Mar. 2 TEXAS: A 'vicious generation' spawned push to condemn Texas Juvenile offenders were infrequent arrivals to Texas' death row until the 1990s, when escalating juvenile violence and a new breed of young killer prompted a severe reaction from the criminal justice system. Only 4 Texas juvenile offenders were executed for crimes committed in the 1970s. Ditto for the 1980s, though one inmate from that decade remains on death row. The turbulent 1990s saw a different story. An explosion of juvenile crime, including a huge increase in juvenile homicides, brought the gloves off. Most juvenile offenders currently on Texas' death row - 25 of 28 - committed their crimes in that decade. Half of the total occurred from 1994-99. In this case, Texas mirrored a national trend. Across the country, 76 juveniles were given death sentences during the last half of the 1990s. That's almost as many as the previous 12 years. Typically, getting a death sentence for a juvenile offender has been harder than for an adult, not only because of age but because of a more limited criminal record. That changed in the last decade. Experts think the impact of publicity about juvenile crime made its way to the courthouse. Not only were there more cases to consider, but people had been shocked by news reports of gang violence, crack wars, drive-bys, school shootings and youths everywhere with guns. "You had local news pounding on the issue, so presumably the jury came in sort of primed to accept the message that the juvenile crime rate is a problem," said Victor Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern University and an expert on the juvenile death penalty. "The arguments in court were no different than they ever were, but the public awareness of juvenile violence was." -NEWS POLL What do you think of the Supreme Court's ruling banning the execution of juvenile killers? Good decision; they're too young to vote: ---- 24% They went too far; it depends on the case:---- 28% Juveniles should answer for their crimes:----- 48% Total Votes: 677 Researcher sees aberration Robert Blecker, a New York law professor who researched the wave of juvenile killers firsthand, thinks they were a frightening aberration that had never been seen in society or the criminal justice system. Blecker spent more than 2,000 hours interviewing young offenders in a Virginia prison that served Washington, D.C., one of the early venues in the outbreak of juvenile violence. He said the death sentences that ensued from their murders were understandable when details of the crimes are explored. "It was an incomparably vicious generation, so it doesn't surprise me there were these death penalties," said Blecker, who teaches at New York Law School. "There was a depraved indifference to human life that I think has peaked. There reached a point where it got so out of control that even the older street criminals recognized themselves that they wanted something better for their younger brothers. The older kids were now reining in the younger kids." Dianne Clements, head of the Houston-based victims rights group Justice for All, said she was disappointed that the court would treat juvenile offenders with a broad brush instead of letting their crimes be considered individually. "I was hoping the majority of justices would give credence to the types of murders that these 16- and 17-year-olds commit," she said, "and understand how important it is to impose the type of penalties states permit and (let) juries decide, instead of turning their backs on innocent victims and families." No state will be more affected by Tuesday's ruling than Texas, which leads the nation by far in sentencing juvenile offenders to death, even though state law permits only 17-year-olds to be considered. Texas' 28 juvenile offenders on death row is double that of Alabama, the only other state in double digits. Alabama, which allows 16-year-olds to receive death sentences, has never executed any of its juvenile offenders. Texas has executed 13. No other state has more than five juveniles on death row. No comfort for families For those familiar with Texas' willingness to use capital punishment, such numbers are hardly surprising. Its 338 executions since the resumption of capital punishment in 1977 - more than 1/3 of all those carried out in the United States - have earned it worldwide distinction. Many are not sad to see that distinction end, at least with respect to juveniles. "Up until today, I think there were six nations in the world that executed people for crimes they committed as children - including China, Saudi Arabia, Republic of Congo and Iran," said Jim Marcus, director of the Texas Defender Service, which handles the appeals of a number of Texas death row inmates. "So it's about time that the United States conformed to the criminal justice standards of the Western Hemisphere." For the families of victims, however, the argument for standards pales beside their pain and outrage. "They were certified as adults, they should be executed like adults," said Adolph Pea, whose daughter Elizabeth and her friend Jennifer Ertman were murdered in 1993 by a gang of teenagers that included three juveniles. "Let those guys up in D.C. worry about whether they knew what they were doing. I know my 16-year-old knew what they were doing." The reasons behind the rise in juvenile homicides in the early '90s - the reaction to which may be indirectly responsible for Tuesday's court ruling - will be debated by social scientists for years. Blecker said several factors played a role. The first was a widely observed phenomenon: the flight of the minority middle class from communities that had previously been segregated. When the merchants and dentists and postal workers left, the only people with money were those involved in crime. Of greater influence, he said, was an epidemic of abuse of crack and marijuana soaked in PCP. The drug culture seized control of a sizable segment of youth. Its assumptions - kill or be killed, no one makes it past 21, live entirely for the moment - went hand in hand with violence. The drugs themselves left the teens feeling both invulnerable and paranoid, a lethal combination. As the epidemic waned, the killings dropped. And so did death sentences. There have been only 22 in the last five years and only two in Texas. Sentencing rate declines Streib, however, said only some of that decrease should be attributed to fewer killings. In recent years, he said, the practice of executing juvenile offenders has become less palatable for society. Death penalty opponents have campaigned steadily against it, increasing their effort after the Supreme Court banned execution of the mentally retarded in 2002. "The (death) sentencing rate is much, much lower than the (juvenile) homicide rate," Streib said. "There has been a lot of campaigning against the juvenile death penalty. It's sort of out of favor politically now. And whether they face the death penalty depends on what the local prosecutor wants to do." ************************ High court's death ruling 'a footnote' When I called anti-death penalty lawyer David Dow yesterday to talk about the U.S. Supreme Court decision barring execution as a punishment for crimes committed by minors, I expected 2 reactions from him. The first was exhilaration at the decision. The second was long-term pessimism about the prospects of doing away with the death penalty altogether. Dow is a law professor at the University of Houston and head of its Innocence Project. You'd think an anti-death penalty activist living in the Death Penalty Capital of the World (a.k.a. Harris County) would celebrate victories exuberantly and then fade back into the slough of despond. I was wrong on both counts. His reaction to the decision was that it was expected, and even a bit disappointing. "Four of the justices have been saying that they want to do away with the death penalty for some time," he said. "I think there was a sense that if they didn't think they could get a 5th vote on juvenile executions, they wouldn't have taken the case." In fact, Dow said, he had hoped the vote would be 6-3 rather than the 5-4 that came down. Death penalty's death? "I think it's a little surprising that Justice (Sandra Day) O'Connor voted with the minority," he said. Dow welcomed the decision, but not with exuberance. "I welcome it as someone who has 3 clients who will benefit from it," he said. "I also view it as a decision that, when the history of the rise and fall of the death penalty is written in another decade or so, I think this case will be a footnote." Did we hear that right? Does Dow think the death penalty will have fallen in another decade or so? "Let me put it this way," he said. "I have a 4-year-old boy. By the time he's ready to go to law school, I don't think we'll have the death penalty any more." (I wonder if the Supreme Court would consider it cruel and unusual for him to sentence a 4-year-old to law school.) Dow noted that the Supreme Court was already nibbling away at the death penalty. It earlier outlawed executing the mentally retarded (with Justice O'Connor in the majority). Now it's removed convicts who committed their crimes before their 18th birthday. Curing to kill "There's one more peripheral issue," he said. "In the near term the court will have to address mental illness. It's a bigger problem than mental retardation." An example is Andrea Yates. Nobody says the woman who drowned her children after conversations with Satan is not mentally ill. But with the help of a highly paid expert witness, Harris County prosecutors were able to convince jurors that she was sane under Texas law at the moment she committed the crime. The DA's office sought the death penalty, but the jury gave her life in prison. Actually, the Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that insane people could not be executed. But in a footnote, one member of the five-justice majority wrote that if the convict could be "cured" he could be executed. So some psychotic inmates have been medicated so that they could be killed. Dow thinks that after the Supreme Court deals with this bizarre side issue, it will go to the issue of whether the death penalty itself is "cruel and unusual." But it will only do so, as it has in the retardation and juvenile issues, because society has led the way. The basis of the court's decision on those issues was that most states had quit executing retarded persons and juveniles, rendering it "cruel and unusual." Dow says support for the death penalty itself is a mile wide and a half-inch deep. "That's hard to see in Harris County, but even in Texas many district attorneys now seek the death penalty much less often than they could," he said. And 2 years ago, a poll of Texans found that 41 percent thought executions should be halted while a number of issues were studied. 69 % said they believed innocent people had been executed. Still, 76 % said they supported the death penalty. Dow says, however, that the expressions of concern show a dwindling depth of conviction for the death penalty. If that's true in Texas, it's more true in other states. The likely scenario, says Dow, is that most of the other states will quit executing criminals. Then the Supreme Court will stop Texas from doing it. And his kid will have to go into a different area of the law. (source for both: Houston Chronicle) ******************* One more rise in the tide against America's tragedy Somewhere William J. Brennan is smiling. Not a face-splitting beam, you understand, because four members of his beloved Supreme Court still believe it's just fine to execute 16- and 17-year-olds. But a pleased, reflected gleam, nonetheless, because the death penalty is one small step closer to being removed as the scourge of a civilized nation that should know better. Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun are, somewhere, smiling too. But I focus on Brennan because it was he, who in 1989 near the end of his 34 years as an associate justice, wrote the blistering dissent as the Supreme Court upheld capital punishment for adolescents. Brennan featured in his erudite opinion many of the concepts that seemed settled in Supreme Court analysis until the wrecking crew of William Rehn-quist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas came along. "Evolving standards of decency." "Contemporary attitudes." "Proportionality." Brennan also skewered Scalia's "misplaced disdain" for scientific evidence, which in the plurality opinion Scalia had sought to ridicule as "ethicoscientific." Well, let's hear it for the "ethicoscientific." Because in good measure, that, along with those pesky evolving standards, is exactly what 5 justices relied on Tuesday, in Roper v. Simmons, to rule that executing 16- and 17-year-olds violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. As a leader of the American Psychiatric Association, one of several medical groups that favored banning juvenile executions, noted Tuesday, the decision acknowledges "that the brains of adolescents function in fundamentally different ways than the brains of adults." It is an especially important ruling for Texas, which is home to more than one-third of the nation's death row population in under-18 cases. It is also another rebuke to the death-penalty zealotry of much of the state's political establishment. Their enchantment with executing juveniles put them in a very narrow league that included, until his recent dethronement, Saddam Hussein. In a nice turn of history, as well as a symbol of how close was the vote, the latest opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a member of Scalia's plurality 15 years ago. Sadly and inexplicably, the new majority did not include Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who 3 years ago joined 5 other justices in striking down the death penalty for the mentally retarded. O'Connor attempted - and failed - in a dissenting opinion Tuesday to parse why the social, medical and legal analyses that applied and were persuasive enough to her in the mental retardation case (Atkins v. Virginia) were not met in Roper. Oh, well, opponents of the death penalty may have to learn to live with 5-4, assuming even that narrow count can be maintained if President Bush, a death-penalty enthusiast, gets to make a Supreme Court nomination. Little by little, since it reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the Supreme Court has whittled back the administration and application of capital punishment. To the Scalias of the world, the idea of "evolving" standards or, even worse to them, an "evolving" interpretation of the Constitution, is some sort of perversion (unless, of course, it gets them to their political ends). But as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, if the meaning of the Eighth Amendment "had been frozen when it was originally drafted, it would impose no impediment on the execution of 7-year-old children." I'd hesitate to see that proposition brought to a vote in the Texas Legislature as currently constituted. The Roper case is "a small tsunami," said Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University professor of law and public health. "It's not a 30-foot wall of water but a 2-foot wall. But that still is changing the landscape." Opponents of the death penalty must acknowledge the narrowness of the vote that produced Tuesday's welcomed result in Roper but also recognize the modestly advantageous lay of the land. "Proponents of the death penalty haven't had a win in a long time," Fagan said. The Roper case, he said, represents "a small tide but an inexorable one." The remainder of the journey is not likely to be short or easy or without setbacks, but with each step and at every turn it will be worthwhile. (source: Houston Chronicle -- Craig Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C.) ********************* Ruling to have profound effect on Texas For almost 12 years, Melissa Pena has waited for the execution of five gang members who raped and killed her teenage daughter and a friend and left their bodies to rot in a Houston field. On Tuesday, she learned that day would never come. "They should die for what they did to my daughter. This is not right," Pena said. A closely divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that it's unconstitutional to execute juvenile killers, ending a practice in Texas and 18 other states that has been roundly condemned by many of Americas closest allies. The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers, 28 of whom are on Texass death row. It also bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes, saying such executions violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The high courts ruling will not affect any cases from Galveston County. The only two people on death row from Galveston County are Gaylon George Walbey Jr. and Robert Alan Shields Jr. Walbey was 18 in 1993 when he beat and stabbed to death his former foster mother, Galveston College instructor Marionett Beyah. Shields was 19 in 1994, when he beat and stabbed Friendswood neighbor Paula Stiner to death. County Criminal District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk said the only capital murder defendant awaiting trial in Galveston County who could have been affected was Thomas Justin Thomas. Thomas was 17 when his grandparents were killed in their Texas City home, and he was charged in their deaths. Sistrunk said prosecutors had already decided not to seek the death penalty in his case, however. "The decision to seek death should be beyond reproach, giving proper consideration to age, mental retardation, mental state at the time of the offense, or whatever the next unknown limiting factor may be," he said. 22 of the people put to death since 1976 were juveniles when they committed their crimes; 13 of them were in Texas. The ruling triggered cries of outrage from Texas victims' rights activists, victims relatives, as well as renewed demands for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty - a demand Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately refused. But Perry asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to review the states cases affected by the Supreme Court ruling. At least two bills pending before the Legislature would prohibit the execution of violent offenders under the age of 18. "If a bill that brings Texas law in line with the court's ruling reaches my desk, I will sign it," Perry said in a prepared statement. "Regardless of what the Legislature does, however, Texas will abide by the courts ruling." Perry told reporters he would consider signing legislation allowing sentences of life without parole for juveniles, which is now not an option for Texas juries. A life sentence in Texas means a defendant is eligible for parole in 40 years. Sen. Garnet Coleman of Houston said it was time to end Texas executions, but Perry replied: "The answer is no." Among the Texas killers affected by the Supreme Court ruling were: - Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal of Harris County (Houston), convicted with three others of the gang-rape and beating deaths of Jennifer Ertman, 14 and Elizabeth Pena, 16. Perez and Villarreal were 17 at the time. Penas father, Adolph, on Tuesday wore a T-shirt with the girls photos printed on it. "These people are animals," he said at a news conference held by Harris County murder victims relatives. "They're the scourge of the streets. If they get out, they will kill again." - Robert Springsteen of Travis County, convicted at 17 in 2001 of the infamous "Yogurt Shop" slayings in which four teenage girls were bound, gagged and fatally shot in the head at a yogurt shop a decade earlier. - Jorge Alfredo Salinas, who at 17 carjacked a man in Hidalgo County in July 2001, fatally shot him in the head, and left the mans 21-month-old daughter to die of dehydration and exposure strapped in her car seat in a brush area near the Rio Grande. 11 of the juvenile murderers on Texas death row were convicted in Harris County. One of them, Johnnie Bernal, was one day shy of his 18th birthday when he shot and killed Lee Dilley as he stood outside a Houston drive-in with his high school prom date. "Does it make sense that just because he was 17 years and 364 days old he's going to be spared?" asked Harris County prosecutor Roe Wilson, who expressed disappointment that the ruling doesnt allow for individual review of cases. But Jim Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, said the decision was long overdue. "This shows a clear consensus that its really inappropriate," Marcus said. "It's inappropriate for the same reason that we dont trust juveniles with the right to vote. Juvenile brain and mental development is just not ready." -- A Look At Juvenile Offenders On Texas' Death Row - 28 Texas death row inmates were under 18 when they committed their crimes. (A 29th juvenile capital murder convict, Patrick Horn, is first serving a life sentence in Georgia). - 13 of the 22 people who were juvenile offenders and were executed since capital punishment was resumed in 1976 were in Texas. - 11 of the 28 Texas death row inmates who were juveniles at the time of their offenses are from Harris County. (source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice) (source: The Galveston County Daily News) ********************* State's option: life in prison----Several killers could be eligible for parole one day, prosecutors warn Texas prosecutors said Tuesday that they expect death sentences handed out to juvenile killers to be commuted to life in prison in response to a landmark Supreme Court ruling, and some warned that several offenders could one day be eligible for parole. "The jurors were wise enough to see that these individuals will be a continuing threat," said District Attorney James Farren of Randall County in West Texas. "I hope your loved ones are barricaded behind doors when these people start walking the streets." While prosecutors and victims' rights advocates decried the ruling as a dangerous case of judicial overreach, lawmakers and state officials scrambled to determine how Texas - with at least twice as many juveniles on death row as any other state - must respond. Under state law, all defendants sentenced to life in prison are eligible for parole after serving a minimum number of years. The minimum sentence has changed over the years. In 1989, when Mauro Barraza murdered Vilorie Nelson in Haltom City, it was 15 years. Now, it is 40. Under the U.S. Constitution, laws cannot be enforced retroactively, so the minimum sentences in place when the offenders were convicted would apply. Lawmakers began expanding the minimum sentences in the early 1990s, so most of the offenders would still face decades of prison time before being eligible for parole. Parole called a long shot The state Board of Pardons and Paroles must grant parole, and lawyers for death row inmates said they do not expect offenders such as Mr. Barraza to be released anytime soon. "There is no mandatory release in any of these cases," said Jim Marcus, executive director of Texas Defender Service, which handles appeals for defendants convicted of capital crimes. "It is always within the discretion of Pardons and Paroles, and they are just not releasing people." The Board of Pardons and Paroles would have to recommend to Gov. Rick Perry that the offenders receive life sentences. Mr. Perry stressed Tuesday that all cases would be reviewed individually, but he indicated that he expected to commute the sentences. "It is a pretty bright line that the Supreme Court has drawn," Mr. Perry said. "If you are 18 or above, you are going to be treated as eligible for the death penalty. If you are 17 years and 364 days, you're not." Legislators might move quickly now on measures to revise Texas law and bar execution of those younger than 18, which have stalled in recent legislative sessions. But Mr. Perry said that even if the Legislature does not act, the state will comply with the high court ruling. The decision continues a recent trend of narrowing the application of the death penalty, which justices reinstated in 1976. The court in 1988 outlawed executions for those 15 and younger when they committed their crimes. 3 years ago, justices banned executions of the mentally retarded. Tuesday's ruling was the result of a Missouri case, but Texas has by far the most juvenile killers on death row. Harris County is responsible for 11 of the 29 cases. Texas has also accounted for 13 of the 22 juvenile executions that have occurred in the United States, said Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston lawmaker who has advocated bans on executions of juveniles and the mentally retarded. Only Oklahoma and Virginia have also executed juvenile offenders. "This will take a little of the Wild West out of the Texas criminal justice system," Mr. Ellis said. He said the ruling might accelerate lawmakers' willingness to create a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. "Many of the people in the past who have opposed life in prison may re-evaluate their decision now," Mr. Ellis said. Sen. Eddie Lucio, who has filed a bill that would create life without parole, said the ruling should compel the Legislature to pass it. "After this ruling, juries will no longer be able to keep juveniles who committed heinous crimes off our streets," said Mr. Lucio, D-Brownsville. "Young persons who commit these crimes are guaranteed to be eligible for parole when they reach my age or even younger." Mr. Perry, who would have to sign such a bill into law, was noncommittal. "The possibility of life without parole will be discussed and debated in this legislative session," he said. "That is another option with a tougher penalty, a tougher outcome." In the past, Texas prosecutors have opposed life without parole because they worried jurors would be less willing to apply the death penalty if they knew a killer could spend his life in prison. Prosecutors did not indicate whether they would change their minds. Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal cautioned that life without parole could create a population of hopeless offenders who would be difficult to manage. "I believe the board has the wisdom to know when people should be paroled, and I hope the system works," Mr. Rosenthal said. Cheers, jeers Walter Long, an Austin lawyer who represents death row inmate Nanon Williams, said he was relieved and thankful that the Supreme Court had effectively spared his client's life. "I felt confident that this would be the outcome because of the unanimity of world opinion against this practice," Mr. Long said. But some lawmakers, prosecutors and victim advocates said the court had gone too far. "It appears the 5 in the majority, who are not accountable to anyone, have indicated that their moral judgment is superior to that of the Texas Legislature," said Mr. Rosenthal of Harris County. Dianne Clements, director of the victim rights group Justice For All, was so outraged by the ruling Tuesday that she said states "should defy the Supreme Court ruling and continue to have a death penalty for 17-year-olds in their state statutes." "The deterrent effect of the death penalty is gone," Ms. Clements said. "The Supreme Court has put innocent people at risk. Executed killers do not kill again." Kathy Bailey, whose sister Elizabeth Peavy was gunned down during a 1994 Houston carjacking, said that victims' relatives could only hope now that lawmakers embrace the sentence of life without parole. "My only wish is that we had life without the possibility of parole," Mrs. Bailey said. "He [the killer] will be out when he's 57 years old." DEATH PENALTY RULINGS 1972: Furman vs. Georgia. The court rules the death penalty does not violate the Constitution, but the manner of its application in many states does. The court noted capital punishment was likely to be imposed in a discriminatory way and that blacks were far more likely to be executed than whites. The decision essentially ends the practice of executions. 1976: Gregg vs. Georgia. A Georgia death penalty statute is held constitutional, a ruling that sets the stage for resumption of executions. 1987: McCleskey vs. Georgia. Justices rule state death penalty laws are constitutional even when statistics indicate they have been applied in racially biased ways. 1988: Thompson vs. Oklahoma. The court decides people younger than 16 when they committed a crime may not be executed. 1989: Stanford vs. Kentucky. Justices uphold the constitutionality of executions for offenders older than 15. 2002: Atkins vs. Virginia. Justices rule that executing mentally retarded criminals violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens cites a "national consensus" against executing a killer who may lack the intelligence to fully understand his crime. 2005: Roper vs. Simmons. The court rules the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, ending a practice that had been legal in Missouri and 19 other states. Justice Anthony Kennedy cites a "national consensus" against the practice. (source: Dallas Morning News) INDIANA: Seeing their case his way In a gala gathering -- a movie premiere, yet -- dominated by noteworthy opponents of the death penalty, the center belonged to a quiet man who believes in capital punishment but has lifted its terrible weight off two human beings. Looking in his blue suit and red tie as if he still commanded the office he lost last November, Joe Kernan started his talk at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis Monday by praising the documentary "Countdown to an Execution" that had just been shown to his audience and will air on A&E March 16. His only quibble, the former governor said, involved the afterword it carried about his election defeat, telling a whole nation "I got my ass kicked." Laughter heralded a hero's reception from a crowd of filmmakers; professors and students from IU Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University; and criminal attorneys, including a Chicagoan named Juliet Yackel who worked 12 years to save the life of a Gary convict. In fairness, no one believes Kernan's decision last August to commute the death sentence of Darnell Williams to life imprisonment cost him much against Mitch Daniels, who declined to make an issue of the first death row clemency issued by a governor in 48 years. (Kernan issued another commutation, in January, to Michael Daniels.) Sadly enough, in fact, the topic of capital punishment rarely surfaced at all during the campaign. And yet this state, one of few outside the South still killing prisoners, could have 5 or 7 on the gurney this year, beginning with Donald Ray Wallace, whose death date is March 10. Wallace slaughtered 4 people -- George and Theresa Gilligan and their children, Lisa and Gregory -- and has not asked for clemency. But capital punishment remains on trial. Aside from the value of an individual life, the motivation of Yackel and the others shown on film frantically fighting for Darnell Williams as the days dwindled down was to show that virtually all death penalty cases have flaws of the severity that drove the governor to spare him and Michael Daniels. Always forthright even in his political days, now free of those constraints altogether, Kernan laid out his own case for mercy as justice. Since the days when theft was a hanging offense and jails couldn't be trusted to hold dangerous men, evolution has taken place, he noted. Prisons are secure. Science can both raise and dispel doubt as never before. Mental retardation is better understood, as is mental illness. The horrific childhoods of death row inmates are not dismissed as mawkish irrelevance. Race and poverty are red flags in condemned populations. And lawyers and appeals courts screw up. Besides DNA tests and other evidence feverishly gathered by Williams' defense team, their low IQs and the lesser sentences handed down to accomplices justified clemency for both him and Daniels, Kernan said. With so many such considerations to factor in, he observed, society has moved "further and further away from any death penalty at all." Yet he insisted that the supreme punishment must stay alive for the worst killers. Kernan has felt that way since he went to the scene of a holdup in 1990 while mayor of South Bend and saw the 3 bodies. "But my experience as governor has caused me to view it more apprehensively, with more skepticism," he said. "This is the big leagues. There are no mulligans, no do-overs." (source: Indianapolis Star) USA: Rough Justice----Scalia exposes a flip-flop on the competence of minors. Dissenting from Tuesday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the execution of juveniles, Justice Antonin Scalia ridicules his colleagues for switching sides on the basis of "evolving standards." He calls the majority opinion a "mockery" for supposing that the Constitution's meaning "has changed over the past 15 years." It's an unfortunate complaint, because the justice most flagrantly guilty of changing his position on the moral responsibility of juveniles in the last 15 years is Antonin Scalia. In the current case, Roper v. Simmons, Scalia goes after his favorite target, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Never mind that she's on his side. "She is nonetheless prepared (like the majority) to override the judgment of America's legislatures if it contradicts her own assessment of moral proportionality," he writes in a footnote. "The votes in today's case demonstrate that the offending of selected lawyers' moral sentiments is not a predictable basis for law." Next, Scalia targets the author of Tuesday's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy. Scalia accuses the majority of "picking and choosing" studies to support its "unsubstantiated generalization" that juveniles are too immature to be held fully accountable for murder. "At most, these studies conclude that, on average, or in most cases, persons under 18 are unable to take moral responsibility for their actions," Scalia writes. "Not one of the cited studies opines that all individuals under 18 are unable to appreciate the nature of their crimes." Therefore, he concludes, they don't support Kennedy's "categorical prohibition of the death penalty for murderers under 18." Abortion figures heavily in Scalia's critique. He tweaks liberals who think minors are mature enough to make abortion decisions but not mature enough to deserve execution. As petitioner points out, the American Psychological Association (APA), which claims in this case that scientific evidence shows persons under 18 lack the ability to take moral responsibility for their decisions, has previously taken precisely the opposite position before this very Court. In its brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U. S. 417 (1990), the APA found a "rich body of research" showing that juveniles are mature enough to decide whether to obtain an abortion without parental involvement. The APA brief, citing psychology treatises and studies too numerous to list here, asserted: "[B]y middle adolescence (age 14-15) young people develop abilities similar to adults in reasoning about moral dilemmas, understanding social rules and laws, [and] reasoning about interpersonal relationships and interpersonal problems." Scalia then skewers his colleagues for the same flip-flop: In other contexts where individualized consideration is provided, we have recognized that at least some minors will be mature enough to make difficult decisions that involve moral considerations. For instance, we have struck down abortion statutes that do not allow minors deemed mature by courts to bypass parental notification provisions. - It is hard to see why this context should be any different. It's a clever point. But let's go back to the 15-year-old abortion case Scalia cited. In Hodgson, the court upheld a Minnesota law that required notification of both parents before performing an abortion on a girl less than 18 years old. However, the court also required Minnesota to offer girls the option of explaining to a judge why they should be allowed to make the decision on their own. O'Connor insisted on the judicial bypass as a means of "tailoring" parental involvement laws "to avoid unduly burdening the minor's limited right to obtain an abortion." She cited a 1976 case in which the court struck down a parental involvement law that didn't allow the option of "judicial determination that the minor is mature enough to give an informed consent without parental concurrence." O'Connor's position, in other words, was that age was too rigid a criterion. And what's her position in the death penalty context? The same. She opposes a "categorical prohibition" of death sentences for minors, since the evidence merely shows "differences in the aggregate between juveniles and adults, which frequently do not hold true when comparing individuals. Although it may be that many 17-year-old murderers lack sufficient maturity to deserve the death penalty, some juvenile murderers may be quite mature. Chronological age is not an unfailing measure of psychological development." Kennedy takes the other side. "All juvenile offenders under 18" should be exempt from execution due to "lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility," he writes. While conceding that "some under 18 have already attained a level of maturity some adults will never reach," he insists that "a line must be drawn. - 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." His position, in short, is that age is an adequate criterion. And what was his position in the abortion context? The same. In Hodgson, he rejected O'Connor's insistence on a judicial bypass option. "Legislatures historically have acted on the basis of the qualitative differences in maturity between children and adults," he wrote. "Age is a rough but fair approximation of maturity and judgment." Scalia derided his colleagues in Hodgson just as he derides them now. "One Justice holds that two-parent notification is unconstitutional (at least in the present circumstances) without judicial bypass, but constitutional with bypass," he wrote, citing O'Connor. "4 Justices would hold that two-parent notification is constitutional with or without bypass," he added, citing Kennedy. These and other disputes among the justices, he concluded, were "the random and unpredictable results of our consequently unchanneled individual views." But there's nothing random or unpredictable in Kennedy's or O'Connor's views on the competence of minors in the two cases. They've held firm. The only justices who have "changed over the past 15 years" are the one who switched from O'Connor's side to Kennedy's--Justice John Paul Stevens--and the two who switched from Kennedy's side to O'Connor's: Chief Justice William Rehnquist and, you guess it, Scalia. At least Rehnquist and Stevens have the sense to keep quiet about it. Not Scalia. He's too busy poking fun at the APA's flip-flop to notice that by taking the opposite side in both cases, he's flop-flipped. When Scalia writes that "we have struck down abortion statutes that do not allow" judicial bypass, and that in so doing "we have recognized that at least some minors will be mature enough to make difficult decisions that involve moral considerations," what "we" is he thinking of? It can't include him. He had a chance in Hodgson to affirm that some minors were mature enough to make moral decisions. He voted no. And as the evolved Scalia observes 15 years later, it's hard to see why this context should be any different. (source: Slate (William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War) ******************* Court Takes Another Step in Reshaping Capital Punishment After a decade of relative quiet, the Supreme Court has in the last several years fundamentally reshaped the nation's capital justice system. It has narrowed the class of people eligible for execution, excluding juvenile offenders yesterday as it had previously the mentally retarded. It has rebuked lower courts for sending people to their deaths without adequate safeguards. And it has paid increasing attention to the international opposition to capital punishment. "Early in the 1990's, we reached the high point in deregulating death," said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, alluding to decisions in which the court refused to hear defendants' claims of innocence because they were raised too late. "Then there was very little from the Supreme Court through the 1990's. Now, in a whole series of substantive and procedural decisions, you have a re-regulation taking place." Opinions vary about where the process will end. "The trend seems to be pushing toward the abolition of capital punishment," said Rory K. Little, a former Justice Department official who is now a professor at Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. "But it would be a mistake to predict that these decisions are leading inexorably to abolition. It could be that they cut out all the edges and leave the core that everyone is comfortable with." Since the Supreme Court's decision banning the execution of the mentally retarded three years ago, lower courts have struggled with how to determine whether specific defendants should be removed from death row on that ground. There will be no such problem when it comes to juveniles. All 72 men on death row for murders they committed when they were 16 or 17 will be spared their lives under the latest decision and will instead receive the harshest punishment available, typically life without the possibility of parole. "These people will all spend the rest of their lives in prison," said Victor L. Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern University whose studies of the juvenile death penalty were cited in yesterday's decision. "Nobody's getting out." Similarly, people who had faced capital prosecutions for crimes they committed as juveniles can now be sentenced, at worst, only to life terms. That group includes Lee Malvo, the teenage sniper serving a life term in Virginia. Prosecutors in Alabama and Louisiana had wanted to try Mr. Malvo on capital charges for killings there. Supporters of the death penalty said they were braced for further, incremental attacks on the use of capital punishment - whether it should be applied to the mentally ill, older teenagers and defendants claiming racial discrimination. "The next battle is the mentally ill," said Prof. Robert Blecker of the New York Law School. Given the decisions on the mentally retarded and on juveniles, Professor Blecker said, "it has a certain appeal." Professor Blecker said he also expected opponents of the death penalty to try to move up the age separating juveniles from adults. In 1988, the Supreme Court set the line at age 16. Yesterday, it rose to 18. "The interim attack may be to go after the so-called teenage death penalty, so they'll go after 19-year-olds," he said. "Then they will redefine juveniles to say it should extend to those under 21." Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group opposed to the death penalty, said he expected the role of race in capital punishment to re-emerge. "Among the issues the Supreme Court decided around the same time as the juvenile death penalty was race and the death penalty," Mr. Dieter said, alluding to a 1987 decision holding that the disparities between whites and nonwhites at the time did not offend the Constitution. "They may be ready to take another look." Professor Zimring said he also expected more attention on procedural safeguards. "The areas to watch for large developments in are the adequacy of representation of counsel and harmless error," he said. Opponents of the death penalty are often critical of the quality of appointed counsel for capital defendants and the willingness of courts to overlook some prosecutorial misconduct by calling it harmless. The extended discussion of international opposition to the juvenile death penalty in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion may also have broader implications, legal experts said. "All over the world, we have been condemned for this," Professor Streib said. "We've now joined the rest of the world. Maybe the only country that still does this now is Iran." David I. Bruck, a capital defense lawyer and the director of the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse at Washington and Lee University School of Law, said many Americans did not realize the strength of international sentiment on this issue. "Had the decision gone the other way," Mr. Bruck said, "it would have been another Abu Ghraib. The outcry around the world would have been simply astounding." Even beyond the debate over the juvenile death penalty, Professor Zimring said, the embarrassment of being out of step with the rest of the world on capital punishment generally may have played a significant role in the majority's decision. "The United States and Japan are in their own small suburb of the developed world," he said, referring to the two major industrialized nations that make routine use of the death penalty. "In the last 10 years, the rest of the world's opposition to the death penalty has become tremendously important to the rest of the world. Capital punishment in Europe has become a hotter topic in Europe in 2005 than it was in 1965, when they were busy abolishing it." Professor Blecker said that analysis was based on faulty premises. "The problem is that when you look at the opposition of other nations," he said, "they're looking at governments and not people. Every European government which abolished the death penalty did it in the face of overwhelming political support." In each of the last 2 years, juries imposed only two death sentences on juvenile offenders. Yesterday's decision is consistent with those trends, said Joshua K. Marquis, a co-chairman of the capital litigation committee of the National District Attorneys Association. "It's not a harbinger of the end of the death penalty," Mr. Marquis said, "but simply an indication that the Supreme Court is becoming more discriminating, as are prosecutors and juries." (source: The New York Times) A high-level commission yesterday began a year-long examination of violence, sexual abuse, overcrowding and inhumane treatment in U.S. prisons, in an investigation provoked in part by reports of misconduct by U.S. corrections officers assigned to serve in military detention centers overseas. The privately organized commission, which has attracted interest in its work from the Justice Department and key lawmakers, is headed by former attorney general Nicholas deB. Katzenbach and John J. Gibbons, a former federal appeals court judge. Its aim is to recommend prison reforms from local to federal levels after holding at least four public hearings around the country. Statistics cited by the commission chart growing problems in U.S. prisons, where the inmate population has quadrupled in the past two decades to more than 2 million: More than 34,000 assaults were committed by prisoners against other inmates in a 12-month period covering parts of 1999 and 2000; the number of prisoner assaults against staff in that period was 27 percent higher than the previous 12 months. More than a million people were sexually assaulted in prisons over the past two decades, the commission said. 11 inmates died in restraint chairs in the 1990s. The commission also said corrections officers have reduced life expectancies and higher rates of alcoholism than other law enforcement officers. Only 3 states -- New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois -- have independent commissions charged with reporting on prison conditions, and they lack authority to impose reforms, the commission said. No mandatory national standards exist for prisons, many of which are now run by private contractors. "We seem to have a gap between our cherished ideals about justice and the realities of the prison environment," said Katzenbach, who served under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. "Despite these numbers and some compelling evidence of abuse and safety failures . . . there is little public knowledge about the nature and extent of the problems and how to solve them." The 21-member commission includes psychiatrists, criminologists and law professors; a former U.S. attorney and Tennessee sheriff; a former death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence; a former mayor of New Orleans; a senior California lawmaker; former FBI director William S. Sessions, and the head of the NAACP's Washington office. It was organized by a New York group, the Vera Institute of Justice. Its staff director is Alexander Busansky, a former counsel to Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Justice Department attorney handling excessive-force cases involving corrections officers. Its financing comes from the Open Society Institute, three law firms and a philanthropic group, the JEHT Foundation. "We look forward to reviewing the commission's study of this important area," said R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights. (source: Washington Post) ********************* Less Fodder for Death Row The U.S. Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to bar the execution of juvenile murderers has come at a pivotal time in this nation's long and agonized debate over the death penalty. Unlike in the cases of the 100-plus death row defendants released in recent years when DNA or other evidence proved them innocent, Christopher Simmons' guilt was not in doubt. Simmons was 17 and a Missouri high school junior when he and a friend entered Shirley Crook's house, bound the 46-year-old woman with duct tape, drove her to a state park and threw her from a bridge to drown in the water below. Before the crime, Simmons bragged to friends that they would "get away with it" because they were minors. Soon after his arrest, he not only confessed to Crook's murder but agreed to perform a videotaped reenactment for police. A jury sentenced him to death. The question before the high court was the fairness and propriety of Simmons' sentence. Capital punishment is reserved for society's worst offenders, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for a sharply divided court. But because teens are still emotionally immature, they cannot be held responsible in the same degree as adults for their actions, however unforgivable. For that reason, their execution violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. "The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood," Kennedy wrote. "It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest." Tuesday's ruling throws out the sentences of 72 murderers in 12 of the 20 states that permit capital prosecutions of defendants who were under 18 at the time of their crimes. California law reserves the death penalty for offenders 18 and over. Opinion polls show Americans softening in their support for the death penalty. Learning that so many innocent defendants spent years on death row before being exonerated has shaken many death penalty proponents. The high court's new ruling comes three years after it outlawed the death penalty for the mentally retarded. Both decisions were pointedly grounded in what the court describes as a changing national consensus on capital punishment. But, as with the headline-making exonerations, those decisions magnify as well as reflect the public's doubts. Add in many other obvious inequities - name a rich person awaiting execution, for one - and death row is increasingly revealed for what it is: a dumping ground for the poorest defendants with the lousiest lawyers rather than the most despicable killers. (source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times) ********************* Ruling reflects U.S. unease on capital punishment issue As it reversed itself yesterday on the question of executing teenage criminals, the Supreme Court further limited the scope of capital punishment in the United States and reflected what in recent years has been a growing uneasiness with the death penalty on many fronts. Just 15 years ago, the nation's high court ruled in a case from Kentucky that states could execute killers who were 16 or older when they committed their crimes. But in raising the minimum age to 18 yesterday, the court continued to narrow how the death penalty is carried out across the country at a time when well-publicized accounts of innocent men discovered on death row have shifted public opinion and left fewer juries willing to impose death sentences. The court in 2002 reversed itself on another death penalty issue, ruling 6-3 that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutionally cruel. In an unusual statement less than a year later, four justices jumped out front on the issue of execution of juveniles by publicly calling the practice "shameful." And in a series of decisions, the high court in recent years has demanded better work from defense lawyers in capital cases - including that of former Maryland death row inmate Kevin Wiggins, in which the justices ruled in 2003 that his original lawyers failed to adequately investigate his personal history for mitigating evidence. 'Reform and restrict' "I don't think the Supreme Court is going to get too far ahead of the people," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington research group. "The court is in a state where they will reform and restrict the death penalty. But they won't take it over; they won't take it out of the hands of the people." In yesterday's decision, there were signs that the court is not prepared, at least for now, to open the door to a broader ban on capital punishment. The court's decision was closely divided, 5-4, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor - who three years ago joined the 6-3 decision that ended executions for the mentally retarded - said yesterday in dissent that there should not be a categorical ban on the death penalty for offenders under 18. But legal experts as well as death penalty supporters and opponents say the Supreme Court generally is following what has been a growing scrutiny of the death penalty across the country, fueled in part by accounts of death row inmates who were later exonerated. >From 1995 to 1999, for instance, judges and juries handed out an average of 300 death sentences a year, according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2001, that number fell to 155. In some states, including Illinois and Maryland, officials imposed temporary moratoriums on executions in response to concerns about possible innocence and racial disparity. Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School who believes the death penalty should have been preserved for teenage killers, predicted yesterday that the court will next be confronted with whether to raise the minimum age for the death penalty to 20 or 21, or to bar capital punishment for offenders who could fall under the broad category of "mentally ill." "We will see continuing scrutiny of the death penalty," Dieter said. "The public still supports the death penalty, but it is much more aware that some mistakes have been made. In the 1990s, [the issue] was: How can we speed things up? Now we're in a different day on that." An emerging 'consensus' In its majority opinion yesterday, the Supreme Court said its shift on the issue of juvenile executions was driven by what it called an emerging "national consensus" against the death penalty for teenagers. The court's slim majority noted that 30 states have banned the execution of juveniles or outlawed capital punishment altogether. It also drew on world opinion that is almost uniformly against the practice and new scientific research suggesting that teenage offenders cannot be held as responsible as adults for their crimes. "When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the state can exact a forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the state cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority yesterday. Kennedy's opinion noted that even the 1989 case in which the court had upheld the death penalty for teenage killers has been recast. In the case of Kevin Stanford, who was 17 when he killed a young Louisville gas station attendant, Kentucky's governor in late 2003 commuted Stanford's sentence to life in prison saying: "We ought not be executing people who, legally, were children." The four dissenting justices rejected the notion that a national consensus has emerged against the death penalty and said that any age restrictions should be imposed by state lawmakers, not by the Supreme Court. "Indeed, were my office that of a legislator, rather than a judge, then I, too, would be inclined to support legislation setting a minimum age of 18 in this context," O'Connor wrote in dissent. But, she added that without "a clearer showing that a genuine national consensus forbids the execution of such offenders, this court should not substitute its own 'inevitably subjective judgment' on how best to resolve this difficult moral question for the judgments of the nation's democratically elected legislatures." A strong dissent In a separate dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority opinion was based on the "flimsiest of grounds" and that determinations about the death penalty were best left to individual states, not "the subjective views of 5 members of this court and like-minded foreigners." The justices had repeatedly declined to revisit the question of executing juveniles since the 1989 ruling in Stanford's case. But their hand was forced in 2003 when Missouri's high court overturned the death sentence of Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he robbed and killed Shirley Crook. The Missouri decision was shaped directly by the Supreme Court's 2002 decision barring execution of the mentally retarded. In the majority opinion yesterday, Kennedy drew parallels. "The number of states that have abandoned capital punishment for juvenile offenders since Stanford is smaller than the number of states that abandoned capital punishment for the mentally retarded, ... yet we think the same consistency of direction of change has been demonstrated," Kennedy wrote. (source: The Baltimore Sun) ******************* At last - Escape from Death Row----A landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court - banning the execution of criminals who were under 18 when they committed their crime - will save hundreds of lives. For Ireland and Rena Beazley, the decision came a little too late. Their eldest son, Napoleon, was executed in May 2002 for a murder he committed when he was 17. At the time of his execution by lethal injection, his lawyer argued for clemency on the grounds that Beazley had been just a juvenile when he shot and killed a man during a robbery that went wrong. His pleas were rejected. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court, which refused to hear Beazley's case, belatedly agreed with his lawyer when it ruled 5-4 to ban the execution of prisoners who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. The decision will spare the lives of up to 70 prisoners being held on death row for crimes they carried out while still legally children. "It's good news," Mr Beazley told The Independent by telephone from his small house in Grapeland, Texas. "Napoleon was 25 when he was executed but 17 at the time of his crime. "Right now, we know a few people at the [death row complex]. They're pretty ecstatic right now ... This was the day we were hoping for." The decision by the Supreme Court represents the conclusion of a long and protracted battle by death penalty campaigners in the US to end the execution of juveniles. They have long pointed out that America was one of just a handful of states including China, Pakistan, Iran and the Congo that still executed juveniles. Indeed, of about 25 documented juvenile executions in the past decade, more than half were carried out in the US, predominantly in Texas. At the same time, several of the previously mentioned countries were introducing legislation to put an end to the practice. Amnesty International, one of the leading campaigners on the issue, said yesterday's decision was "very gratifying". "Last year, we started a campaign to try to end juvenile executions worldwide by the end of 2005 so this is a good development," said Kristin Houle, of AI's programme to end the death penalty. She said that, since 2000, the organisation had recorded 18 juvenile executions, nine of which were carried out in the US. In their ruling, the justices said the practice of executing juveniles violated the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution which prohibits the "cruel and unusual punishment". Sixteen years ago the Supreme Court had rejected that notion but, yesterday, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said: "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." He noted that only 18 of the 38 US states that permit execution allowed the execution of juveniles and public opinion was moving away from the practice. The trend, he said, is to abolish the practice because "our society views juveniles ... as categorically less culpable than the average criminal". The court made its ruling in relation to the specific case of Christopher Simmons from Missouri who was 17 in 1993 when he kidnapped a woman who lived nearby, tied her up and threw her from a bridge. The body of the woman, Shirley Crook, 46, was found in the Meramec River in St Louis County. She had been tied with electric cable, leather straps and duct tape, had bruises on her body and fractured ribs. Prosecutors said Simmons had planned to burgle and kill the woman and that he bragged he would get away with it because of his age. Simmons had originally been scheduled for execution in May 2002. But he received an initial stay at almost exactly the same time that Beazley's appeal for clemency was set aside and he was put to death. The following year, in August 2003, the Missouri Supreme Court set aside Simmons' death sentence and instead commuted it to one of life imprisonment. The state authorities appealed that decision and case was then sent to the US Supreme Court in Washington which ruled yesterday. Simmons's supporters said yesterday the child killer was now a remorseful adult who has worked to end violence. "This is a victory for the nation but also for us here in Missouri," Rita Linhardt of the Missouri Ban Youth Executions Coalition, said. "He has grown up a whole lot and has tried to work with young people. He has realised the mistakes he made and regrets his decisions that night." As with all the other juvenile death penalty cases, at the heart of both Simmons' and Beazley's defences was the argument that, at the age of 17 a person was less responsible and therefore less culpable for their actions. When The Independent visited the Beazley family on a sweltering summer day in 2001, his parents passed around a photograph of their son when he was aged 13. It was a black and white picture of a young boy, kitted out in a running vest, baton and a bright innocent smile on his face. His father said his son had always been a good athlete. But neither Mr Beazley or his wife attempted to downplay or excuse the murder their son committed. That took place on the night of April 1994 when Beazley and two friends, Cedric and Donald Coleman set out in Mrs Beazley's car to the town of Tyler, 60 miles to the north. Although Beazley had no criminal record at the time, he later admitted he was involved with selling drugs, in particular crack cocaine. He had also recently bought a .45 handgun. That night Beazley - president of his senior year at high school and recently enlisted for the Marines - and the Coleman brothers tried to "carjack" a Mercedes Benz belonging to John Luttig, a Korean War veteran and a leading member of Tyler society. Mr Luttig, 63, was pulling into the driveway of his house with his wife, Bobbie, when the three teenagers struck. At some point - the reason to this day remains unclear - Beazley drew his gun and shot Mr Luttig, father of a federal judge, in the head. He died, his wife crawled under the car and survived. The three assailants were arrested seven weeks later and tried separately. The Colemans were first tried and convicted by a federal court on charges of carjacking. They received sentences of more than 40 years, though the death penalty was not sought. The prosecution then used allegedly false testimony from the Coleman brothers to convict Beazley. Donald Coleman told the court he had told them: "I'm going back into Tyler to get me a car. I want to see what it feels like to see somebody die." In a subsequent affidavit, Coleman said that testimony had been a lie and he had been coached on what to say by the FBI. "Napoleon didn't mean to shoot Mr Luttig. He cried all the way home. He was still crying when he came over to see my brother the next day." Amid intense international pressure, Beazley won one stay of execution. On that occasion, his father was at the funeral home finalising arrangements when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an emergency stay. It, in effect, gave him another 10 months: he was executed the following spring. In their ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court also cited as a factor in their decision the international opposition to the practice of juvenile execution. That admission is likely to be subject of intense debate within legal and political circles. "It is proper 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," wrote Justice Kennedy. Anne James, the director of the Virginia-based International Justice Project, a group that has campaigned for the application of international law to the US death penalty, said the Supreme Court decision marked a victory for their efforts. "The ruling refers to the European Union and the international community's briefs [to the court]," she said. "The US, in the past few years, was out on its own. Lately, we have reported executions of juveniles outside of the US but the number of states that do these executions is going down to the extent that the US was out of step." But the closeness of the ruling by the Supreme Court underlines the broader debate about the death penalty within the US. In recent years, there has been a clear and steady series of measures to narrow the scope of the death penalty. In 1988, for instance, the court outlawed the execution of prisoners who were aged 15 and younger when they committed their crimes. Three years ago, justices banned executions of the mentally retarded. There has also been a slight decline in the overall number of executions, according to figures collated by the Death Penalty Information Centre. In 2002, there were 71 executions; in 2003 there were 65 and last year there were 59. The most executions continue to be carried out in Texas which, in 2004, executed 23 people. A Gallup poll in October in 2004 found support for the death penalty remained at 66 %. That, however, was down from a high of 80 % in 1994. The four justices who opposed the ban were Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O'Connor. In the dissent written by Justice Scalia he disputed that there was a clear trend of declining juvenile executions which justified a growing consensus against the practice. "The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter. The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards," he wrote. In Texas Mr Beazley was trying to think of the prisoners whose lives will be spared. "The day that Napoleon's execution was [temporarily] stayed, it was the same," he said. "It was sweet for us." EXECUTED GERALD MITCHELL, from Houston, Texas, was executed on 22 October 2001 for the murder of 20-year-old Charles Marino. He was aged 17 at the time, and 33 when he was executed on 22 October 2001 NAPOLEON BEAZLEY was executed on 28 May, 2002. He was 17 when he killed John Luttig in Tyler, Texas, in April, 1994. Shortly after his crime, he told friends it was "the stupidest thing" he had ever done. GLEN McGINNIS was 17 when he killed Leta Wilkerson, a shop assistant, in a laundry in August 1990. He was executed by lethal injection on 25 January 2000 in Huntsville, Texas REPRIEVED CHRISTOPHER SIMMONS, from Missouri, was 17 when he was arrested for the murder of Shirley Crook in 1993, and had been due for execution in 2002. His was the case heard yesterday ANZEL JONES, from Texas, was 17 when he was arrested for the 1995 murder of two women in their home. He was scheduled for execution last April but granted a stay of execution pending the Simmons decision EDWARD CAPETILLO, from Texas, was 17 when he was arrested for the murder in January 1995 of Kimberly Williamson. He too was granted a stay of execution pending the Simmons verdict (source: The Independent (UK) )
