A big step for the US back to morality
Sometimes the Supreme Court surprises you. In one of the more important decisions in recent history, today a 5-4 Supreme Court ended the barbaric practice of sentencing children to death.
In the court's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared the U.S. Constitution forbids the imposition of the death penalty against those under the age of 18 when those crimes were committed. "It is property that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime," he wrote.
He noted that the United States was the only country in the world that still gave official sanction to the juvenile death penalty. To put that into a greater context, in recent years only a few other countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China, and Saudi Arabia have put a juvenile to death. All of those countries have subsequently gone on the record as opposing capital punishment for minors.
While a great decision for advocates of abolision, the larger problem is with the practice of sentencing people to death in the first place.
Using Illinois as an example, the statistics of futility for the death penalty are staggering. A person found guilty in a rural area of Illinois was five times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who committed murder in Chicago. Minorities make up an overwhelming majority of those condemned to die and 35 blacks were condemned to die by all-white juries. More than half of the nearly 300 capital cases in the state's history had been overturned and many of the lawyers who had represented these defendants at trial had been disbarred or suspended from the practice of law by the Illinois bar.
Illinois problems mirror themselves across the country. Exhaustive studies have shown the death penalty does not deter crime. In the 12 states that have abolished its use, homicide rates have not increased. The same studies conclude that it is a punishment disproportionately imposed on poor, racial minorities and the disadvantaged in society. The satisfaction of retribution that the death penalty provides can never outweigh the danger of unfair or erroneous application as long as it exists.No civilized country -- except the United States -- continues to use death as a means of punishment.
Today was a step in the right direction. We still have much farther to go.
In the court's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared the U.S. Constitution forbids the imposition of the death penalty against those under the age of 18 when those crimes were committed. "It is property that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime," he wrote.
He noted that the United States was the only country in the world that still gave official sanction to the juvenile death penalty. To put that into a greater context, in recent years only a few other countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China, and Saudi Arabia have put a juvenile to death. All of those countries have subsequently gone on the record as opposing capital punishment for minors.
While a great decision for advocates of abolision, the larger problem is with the practice of sentencing people to death in the first place.
Using Illinois as an example, the statistics of futility for the death penalty are staggering. A person found guilty in a rural area of Illinois was five times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who committed murder in Chicago. Minorities make up an overwhelming majority of those condemned to die and 35 blacks were condemned to die by all-white juries. More than half of the nearly 300 capital cases in the state's history had been overturned and many of the lawyers who had represented these defendants at trial had been disbarred or suspended from the practice of law by the Illinois bar.
Illinois problems mirror themselves across the country. Exhaustive studies have shown the death penalty does not deter crime. In the 12 states that have abolished its use, homicide rates have not increased. The same studies conclude that it is a punishment disproportionately imposed on poor, racial minorities and the disadvantaged in society. The satisfaction of retribution that the death penalty provides can never outweigh the danger of unfair or erroneous application as long as it exists.No civilized country -- except the United States -- continues to use death as a means of punishment.
Today was a step in the right direction. We still have much farther to go.
posted by T. Hildebrandt at 9:21 AM
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