Supreme Court bans juvenile executions

[David S]

How is it that the death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment" for a 17 year old but not for an 18 year old?

[David S]

How is it that the death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment" for a 17 year old but not for an 18 year old?

In my humble opinion because a 17 year old is not legally considered a responsible member of society while an 18 year old is.

Does the question of whether a punishment is "cruel and unusual" depend on who its applied to? Is it cruel for one person but not for another?

[David S]

The Supreme Court continues its recent tradition of judicial activism.

One of the most alarming things is the Supreme Court basing decisions on international consensus. 

Exactly right!

All of the Justices take an oath to support the constitution when they take office. They do not take an oath to impose "international consensus" on the American justice system.

[David S]

This is one of the guys who was sentenced to death but now won’t get the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the crime. Tell me he doesn’t deserve the death penalty.

The case of Raymond Levi Cobb
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-1702.ZO.html
After a short time, respondent confessed to murdering both Margaret and Kori Rae. Respondent explained that when Margaret confronted him as he was attempting to remove the Owings’ stereo, he stabbed her in the stomach with a knife he was carrying. Respondent told police that he dragged her body to a wooded area a few hundred yards from the house. Respondent then stated:
“I went back to her house and I saw the baby laying on its bed. I took the baby out there and it was sleeping the whole time. I laid the baby down on the ground four or five feet away from its mother. I went back to my house and got a flat edge shovel. That’s all I could find. Then I went back over to where they were and I started digging a hole between them. After I got the hole dug, the baby was awake. It started going toward its mom and it fell in the hole. I put the lady in the hole and I covered them up. I remember stabbing a different knife I had in the ground where they were. I was crying right then.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A—9 to A—10.
Respondent later led police to the location where he had buried the victims’ bodies.

http://cf.us.biz.yahoo.com/law/050307/2e4e39955dcf9cf1d6cb0f2db13c17d3_1.html

Simmons infuriates Walker County District Attorney David Weeks, because it will result in a life sentence for Raymond Levi Cobb, who was sentenced to death for a 1993 double murder in which he killed a young mother and buried her 16-month-old daughter alive. Cobb committed the crimes when he was 17 years old.

[David S]

This is one of the guys who was sentenced to death but now won’t get the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the crime. Tell me he doesn’t deserve the death penalty.

Okay: he doesn't deserve the death penalty.

Advocates of the death penalty may as well be put to death for every sin they have committed.  Way to go, hypocrites.

You are f****** looney tunes!

Can you not comprehend the difference between the crime of a woman who commits adultery and a 17 year old who murders a woman and then buries her and her infant daughter while the child is still alive?

[David S]

Um putting to death murderers is a double standard...how?

Two wrongs don't make a right.  Life isn't replaced by killing another person.

How is killing a murderer a second wrong?

What if it turns out he's not a murderer, after new evidence comes up, but you've already killed him?

It seems your concern is not so much with the death penalty as with the possibility that the justice system might convict the wrong person. Certainly that is an injustice. But death penalties are rarely carried out swiftly. With the exception of Tim McVeigh there is usually a long time period of appeals before the sentence is carried out. In the case that I cited above the individual confessed to the crime in 1995. It is now nearly ten years later and the sentence still has not been executed. That would seem like adequate time for new evidence, appeals etc which would reduce the risk of executing the wrong person. The advent of DNA evidence should also reduce the risk.

Many posters on this forum have stated that life in prison is a fate worse than death. So if we put someone in jail for life and after he died of old age we found out he was innocent, would that not be a bigger injustice?

The risk of error exists in everything we do. Everytime you get behind the wheel of your car and drive somewhere there is a risk that you might get killed or kill an innocent person. In fact 40,000 people die that way every year, and yet that does not deter us from driving.

In my opinion there are some crimes that are so evil, that they just scream out for the death penalty. It isn't a question of deterent or revenge. It is simply justice.

[David S]

It isn't just the fact that someone died. It's that he was murdered. There was wrongdoing on the part of the murderer.

On September 11th, 2001, three thousand people died of terrorism.

And four thousand people died of food poisioning that year.

One could blame the poverty currently manifesting itself in America at the fault of Bush's disastrous administration.  Should Bush get the death penalty?

The fact that 4,000 people died of food poisoning in 2001 only serves to prove my point.  People die; there's no reason to execute them based on your ideas of right and wrong.  Yes, I agree murder is wrong, but if I were to murder someone for murdering someone else, then, under your system, someone would have to murder me.

Hey, what do I know, I'm "f****** looney tunes."

I appologize for making the "f****** looney tunes" comment. It was crude and inappropriate.

[David S]

The risk of error exists in everything we do. Everytime you get behind the wheel of your car and drive somewhere there is a risk that you might get killed or kill an innocent person. In fact 40,000 people die that way every year, and yet that does not deter us from driving.

You are comparing apples and oranges; When you set out on a car journey, you never intend to kill somebody in an accident. When the state sentences somebody to death it is with the sole intent of killling them.

The act of driving is pretty much integral to today's society; I personally couldn't conceive what society would be like without cars and roads. The death penalty is not integral to society, and I live in one where it has ceased to exist.

The prospect of innocent deaths on the roads is a necessary evil, the prospect of innocent deaths in the execution chair is an unnecessary risk.

My comment on car accidents was meant to illustrate that in all human endeavors mistakes can happen and they can result in injury or death. We try to minimize mistakes but we accept the fact that mistakes can happen.

Your profile says you're from the UK. Your country spends billions on the military. To put it in blunt terms the purpose of the military is to break things and kill people. In fact  your country is doing that in Iraq, right now. While there may be no intent to kill innocent people, there are still innocent people getting killed by your weapons and ours. Your government and our government understand that risk and they accept it.

Now suppose that you sentenced someone to life in prison. Prisoners in the U.S., and probably the UK, are routinely subjected to rape and other abuse at the hands of other prisoners. So lets say this guy spends the final fifty years of his life being brutalized in prison and then dies  of natural causes. The next day we find out he was innocent. Isn't that a horrible injustice too?

Also I would ask you to consider the hideous nature of the crime I cited. The killer stabbed to death a young mother who caught him in the act of burglarizing her home. Then he took her body to the woods and dug a grave for her. He then went back to her home and took her infant daughter out of her crib while she was sleeping. He put her on the ground by the grave. Now imagine that tiny child awaking to see her mother lying by the grave. Perhaps you have a young relative you might envision in that situation. Then imagine her crying for her mother and trying to crawl to her. Imagine her falling into the grave. Imagine the brutal killer shoveling dirt on her until she was completely buried alive. In his testimony the killer said he cried while doing it. Compasionate guy right? Well not compassionate enough to lift her out of the grave and spare her life. Not compassionate enough to stop shovelling dirt on her.

In my opinion the death penalty is a fitting punishment for such a horrible murder.

[David S]

And in my opinion you just demonstrated exactly why we shouldn't allow the victims of horrific crimes to be involved in the sentencing of crimes.

In the U.S. as far as I know victims are not allowed to be involved in sentencing, and certainly dead victims are not.

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I suppose we agree on the sentiment, but wouldn't you want to apply the same standard of justice if it was someone else's nephew?

[David S]

Sweeney was 16 - and believed he was on a romantic rendezvous with his first girlfriend, Justina Morley, who confessed to the crime - when he was clubbed and hacked to death with a hammer, a hatchet and a rock. He was murdered for the $500 he had earned working in construction with his father.

"We just kept hitting him and hitting him. We took Sweeney's wallet and split up the money, and we partied beyond redemption," Domenic Coia confessed, adding that he used the proceeds to buy marijuana, heroin and pills.

As they fled the murder scene, the killers engaged in a "group hug."

"It was like we were all happy [with] what we did," Domenic Coia told detectives.


Jason Sweeney's face was unrecognizable from the 20 to 40 powerful blows, a deputy medical examiner testified during the trial. Every bone in his face, save one, was fractured, and the wounds were so severe that investigators could not initially determine whether he was young or old.

Nice folks! I vote for hanging em!

[David S]

Good idea. Let them win.

Unless you believe in reincarnation, being executed doesn't seem like much of a win.

[David S]

The brain simply is not developed enough to make this a senseful deterrent to teen offenders.

It's up to the state legislatures to make that determination, not the supreme court.

The 8th amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment was ratified in 1791.  In 1792 congress passed the coinage act of 1792, which specified the death penalty for any employees of the mint who intentionally reduced the precious metal content of coins. So people who participated in ratifying the 8th amendment didn't believe the death penalty was cruel and unusual.

[David S]

Shall we infer that you, or the Supreme Court, know better what the founders meant than they did?

If you want to change the constitution there is a process for doing so, but you cannot change it by simply saying that it doesn't mean what it says. As soon as you allow that then the constitution means nothing and the protection of our rights afforded by the constitution also means nothing.

[David S]

I'm saying that the Founders didn't fully appreciate the full meaning of what they wrote (and neither do I), they knew this, and thus allowed for interpretations that would change with time.

...so obviously an evolving interpretation is appropriate.

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True, but I never said that.

But actually you did say that. Your idea of an "evolving interpretation" means exactly that. It says that the constitution may mean something different tomorrow than it does today even though the words did not change. It says that the constitution means whatever somebody wants it to mean rather than what it actually says.
How would we know which parts of the constitution mean what they say and which parts do not? Should we ask you? ,or me? or Hillary Clinton? or Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

The founders gave us ways to change the constitution; either by amendment or by a constitutional convention. Both processes were intentionally made difficult so that the constitution could not be changed without wide spread support. This is much different than allowing the meaning of the constitution to change at the whim of 5 of 9 Supreme court justices.

[David S]

The Supreme court has assumed the roll of arbiter of the constitution. Here are some things Thomas Jefferson said about that:
   "The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."

    —Thomas Jefferson to W. H. Torrance, 1815. ME 14:303
 
   "But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.' True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force."

   —Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451
 
 
   "The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."

   —Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
 
   "To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
   —Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
 
   "In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

   —Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212