The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the practice of executing individuals for crimes they committed below the age of 18 is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Justice Kennedy wrote for the 5-4 majority (Chief Justice Rehnquist heard the case, and thus voted even though there was no "tie" without him).Cut to Findlaw and Justice O'Connor for some details of the unruly tyke in this case:
Justice Kennedy relied on international law and practice to "confirm" his view that the juvenile death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. He also cited the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. signed only subject to the reservation of its right to impose the death penalty for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.
Christopher Simmons' murder of Shirley Crook was premeditated, wanton, and cruel in the extreme. Well before he committed this crime, Simmons declared that he wanted to kill someone. On several occasions, he discussed with two friends (ages 15 and 16) his plan to burglarize a house and to murder the victim by tying the victim up and pushing him from a bridge. Simmons said they could " 'get away with it' " because they were minors. Brief for Petitioners 3. In accord with this plan, Simmons and his 15-year-old accomplice broke into Mrs. Crook's home in the middle of the night, forced her from her bed, bound her, and drove her to a state park. There, they walked her to a railroad trestle spanning a river, "hog-tied" her with electrical cable, bound her face completely with duct tape, and pushed her, still alive, from the trestle. She drowned in the water below.Justice Scalia puts the hammer down on these ninnies:
In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people's representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since "[t]he judiciary ... ha[s] neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment." The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, "bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them." Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years--not, mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed.I must have missed the news!
The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to "the evolving standards of decency," ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: "[I]n the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment." Ante, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards--and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.What our legislatures decide must obviously be inferior to the sensitive ones and their foreign pals. Sheesh, I can hear the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.
Oh yeah - here are some more tykes whose death sentences the sensitive ones revoked:
LOUISIANA:How about a law compelling Supreme Court weenies to witness the autopsies of a few victims?
Dale Dwayne Craig was convicted of the Sept. 14, 1992 killing of Kipp Gullet, a student at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who was ambushed, abducted and had his van stolen after pulling into a dormitory parking lot.
According to co-defendants who testified against Craig, who was 17 at the time of the killing, the victim cried and begged for mercy. Craig fired three bullets into his head as the victim lay on the ground in a fetal position.
...
TEXAS:
Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal were both 17 in 1993 when they joined three other teenagers in the gang rape and killings of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16. The girls were taking a shortcut home from a party and came upon Perez, Villarreal and their friends, who were drinking and fighting along a Houston rail line. The girls were repeatedly raped before being strangled and stomped to death.
The girls' rotting bodies were found four days later. Ertman's teeth were kicked in and she was strangled with a belt and Pena's jaw was broken before she was strangled by her shoelaces. The outspoken grief of Ertman's father, Randy, led to a law allowing families of murder victims to watch the execution of their loved one's killer.
