After a 32-year journey, Justice Stevens renounces capital punishment

[flashl]

Source: IHT

WASHINGTON: When Justice John Paul Stevens intervened in a Supreme Court argument on Wednesday to score a few points off the lawyer who was defending the death penalty for the rape of a child, the courtroom audience saw a master strategist at work, fully in command of the flow of the argument and the smallest details of the case. For those accustomed to watching Stevens, it was a familiar sight.

But there was something different that no one in the room knew except the eight other justices. In the decision issued 30 minutes earlier in which the court found Kentucky's method of execution by lethal injection constitutional, John Paul Stevens, in the 33rd year of his Supreme Court tenure and four days shy of his 88th birthday, had just renounced the death penalty.

In an opinion concurring with the majority's judgment, Stevens said he felt bound to "respect precedents that remain a part of our law." But outside the confines of the Kentucky case, he said, the time had come to reconsider "the justification for the death penalty itself."

He wrote that court decisions and actions taken by states to justify the death penalty were "the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process" to weigh the costs and risks of the penalty against its benefits.

IHT

Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/18/america/18memo.php

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Respect for precedents that remain a part of law? American myth-making for the next generation.

[flamin lib]

1. "American myth-making for the next generation."

That's a little harsh for one of the most important tenants of American Jurisprudence. Precedent is a vital part of law through out history. Without respect for what went before law wouldn't exist. That's why the concept of bills of attainder and ex post facto laws were written out of the constitution.

It is only with the most caution that a wholesale overturn of previous decisions be made.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't welcome such a change or that it is unheard of, just that precedent is a very important stabilizing factor in the interpretation of law.

[flashl]

4. Myth-making ...

Judges May Overrule Juries in Capital Cases, Court Says

Published: February 23, 1995

The Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of Alabama's death penalty law, under which a judge may impose a death sentence despite a jury's recommendation of life in prison without parole.

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"Serious questions are being raised about whether the death penalty is being fairly administered in this country. Perhaps it's time to look at minimum standards for appointed counsel in death cases and adequate compensation for appointed counsel when they are used."
-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, July 1, 2001

Sleeping Lawyer
In 1984, Calvin Burdine was convicted of murder and sentenced to die while his defense lawyer slept through major portions of the trial. The Texas death row inmate is now back in court hoping to receive a new trial.

Inexperienced Counsel
In 1992, William Nieves was arrested and convicted for a drug-related murder he did not commit. Assigned to his case was a divorce lawyer who did not hire investigators to find witnesses in the case. After spending years on death row, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ordered a retrial. With the help of a criminal defense lawyer hired by the Nieves family, William was acquitted and released in October 2000.

Ineffectiveness of Counsel
Ronald Williamson and Dennis Fritz were charged with the murder and rape of Deborah Sue Carter in Oklahoma. Both were convicted and Williamson received the death penalty. In 1997, a federal appeals court overturned Williamson's conviction. The court noted that the lawyer failed to tell the jury that another man had confessed to the crime. All charges against the two defendants were dismissed on April 15, 1999 and they were released after DNA tests implicated another man.

The Justice Project

[izquierdista]

5. Precedent

Continuing to walk into a doorway, day after day, waiting for someone else to widen the doorway.

[annabanana]

2. THIS is ANOTHER reason why I will vote for WHICHEVER Dem

gets the nomination. The Court is fast approaching the point of no return for generations. The youngest Justices are the most radical. Reason is dying off and must be replenished.

[customerserviceguy]

3. Interesting

that Justice Stevens chose child rape as the place to draw the line...

Oh, wait, they don't give the death penalty for anything else besides murder. I guess if you want to draw a line, that's as good a place as any.

[boilinmad]

6. I find it very interesting.....

.....that this nation, FULL of " Christians ", chooses to ignore a pretty important part of its teaching.....THOU SHALT NOT KILL. But i guess everyone just picks and chooses whats important to them, huh?

[fed_up_mother]

14. I'm against the death penalty

but that should read "Thou shall not murder." Killing in self defense is not murder, and apparently some believe that killing murderers isn't murder. I'm not so sure about that.

[customerserviceguy]

16. I guess

I pick children as being more important than child rapists.

No, I'm not a christian, but an atheist who knows when someone can forfeit the right to life for heinous acts.

[flashl]

19. Children are important, have you ever known ANYONE from a state run program

found guilty of child abuse EVER receive death penalty charges?

[knitter4democracy]

7. Treason, espionage, and terrorism also get the death penalty.

At least on the federal level. The military also uses it for certain military crimes. Rape is not usually a death penalty crime in most states.

[customerserviceguy]

17. Treason, espionage, and terrorism

all pretty much lead to murder at the more extreme levels. I don't recall anybody being given a death sentence for any of the above within my lifetime, perhaps you can educate me where this has occurred.

[knitter4democracy]

18. Maybe not a sentence, but we've killed terrorists.

Of course, we ignored the rule of law, etc., and I don't know why, other than lots of stuff would come out in a trial and make everyone look bad.

My main point was that murder isn't the only crime with the death penalty.

[AngryAmish]

8. The death penalty is not unconstitutional

It is as bad idea, but not unconstitutional.

[ensho]

9. he just did it so he and the other neo cons won't get executed

after they are arrested and tried.

[tchunter]

10. justice stevens a neocon?

Stevens wrote the majority opinion in the Hamdan case which said that the military tribunals were unconstitutional. he was further to the right in the past but he's been steadily moving left for the last two decades. He sided with counting the votes in 2000.

[ensho]

11. sorry I was thinking of the other one who doesn't allow the media

to record his speeches, etc. Scalia.

must be having a senior moment

[Freddie Stubbs]

12. Who is going to arrest and execute Supreme Court Justices?

President Bob Barr?

[robcon]

13. Stevens can hold whatever private opinion he wants. But as a justice he knows execution is constitu

It is explicitly constitutional. The Kentucky case was about the methods of execution, although Stevens slipped into his argument the idea of the "justification of the death penalty itself" aside from the facts of the particular case at issue.

The Kentucky case basically said the requirement that the defendant prove a specific alternative to the execution method is better (less pain, for example.) It will force defendants to argue a very specific alternative: "Don't kill me that way, kill me this way." If a state wants to litigate the issue and loses, the court will not prevent the execution itself, but rather will just order the state to execute the person in the different but also "feasible" and "readily implemented" way the defendant has proposed.

[flashl]

15. Lawsuits test crackdown on sex criminals

A death-penalty case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this week marks the latest constitutional challenge to an ongoing, nationwide crackdown on sex criminals.

...

Penalties for molesters and other sex criminals have toughened considerably in recent years and now include execution in at least five states, chemical castration in eight states and the use of technology to monitor offenders’ every move in more than half the states.

...

The recent legal challenges take aim at laws that sex criminals say violate constitutional guarantees, including privacy, due process and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. Supporters of the laws say they are necessary to protect children from predators who are capable of committing brutal crimes.

...

Lawyers for the inmate, Patrick Kennedy, say the death penalty for child rapists is cruel and unusual, in part because only four other states (Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas) allow it, while similar laws in Florida and Georgia may be invalid after court or legislative action. They stress that only Louisiana actually has sentenced child rapists to death, and only in two cases, and that the Supreme Court already has struck down the death penalty for those who rape adults

“Evolving standards of decency,” however, should allow for the execution of such criminals, lawyers for Louisiana counter, noting that child rapists are universally acknowledged as being among the worst of the worst.

Stateline