Posted on 08/29/2002 8:01:56 AM PDT by ZGuy
By ANNE GEARAN Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - In an unusual public statement about the death penalty, three Supreme Court justices said the time is right to consider abolishing capital punishment for killers who committed their crimes as minors.
Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer could not persuade the rest of the court to delay Wednesday's execution of a Texas inmate for a killing committed when he was 17. Toronto Patterson had asked the high court to delay his execution and consider whether such executions are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
The three justices, part of the court's liberal wing, said Patterson's execution should be put off at least until the Supreme Court next meets in September to consider cases for the coming term.
"Given the apparent consensus that exists among the states and in the international community against the execution of a capital sentence imposed on a juvenile offender, I think it would be appropriate for the court to revisit the issue at the earliest opportunity," Stevens wrote in a dissent.
All nine justices vote on whether to halt dozens of executions nationally each year. Usually, the vote is kept secret and the court issues only a dry, one- or two-sentence order denying the inmate's request for a delay.
In Wednesday's public dissent, Stevens said he opposed executions of minor killers when the court last considered the question in 1989, and would do so again. Ginsburg and Breyer did not go as far. They said only that the court should revisit the question considering the June decision on retarded killers.
The dissents follow the court's landmark ruling this year abolishing executions of the mentally retarded. The court said it is unconstitutionally cruel to execute those who may be mentally incapable of fully understanding their situation or unable to help their lawyers.
Death penalty opponents predicted the same reasoning could be applied to the execution of those too young to fully understand their crimes, and Stevens himself has predicted that the question will be the next death penalty issue the court decides.
It is impossible to know when that reconsideration might come. In the meantime, there is nothing to stop executions such as Patterson's unless state legislatures or governors step in, lawyers said.
The statement on retardation was the most significant among several rulings in the court's most recent term that re-examined the mechanics of capital punishment without addressing the constitutionality of the practice as a whole.
"The U.S. Supreme Court is now taking a hard second look at capital punishment, which is not to say at the end of the day the court is going to abolish it," said Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor specializing in the death penalty.
Stevens wrote the June decision in the retardation case, and Ginsburg and Breyer voted with him. The 6-3 majority focused on the growing numbers of states that had outlawed executions of the retarded even though they allowed the death penalty for others.
Sixteen of the 38 states that allow the death penalty prohibit executing those who were under 18 when they killed, said David Elliot, spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
The high court is most likely to take on the issue if it sees more states outlawing such executions over the coming year or two, Elliot said.
"It's issue No. 1 for us," he said.
This "public statement" is an unequivocal admission that Stevens, if not all of these three justices, are unqualified to continue serving as justices.
Their sworn duty is to interpret the constitution, but here they are saying very clearly that they will not do that, but will instead make legal pronouncements based upon "consensus" and the input of the "international community."
In any other job, a person would be fired for refusing to do that for which they were hired. Unfortunately, that cannot happen here and the country's only hope is that these three will soon resign.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg...what a Socialist/Marxist Hillary selected piece of work!
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