Juvenile death penalty banned
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
CARLA CROWDER
News staff writer
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday barred states from executing people who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, vacating 72 death sentences, including 13 in Alabama.
In a 5-4 decision, the court found that executing juveniles was unconstitutionally cruel and that the death penalty must be reserved for the worst offenders, a category that cannot include people who have not reached adulthood.
Citing scientific and sociological studies, the court said that juveniles are more immature, irresponsible and susceptible to negative influences than adults.
"The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.
The Roper v. Simmons decision, an appeal out of Missouri, reverses a 1989 high court decision and strikes the second major blow to death penalty supporters in three years. Justices banned the execution of the mentally retarded in 2002.
Justices said that the United States' practice of executing juvenile criminals is so out of line with other developed countries that it is no longer acceptable. The United States has stood virtually alone in sanctioning such executions, wrote Kennedy, who voted 16 years ago to continue the executions. Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia are the only other countries still putting juveniles to death.
`Evolving standards':
Only 19 states allow the juvenile death penalty, and those states rarely use it, justices said. They cited "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society to determine which punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual."
In the minority dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia accused other justices of cherry-picking studies that supported their views and disputed that a national consensus exists. The appropriateness of capital punishment should be determined by individual states, he said, not "the subjective views of five members of this court and like-minded foreigners."
Alabama has the country's second-highest number of people who committed their crimes as 16- or 17-year-olds on Death Row, behind Texas.
Prosecutors throughout Alabama also expressed disappointment that Tuesday's ruling means death sentences will not be an option for dozens of teenagers under indictment for capital murder.
"Our fight against these crimes and those who commit them has one less tool today," Alabama Attorney General Troy King wrote in a statement. King previously wrote a brief in the Missouri case and listed details of six Alabama cases that he said supported the need to execute teens.
Life without parole:
Several defense lawyers and advocates against capital punishment said they were pleased with the ruling.
"It's very significant anytime 8 percent of people under sentence of death have their death sentence overturned," said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery law firm that represents poor people on Death Row.
"Every human being has the possibility for redemption and change, and I think with kids it's especially important to recognize that," Stevenson said.
The decision means the 13 Alabamians will be sentenced to life without parole and will likely die in prison.
The men affected were lining up at Holman Prison phones Tuesday to call their lawyers. They will not be immediately removed from Death Row. But they can petition whatever court their appeal is before and have the sentence changed to life without parole, said attorney general's office spokesman Chris Bence.
Several men convicted in Birmingham metro-area cases will be removed from Death Row. Among them is Mark Duke of Pelham, who was 16 when he killed his father, his father's girlfriend and her two young daughters. The girls' necks were slashed.
Duke's attorney, John Lentine, a past president of the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said his client is one of those who was severely abused by his father as a child.
"The reality is children aren't born monsters, they're made that way," Lentine said.
`Exceptional cases':
Marcus Pressley, who at 17 shot and killed two people in robbery-murders in Jefferson and Shelby counties, also will have his sentence commuted.
Shelby County Chief Assistant District Attorney Bill Bostick said the office informed victims' families of the decision. "They, of course, are extremely disappointed, as are we," Bostick said.
The Supreme Court's four most liberal justices, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer, were joined by Kennedy in the vote to ban capital punishment for juveniles.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor voted to uphold the executions.
In Scalia's dissent, he mentioned an Alabama case in which four teenagers picked up a hitchhiker near Trussville, kicked and stomped her, then sexually assaulted and mutilated her corpse. He called it a "monstrous act" and argued that juries should treat "exceptional cases in an exceptional way."
He said that the majority "looks to scientific and sociological studies, picking and choosing those that support its position. It never explains why those particular studies are scientifically sound; none was ever entered into evidence or tested in an adversarial proceeding."
The decision blocks any state from attempting to get death for convicted Washington sniper Lee Boyd Malvo. Montgomery authorities have tried to bring him to trial in Alabama, where he is accused in the shooting death of a liquor store manager in Montgomery on Sept. 21, 2002. Malvo was 17 at the time. Alabama has not executed a juvenile offender since 1961.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. ccrowder@bhamnews.com
