Mar. 2 USA: Christians Praise Ban on Death Penalty for Juveniles United Methodist leaders joined pro-life advocates in praising Tuesdays Supreme Court decision outlawing the execution of juvenile criminals, on statements released on Wednesday. March 2. "I thank God that the Supreme Court [ has at long last ruled against the execution of persons under the age of 18," said the Rev. R. Randy Day, the top mission executive of the United Methodist Church. "(We encourage) guidance that will lead young people away from violence and crime, but we do not turn our backs on those who commit criminal acts, including murder," said Day, who leads the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, which prioritizes ministries to children and young people worldwide. "The Bible and the church teach love, forgiveness and the opportunity for restoration even in cases of the worst offenders." The high courts 5-4 decision overturned a 1989 ruling that allowed the execution of murderers who committed their crimes as juveniles; under the new decision, 72 prisoners will be taken off death row. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said many juveniles lack sufficient maturity and intellectual development to understand the ramifications of their actions. "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," said Kennedy. Kennedy also took note that the US was one of only a few countries that legalized executions of child offenders. "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 a crime," Kennedy wrote. Since 1990, the United States has accounted for almost 1/2 of the worlds 39 known executions of child offenders. 19 states had allowed juvenile executions prior to Tuesdays decision, but only 3 - Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia - had carried them out. United Methodist leader, noting that the recent ruling is the second in the past several years to narrow the scope of the death penalty in the United States, said there is a shift in both public and judicial sentiments about the fairness of capital punishment in general, according to the United Methodist News Service. "The pendulum has definitely begun to swing against the death penalty, said Jim Winkler, chief executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, the denominations social advocacy agency. "The death penalty is too flawed. People are feeling a real uneasiness about it." "It's just savagery, really," Winkler told United Methodist News Service. Harmon Wray, the former head of the UMCs restorative justice office, welcomed the ruling as an opportunity to better explore alternative forms of punishment - such as restorative justice - which he says are more consistent with the ministry of Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Gospel, according to UMNS. "It's when crime is understood as a violation of another human being, not just breaking the law," said Wray, who has worked on criminal justice concerns for 32 years. "It defines accountability not as passively taking punishment but actively taking responsibility and trying to make amends," he said. "It amounts to a focus on repairing the harm rather than seeking vengeance and a punitive response." The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and declares that "all human life is sacred and created by God." "We believe the death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore and transform all human beings," it says. (source: The Christian Post) ******************* A major victory for minors There's a reason adolescents are overrepresented in every form of reckless behavior. Sometimes they lack the judgment, the impulse control, the maturity and the character to resist harmful peer pressure. Every parent knows this. So do most legislators. That's why young people are prohibited from serving on juries, voting, marrying, serving in the armed forces and drinking. The U.S. Supreme Court now knows this, too. In a landmark ruling Tuesday, the court found that it is unconstitutional to put to death those who were under age 18 at the time of their crime. A 5-4 majority of justices acknowledged what common sense already tells us: Adolescents inherently are different from adults. "From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. Brain research backs that up. Imaging technology shows that the frontal lobe--the area of the brain that governs judgment, decision-making and impulse control--doesn't fully develop until one's early 20s. The high court acknowledged a changing "national consensus" against the death penalty for juvenile offenders, similar to the argument used nearly three years ago when it banned the execution of the mentally retarded. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a concurring opinion to the case decided Tuesday, if standards of decency hadn't evolved from the time of the framers, we might be executing 7-year-olds today. There are 31 states that prohibit the death penalty for 16- and 17-year-olds. In the last decade, only three states--Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma--have executed people who were juveniles at the time of their crimes. The majority on the high court found it worth noting that the trend for the last 15 years has been for states to move away from capital punishment for juveniles, even while anti-crime legislation and tougher overall treatment of juvenile crime has remained politically popular. The court majority also said the U.S. was "alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty." Since 1990, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and China--the last nations outside of the U.S. to execute teen offenders--have either eliminated or publicly disavowed the juvenile death penalty. "The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions," the court said. The immediate impact will be that 72 people who were juveniles at the time of their crimes will no longer face execution. For most of them, that will mean life without possibility of parole. That still reflects the moral outrage of the community over depraved acts. It also better reflects the notion in this country that punishment be reasonable and commensurate to the offense--and the offender. (source: Editorial, Chicago Tribune) ************************** An end to killing kids Americas Supreme Court has abolished the death penalty for those under 18 when they committed their crimes. It is just another nibble at the edge of still-popular capital punishment-but does it show that America can sometimes be swayed by world opinion? Which country seems the odd one out in this list: China, Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United States? These eight countries are the only ones in the world that have executed children under 18 since 1990. Now, at last, the worlds self-proclaimed beacon of freedom will be able to take itself off the list. On Tuesday March 1st, Americas Supreme Court ruled, by five votes to four, that putting to death those who were minors at the time of their crimes is unconstitutional. Of course, the death penalty will remain in place for convicted murderers in America. Indeed, it remains populartwo-thirds of Americans support it (though this number drops to half when life imprisonment without parole is offered as an alternative). Despite this weeks ruling, America is clearly still out of step with most of the countries it considers its friends. More than half of the worlds countries have either abolished the death penalty for normal crimes or have imposed moratoriums, according to Amnesty International, a non-governmental organisation that campaigns against capital punishment. These include all but two countries in Europe and Central Asia (Belarus and Uzbekistan), as well as both of America's neighbours, Canada and Mexico, and like-minded countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Among large democracies, only India, South Korea and Japan still practise capital punishment. But it is rare in those places. According to Amnesty, in 2003, 84% of the worlds known executions took place in just four countries: China, Iran, Vietnam and America. Though Americas polls do not show it, the tide may be creeping against the death penalty. One reason to think it will not last forever is that in most of the countries where it has been abolished, a majority of the public remained in favour of keeping it at the time. In most cases, crime rates failed to shoot up after abolition-thus putting paid to the argument for execution as deterrence-and populations came to believe that judicial killing was wrong under any circumstances. Only one formerly abolitionist country has resumed executions-the Philippines-though it has since suspended them again. A second trend is the gradual nibbling away at the death penalty within America itself. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that most Americans now regarded the mentally retarded as -categorically less culpable than the average criminal," and banned executing them. Ten years earlier, Bill Clinton, then a presidential candidate, had burnished his law-and-order credentials by letting the execution of a retarded man go ahead in Arkansas, where he was governor. But more recently, another governor with a national profile, George Ryan of Illinois, put a moratorium on his states use of the death penalty, and later granted clemency to all prisoners on death row. He was concerned about the number of inmates exonerated by DNA evidence after already having been sentenced to die. A third trend against the death penalty in America is the increasing attention paid to moral views elsewhere. In the Supreme Courts majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court acknowledged "the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." While the court explicitly said that foreign opinions, legal or moral, are not binding in American law, they were nonetheless "respected and significant confirmation" for Tuesdays ruling. Antonin Scalia, the court's conservative stalwart, stoutly rejected any such notion. Conservatives are bound to be furious when they feel that more liberal societies' values are being foisted on a fundamentally different America. But it is not the first such case. In the 2002 ruling in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court struck down a state statute forbidding private homosexual conduct. The court ruled that: "Where a cases foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance"[T]o the extent Bowers [a previous case that had upheld the anti-sodomy law] relied on values shared with a wider civilization, the case's reasoning and holding have been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights, and other nations have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct." In other words, courts have previously cited other countries, or sometimes pre-American traditions, in making their case. The anti-sodomy Bowers decision had argued that prohibitions on homosexuality went back to biblical times from which much of Western ethics and morality is drawn. The Lawrence decision essentially replied that shared tradition is shared tradition, and that if the rest of the Judeo-Christian world is changing, America should not be blind to it. But conservatives are bound to be furious when they feel that more liberal societies values are being foisted on a fundamentally different America. The death penalty is far from dead in America. The capture last weekend in Kansas of a serial murderer who had taunted his victims families and the police for decades will remind Americans that sometimes evil is just evil. "Victims-rights" groups remain potent. And anyway America remains happy to swim against the Western cultural mainstream in a host of areas. At a United Nations conference this week on women's rights and health, for instance, the American delegation insisted that any declaration explicitly rule out the creation of "new international human rights," a reference to a putative right to abortion. America may be happy to differ sharply from the worlds other democracies on some moral and ethical issues, and this often irritates its closest friends. But this week's death-penalty ruling seems to show that even a superpower can sometimes be swayed, even if just a bit. (source: Economist, UK) CALIFORNIA: Scott Peterson's Half - Sister Writes Book A new book written by Scott Peterson's half-sister paints the now-familiar picture of him as a lying philanderer fixated on himself and uninterested in the search for his missing wife. But it also sheds new light on Jackie Peterson, describing her as a mother willing to go to any lengths to save her son. Author Anne Bird was given up for adoption by Jackie Peterson in 1965 and did not reconnect with the family until 5 years before the 2002 murder of Peterson's wife, Laci, and her 8-month-old fetus. During that time, she said, she grew close to all the Petersons but felt the deepest connection to Scott, in part because their physical resemblance was so strong. "He really was the golden boy," Bird wrote. "He was a real charmer, the kind of guy who lights up a room. I had always considered myself a good judge of character, and I thought Scott was about as solid and genuine as they came." "Blood Brother: 33 Reasons My Brother Scott Peterson is Guilty" went on sale Tuesday. Bird offered her half-brother a guest room in her house after Laci's disappearance, when he was being hounded by the media. While her husband was suspicious of Peterson early on, Bird supported him. When her husband pointed out that Peterson never seemed upset and never mentioned his missing wife, Bird suggested he might just be traumatized. "When are you going to stop making excuses for him?" her husband responded. As Peterson's behavior grew more strange, Bird wrote that she began to doubt his innocence. Some examples, as depicted in the book: -- He flirted with Bird's 22-year-old baby sitter. -- He surfed Internet porn sites from Bird's home computer. -- He dismissed Amber Frey as a "down and dirty" fling and told Bird about having sex with 2 strangers in an airplane's bathroom on a long flight. Jackie Peterson's actions also bothered Bird, who noticed her being critical of her daughter-in-law. Jackie Peterson once called Bird to complain about the "by-the-book" wording of a thank-you card Laci had sent, according to the book. On another occasion, she wrote that her mother told Bird's baby sitter: "I wish Scott could meet someone like you." Jackie Peterson also tried to persuade Bird to testify during the penalty phase of Peterson's double-murder trial, but she refused. "She would go to any lengths to save him, do anything for her little boy, fight to the death if she had to," Bird wrote. Peterson was convicted in November, and a jury recommended the death penalty the following month. A judge will sentence him March 16. The 214-page book closes with a chapter about Bird's final visit to Peterson in jail a little more than a month ago. He assured her he would be released after his appeals. She went out to the parking lot and cried. "Scott was going to be locked away for the rest of his life, and it wasn't registering," she wrote. "He thought it was temporary. I guess they all do. I guess that's how they survive." (source: Associated Press) TEXAS: Juvenile executions banned The Supreme Courts ruling Tuesday banning the execution of those under 18 years old could change the punishments for 2 Hidalgo County death row inmates and one in Cameron County. The Associated Press reported that the 5-4 decision found executing juveniles unconstitutional because it violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling follows the courts trend of narrowing the scope of offenders who qualify for the death penalty, which justices reinstated in 1976. In 1988, the court outlawed the executions of those 15 and younger when they committed their crimes and in 2003, justices banned death sentences for the mentally retarded, according to the AP. Sentencing juvenile offenders to death row led other countries to criticize the United States. Only a few other countries employ the death sentence for juvenile offenders, including Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia. In his decision to overturn juvenile death penalty, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited international opposition to the practice. "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," he wrote. The AP reported that the ruling overturns the death sentences of the 72 murderers from 19 states, including Texas, who were younger than 18 when they committed the crimes. One of those inmates, Jose Alfredo Salinas, was 17 on July 28, 2001, when he and 2 others shot 20-year-old Geronimo Morales in a carjacking and left his 21-month-old daughter, Leslie Ann Morales, strapped in her carseat in a tall grassy area outside Mission, where she later died of dehydration and exposure. A Hidalgo County jury found Salinas guilty of capital murder in state District Judge Noe Gonzalezs 370th courtroom and sentenced him to die for their murders. He's been on death row since Aug. 29, 2002. Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra said Salinas's death sentence will likely be converted to a life imprisonment. Salinas's attorney, Rogelio Garza did not return The Monitors phone calls. Guerra said the Supreme Court's ruling does not surprise him and did not initially intend to seek the death penalty for Salinas, but was eventually persuaded by his staff. "(Salinas) committed a very heinous crime. I thought it was something that would be worthy of a death penalty," Guerra said. Still, Guerra says agrees with the Supreme Court. "I always believed that 17 and under should not be put to death." The Supreme Courts decision may save a second Hidalgo County inmate from the death penalty. Juan Raul Navarro Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to die in December 2004 for the gang related murders of 6 men in north Edinburg. Ramirez claimed he was 18 on Jan. 5, 2003, when the killings occurred, and is the youngest of 13 charged in what is now commonly referred to as the Edinburg massacre. However, Ramirez may have actually been 17, according to his appellate attorneys Larry Warner and David Sergi. Warner said they are investigating evidence that the midwife who delivered Ramirez may have provided a false birth certificate, claiming his birthplace as Hidalgo instead of Mexico and giving him an earlier birth date than his true birthday. "We have reservations about whether the midwife attended the birth," Warner said, adding the scenario is not unusual in border regions. Some of the family history seems to indicate that he may have been 17 when he committed the offense he wouldnt be subjected to the death penalty. Once the private investigator finishes his investigation, Warner is filing a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. He urged the importance of a fair and cautious decision regarding Ramirez's case. Judge Gonzalez also presided over Ramirez's trial and will likely determine if he believes evidence supporting claims that Ramirez was 17 at the time of the murder. His ruling would be subject to the 13th Court of Appeals review. Warner calls the Supreme Court's ruling a "watershed in United States jurisprudence." "Its very unusual for them to make a decision like this," he said. "I also think it's just extraordinary they would consider other countries up until now we never had." Hidalgo County Assistant District Attorney Joseph Orendain prosecuted Salinas and Ramirez's case. He said it was "really unfortunate" that the Supreme Court's ruling could affect Salinas death sentence, noting that while serving time, Salinas stabbed a prison guard with a spear he fashioned from an old typewriters key. "What about the cruel and unusual punishment this defendant did to those poor victims and the jailers?" he asked. "Hes proven the jury is right." Orendain also said there was no question about Ramirez's age, and that claims he was younger are only to improve his chances of winning an appeal. In Cameron County Jose Ignacio Monterrubio was 17 years old when he and his older cousin Sixto Monterrubio raped, beat, stabbed and then strangled a female classmate from Brownsville Rivera High School in September 1993. The two men buried the body of 16-year-old Carla Villarreal in a shallow grave near the airport. The body was found one month later. Sixto Monterrubio was sentenced to life in prison. Under state law, Jose Ignacio Monterrubio was tried as an adult and received a death sentence in October 1994. First Cameron County District Attorney John Blaylock said his office will review the Supreme Courts ruling to see how it would apply to Monterrubios case. "Well verify if the ruling is retroactive or proactive," Blaylock said. "Then well be able to make a comment." According to federal court records, Jose Ignacio Monterrubio had lost a death sentence appeal in February 2004. At press time Tuesday, Monterrubio remained on the Texas Department of Criminal Justices official list of 445 death row inmates. According to court records, Sixto Monterrubio had asked for a forensic DNA testing. Judge Roberto Garza with the 138th state District Court denied the request 2 weeks ago. According to AP, the Supreme Court has permitted states to impose capital punishment since 1976. Twenty-two of the people put to death since then were juveniles when they committed their crimes. Texas executed the most, 13, and has the most on death row now - 28. 29 juveniles have been sentenced to death in Texas, but one of them, Patrick Horn, is serving a life sentence in Georgia. More than 3,400 inmates await execution in the 38 states that allow death sentences. Justices were called on to draw an age line for executions after Missouris highest court overturned the death sentence given to Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he kidnapped a neighbor, hog-tied her and threw her off a bridge in 1993. Prosecutors say he planned the burglary and killing of Shirley Crook and bragged that he could get away with it because of his age. The 4 most liberal Supreme Court justices - John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - had gone on record in 2002 opposing the death penalty for juveniles, calling it "shameful." Those 4, joined by Kennedy, formed Tuesdays decision. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined Justice Antonin Scalia in seeking to uphold the executions. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor filed a separate dissent, arguing that a blanket rule against juvenile executions was misguided. Case-by-case determinations of a young offenders maturity is the better approach, she wrote. The 19 states allow executions for people under age 18 are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Texas and Virginia. The federal government does not execute juveniles. (source: The Monitor) ********************** HPD crime lab accreditation denied----Panel cites problems with transferring evidence and record-keeping A national panel rejected the Houston Police Department's effort to have its troubled crime laboratory accredited by the end of February. In a meeting Saturday in New Orleans, the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors told HPD lab director Irma Rios that auditors had found problems with the evidence chain-of-custody record-keeping. Specifically, Rios said, inspectors found that the transfer of evidence from one person to another in the lab was not always properly recorded. "At the time that you do the transfer, both parties must acknowledge it," she said. ASCLD executive director Ralph Keaton would not comment on the inspection or what problems were found but said his organization requires "a documented, unbroken chain of custody of all evidence in the laboratory." "That includes a documented record, either hard copy or electronic, of all person-to-person and person-to-places transfers at the time of the transfer," he said, and he added that such problems are not unheard-of when departments seek accreditation. The decision was based on a Feb. 10 inspection. HPD had sought national certification for all crime-lab divisions except the still-closed DNA lab: the biology, toxicology, controlled substances, firearms and document verification divisions. Rios said HPD will reapply in 90 days. The DNA lab was shuttered in December 2002 after an outside audit revealed widespread problems, including poor training and possible evidence contamination. Retesting was ordered in almost 400 cases, resulting in questions in about 25 % of those cases. On Feb. 16, Police Chief Harold Hurtt told state lawmakers investigating the crime lab that he hoped to have it accredited by the end of February. On Tuesday, state Reps. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, and Robert Talton, R-Pasadena, filed a bill that would establish regional DNA crime labs that would be overseen by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Any police agency without an accredited lab would be required to have its DNA evidence analyzed by a regional lab. Bailey said HPD's failure, thus far, to get accreditation reinforces his doubts about its ability to run its own lab. "It's 2 years later and they still can't get accredited," the state lawmaker said. "You don't see any real evidence that they're making a whole lot of progress." (source: Houston Chronicle) FLORIDA: Ruling Will Spare 3 Flordia Killers At 17, James Bonifay ignored the pleas of an auto-parts store worker begging for his life, and then cursed his victim's family before shooting the Pensacola man dead. Escambia County jurors later decided Bonifay should be executed for killing Billy Wayne Coker in 1991, and judges agreed to place Bonifay on death row. But in a landmark ruling Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Bonifay and others like him cannot be sentenced to death because they killed when they were younger than 18. "The Supreme Court gave him what he wouldn't give his victim, and that is a second chance at life," said David Rimmer, the Pensacola assistant state attorney who prosecuted Bonifay during his 2nd trial. "This guy cannot be executed. I think it's just an outrageous miscarriage of justice." Two other convicted killers in Florida -- Cleo LeCroy and Nathan Ramirez -- also will have their death sentences commuted because they were not yet 18 when they killed. All were 17 when they murdered. LeCroy likely will be eligible for parole, because his crimes occurred before tougher sentencing guidelines kicked in during the mid-'90s, state officials said. Bonifay may also have a chance at parole, but Ramirez is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. While the decision frustrated some in Florida's law-enforcement community, anti-death-penalty activists and some criminal-defense lawyers viewed the decision as long-overdue recognition that a civilized nation shouldn't execute juveniles. "This is a good day for our country and for Florida, and this decision effectively spares the lives of three Florida death-row prisoners," said Abe Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty based in Gainesville. "I am pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld the fundamental principle that a just society should not be executing its children," state Rep. Phillip Brutus, D-North Miami, said Tuesday. "Without defending the horrible crimes committed by troubled youths, decency requires that we find a better way to punish these children." In Central Florida, prosecutors did not recall cases in the pipeline in which they were considering seeking the death penalty for any defendants who were 17 when they committed their crimes. One murder defendant, Blaine Barber, was 9 days short of 18 at the time of his shooting crime in Brevard County last year. He is headed to trial, but prosecutors on Feb. 7 announced they would not be seeking the death penalty in his case. Robert Wesley, Orange-Osceola public defender, said the youth factor had been discouraging some prosecutors from pursuing the death penalty recently as successive state- and federal-court decisions found against juvenile executions. In Florida, the state Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the state constitution banned the execution of 16-year-olds. But the constitutional provision was changed in 2002, creating the possibility that murderers that age could be executed. "It was really necessary," Wesley said of Tuesday's ruling. "Kids do not have the same wisdom, judgment and insight as adults have." Wesley added that the prospect of life in prison without parole for a 17-year-old cannot be considered a light sentence. In Palm Beach County, where Cleo LeCroy committed his crime 23 years ago, a spokesman for State Attorney Barry Krischer said his office hasn't sought the ultimate penalty against a juvenile since Krischer took office in 1993. Mike Edmondson said Krischer was not philosophically opposed to the death penalty for juveniles but thought the cases face too many challenges on appeal to pursue. "It alleviates a significant amount of appellate issues and brings closure to the survivors much more readily if they [the accused] get life in prison," Edmondson said. "I think if you talk to most prosecutors, they'd tell you the death penalty for juveniles has been so eroded, it's lost its effectiveness." Edmondson was unfamiliar with LeCroy's case and had no comment on the prospect that he might be eligible for parole in the future. Now 41, LeCroy was convicted of shooting a pair of Miami newlyweds who were camping in rural Palm Beach County south of Lake Okeechobee in January 1981. The bodies of John and Gail Hardeman were discovered a week after they failed to return home from their honeymoon. John Hardeman had been shot in the head, and his wife in the head, neck and chest. Of the three Florida death-row inmates directly affected by Tuesday's ruling, LeCroy may have benefited the most. Bob Sparks, a spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office, which handles death-penalty-case appeals for the state, said LeCroy might be eligible for parole after 25 years in prison because his crime occurred before stricter sentencing laws. LeCroy has been incarcerated since 1986, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Ramirez, now 27, was on death row for killing 71-year-old Mildred Boroski, who was shot after being raped and abducted from her Pasco County home in 1995. Bonifay, now 31, was condemned for the mistaken-identity shooting death of Billy Wayne Coker in Pensacola in 1991. Bonifay meant to kill Daniel Wells, whom Bonifay's cousin blamed for getting him fired. (source: Orlando Sentinel) ************************** 3 Fla. convicts spared death after high court ends juvenile executions The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states can no longer execute convicted murderers who committed their crimes as juveniles, knocking more than 70 defendants around the country, including three in Florida, off death row. "Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. 2 of the 3 men on Florida's death row who were condemned for crimes as juveniles likely will become eligible for parole, said Bob Sparks, a spokesman for Attorney General Charlie Crist. One of them, Cleo LeCroy, 41, was convicted of shooting to death a Miami-Dade couple in 1981 in western Palm Beach County. "Today is certainly a big victory for Florida and justice," said Abraham J. Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "Recent science has shown brain development continues into your 20s. We don't allow children to buy cigarettes, or buy alcohol or sign contracts. The only time we consider children [to be] adults is when they commit a horrible crime, then we want to punish them harshly." The majority wrote that as a society, views on the death penalty have evolved quickly since the last time the court considered the issue. They also wrote that juveniles don't possess the same maturity as adults, are more vulnerable to negative influences and oftentimes don't possess an incorrigible character. Minors in most states can't vote, serve on a jury or marry without parental consent. "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," Kennedy wrote. The 2nd condemned man in Florida who will be eligible for parole is James Bonifay, 31, who was convicted in the shooting of a Pensacola man in 1991. Before 1994, Florida law allowed for the possibility of parole on a life sentence after 25 years. LeCroy and Bonifay committed their crimes before the change. The third Florida defendant, Nathan Ramirez, 27, was convicted of raping and killing a Pasco County woman in 1995, so he will spend the rest of his life in prison. LeCroy is still pursuing appeals in federal and state courts. His case garnered new attention in 2003 when his brother, Jon LeCroy, who was acquitted of being an accomplice, testified he was the one who shot the couple, according to a court transcript. Jon LeCroy subsequently refused to testify further. State Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, has pushed for legislation to bring Florida in line with 18 other states that set the minimum age at 18. He praised the decision, but said it was one that should have been made by state and federal legislators, not the court. "Today's society, generally speaking, has not been supportive of executing anyone under the age of 18," he said. "I do support the death penalty for those who are unquestionably guilty and commit a heinous, torturous crime." Ron Ishoy, a spokesman for Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz, said no one in his office could remember seeking the death penalty for a juvenile dating to Satz taking office in 1977. In Palm Beach County, State Attorney Barry Krischer has not sought the death penalty for a juvenile since he took office in 1993, spokesman Michael Edmondson said. Only Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia have executed juvenile offenders in the past 10 years. Tuesday's ruling throws out the death penalty for minors in 19 states. The decision arose out of a 2003 Missouri case. In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia disputed that a "national consensus" exists and said the majority opinion was based on the "flimsiest of grounds." The appropriateness of capital punishment should be determined by individual states, he wrote. The ruling continues the court's narrowing of the death penalty's scope. In 1988, the court prohibited the execution of those 15 and younger. 3 years ago, justices banned executions of the mentally retarded. "The lasting significance of this case is that it opens the door to the abolition of the death penalty judicially," said Jordan Steiker, a death penalty expert at the University of Texas law school. "If a national consensus can emerge without a majority of the death penalty states moving toward abolition, then it suggests that judicial abolition is a genuine prospect." (source: Palm Beach Post)
