I don’t like how they got to the decision, but I like the outcome:
In a ruling that marked a change in “national standards,” a divided Supreme Court Tuesday ruled that the execution of juvenile killers is unconstitutional.
The 5-4 decision tosses out the death sentence of a Missouri man who was 17-years-old when he murdered a St. Louis area woman in 1993…
In a sharp dissent delivered from the bench, Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed that argument as “no way to run a legal system.”
“We must disregard the new reality that — to the extent our Eighth Amendment decisions constitute something more than a show of hands on the current Justices’ personal views (on the death penalty) — they purport to be nothing more than a snapshot of American public opinion at a particular point in time,” he wrote.
“Allowing lower courts to reinterpret the Eighth Amendment whenever they decide enough time has passed for a new snapshot leaves this court’s decisions without any force,” Justice Scalia writes.
He also criticized the majority opinion for including references to international opposition to the juvenile death penalty.
“Only seven countries other than the United States have executed juvenile offenders since 1990,” Kennedy writes. “Since then each of these countries has either abolished capital punishment for juveniles or made public disavowal of the practice.”
Anticipating criticism, Kennedy adds, “The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions.”
Scalia was undeterred in his dissent. “To invoke alien law when it agrees with one’s own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, is not reasoned decisionmaking, but sophistry,” he says.
Scalia, as usual is right- but I like the outcome of this decision despite the flawed and exceptionally dangerous reasoning that brought us to it. Via How Appealing, more content on why the decision making in this case was particularly troubling.
The decision can be found here.
semm
What a wretchedly reasoned descision. Uggg. These justices amoung the majority opinion are supposedly the best and brighest of our judiciary branch? Gimme a break.
Orac
I like the outcome as well, but was troubled by the invocation of international law. Why not just declare the execution of minors to be cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment? That is certainly a defensible position and doesn’t require the invocation of any law other than the Bill of Rights.
Al Maviva
You know, I’d rather subject helpless old grannies to the death penalty, than to have the legislative power usurped by 9 Ivy-educated jackasses who are beholden to a bunch of Brussels based opinion columnists (not particularly good ones) posing as washed up politicians exiled to the EU assembly.
And it’s not the reliance on international law that even gets me, it’s the citation to UNRATIFIED FUCKING TREATIES as persuasive authority. That’s basically like building an airplance based on bad engineering concepts that have been rejected based on former plane crashes.
Tom Smith at the Right Coast nails this decision pretty well right here:
“The Supreme Court is like a religion where every year the elders come out with new rules that everyone knows they are just making up, and instead of saying, Hey! It’s OK after all to fill up your car on Saturday!, it’s something like, Gosh, I’m sorry, but you can only eat soup with a fork! To be blunt, the Supreme Court is a policy making body, and they suck at making policy.”
Bob Smith
Of course if Scalia got his way, you’d all be executing seven year olds.
Nate
I couldn’t disagree more, and usually I’m right in line with you… To me, this is a lazy, stupidly-reasoned bit of pap that demeans the Supreme Court and casts into question the mentality of the majority.
It makes absolutely no sense at all that a thinking person would accept the argument that one murderer is fully culpable for his actions because he is 18-years-and-one-day old, while another murderer is NOT fully culpable because he is 17-years-and-364 days old.
It just makes no sense. Something as irrelevant as a few months, or a few days, or a few hours of chronological age should have no bearing on legal culpability.
World opinion, while interesting, should not be used as a crutch in lieu of legal argumentation to determine a US constitutional question.
If a Justice could explain to us why a difference of a few days of chronological age is an important factor in sentencing, I’d listen to the argument (I’m CERTAIN it would be an entertaining fantasy!) — but evidently, no justice even felt the need to broach that subject.
If you entertain the quaint notion that there must be a “line’ somewhere (for the sake of judicial laziness?), then why isn’t the “line” based on IQ, then, or on a brain activity-scan? Who can honestly argue that chronological age determines whether someone knows the consequences of their actions?
Even so, aren’t 19-year-olds less able to weigh the consequences of their actions than 20-year-olds? Shouldn’t there be special sentencing guidelines for them? Aren’t 20-year-olds less able to weigh consequences than 21-year-olds? Are 109-year-olds less able than 108-year-olds? Where does it stop?
My point is that the facts of the individual case should determine punishment, not something as arbitrary as age limits. The present system allowed for that flexibility — the illogical ruling today does not. We now have a more inflexible, less logical legal system, and I don’t think that should be the goal of the Supreme Court!
Age limits do have there place to solve certain problems. When you go to buy beer, the bartender must have some way of determining whether society thinks you should be able to consume alcohol in order to protect himself from litigation. Since having your life-story laid out for the barkeep in the form of a legal proceeding in order to prove your responsibility every time you order a drink would not be time-effective, we’ve passed drinking-age laws, which, of course, allow some irresponsible kids to drink themselves to death while denying alcohol to some kids who wouldn’t use it irresponsibly.
In a murder trial, however, the entire life of the defendant CAN and IS laid out for the judge and jury to decide ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS whether you are responsible. There is no reason to rely on something so arbitrary as a made-up age limit for sentencing guidelines. Lawyers take great pains to show juries the EXACT state-of-mind of every defendant.
Sentencing murderers is JOB ONE for the courts. Nothing is more important. To rely on a made-up number to “prove” than an individual is reasonable enough (knowing that a few months of chronological age mean virtually nothing to the maturity level of individuals) or not is not logical.
When we have a system that differentiates between the punishments of murderers who are 17.99 years old and murderers who are 18.01 years old, SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF A FEW DAYS OF AGE, then we have an illogical, inflexible system.
Birkel
I’m against the death penalty. Not because of some moral aversion but rather because the cost of the mandatory appeals. It’s just not cost effective.
But I couldn’t care less what another country thinks about the issue. Piss on those other countries.
And finally, Lee Malvo should get the harshest possible punishment regardless of his age.
Ron
I must disagree, Mr Cole. If a ruling of law cannot be justified on reasonable grounds it is a bad ruling.
I can understand opposition to the death penalty on many grounds, and I can understand a desire to not execute minors. But either the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, or it’s not.
It would be the legislature’s job to codify lighter sentences for minors, not the Supreme Court’s.
CadillaqJaq
OK, now it should be interesting to keep track of the increase in minors capping folks for pay. A Los Angeles area cop telephoned Rush Limbaugh yesterday explaining that legal age ‘gang-bangers’ regularly hire and pay minors to off their rivals.
He went on to explain that then as a convicted minor, they spend time in JA until they are 25 or so and are cut loose. This activity has been going on for a quite a while with not much mention of it in the media. So, if not the death penalty, what should the penalty for a minor convicted of murder-for-hire be? Maybe the “Judicial Nine” should spend a while in south central LA.
Steve Malynn
Bob Smith, two points: 1) Scalia simply argued that the policy decision regarding the age at which one is competent to stand for a capital crime is a legislative decision; 2) relatedly, the legislators of the 19 states that allow 16 year-olds be tried as adults in capital cases actually over-ruled the common law at the time of the drafting – our forebears allowed 14 year old murders pay for their crimes, anyone younger was considered incompetent.
Bob
Giving the State the power to kill with premeditation has been dismissed as barbaric by most of the civilized world. I won’t even get into the argument about killing children. Killers can be put into prison for life without parole where they won’t be a danger to the public.
But, hey, if you’ve got the bloodlust, anything I say isn’t going to change your mind.
Veeshir
I see it that the majority liked the outcome so they had to figure out how to implement it.
The trouble lies in the fact that we already have a way to implement decisions we like but can’t find justification in the Constitution. It’s called “The Legislature”.
This is judicial activism at its most foul.
Now that we have two decisions where the justices used “international standards” when will the first case be brought that our taxes are too low and we need to bring them more in line with “International standards”?
There’s a reason most of the people in the US are here, they or their ancestors didn’t like it where they were.
I see the US as the biggest, “Screw You” to “international standards” in the history of the world.
Bob
Vee, I hope you’re not driving on public roads, I hope when your house catches on fire you don’t call the fire department, etc., etc. I never hear any of you guys complaining about having public roads or public services when they pull your butt out of the fire, only paying for them. More hypocrisy.
Most people are here because they or their ancestors were starving someplace else or tbeir leaders where they came from didn’t give them justice, or killed and tortured them. I don’t see any streams of refugees from Sweden.
TM Lutas
John Cole – Your line is exactly what the liberals did with Roe v Wade. Everybody knew it was a travesty of legal reasoning but an awful lot of libs prostituted themselves for it because they liked the outcome. I’d think you’d want to be better than that.
Bob – You’re acting the idiot. The small government idea is that road payment, fire payment, etc. can be done better if privately arranged with more services for less cost. It is not, and has never been, to do entirely without roads firemen, or other services though we might have plenty of money to pay for such.
Accepting inferior service for your money just because you’re too lazy to sort out the issues of private provision is not an admirable way to go about through life. Commercial fire services are a real world reality, so are private roads. Private police aren’t, really, but people are working on the problem.
The key is to embrace private provision where the kinks have been worked out and patiently pay your taxes for the services that have not. Here’s a hint, if it was provided for privately in the past, there’s a pretty good chance that it could be done so today and done better than public provision.