Justices split on death penalty

While the Supreme Court's four liberal members called for a review of executions of juveniles, they were outvoted.

©Associated Press
October 22, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court revealed deep divisions over the death penalty Monday as justices used unusually strong language regarding the constitutionality of executing people who killed when they were juveniles and allowing exceedingly long waits on death row.

The high court declined to hear two capital murder cases: one for a man given the death penalty for a killing committed when he was 17 and the other for a man who has spent nearly three decades waiting to die in Florida.

The court split along traditional lines, with the four more liberal justices saying the court should continue re-examining the death penalty, begun last year when it banned executions of the mentally retarded. The four said it was "shameful" to execute juvenile killers.

"The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Two months ago, Stevens alone went on record against the executions of juvenile offenders. Ginsburg and Breyer said they wanted the court to consider the issue.

No justice wrote separately Monday to defend the practice. On the other case, however, Justice Clarence Thomas expressed outrage at the thought of overturning death penalty convictions for longtime death row inmates.

The prisoner, Thomas wrote, "could long ago have ended his "anxieties and uncertainties' by submitting to what the people of Florida have deemed him to deserve: execution."

"The court is really mirroring America's own debate and struggle with this set of questions," said Lawrence Marshall, a Northwestern University law professor specializing in the death penalty.

Only the United States and a few other countries allow execution of juvenile killers. States that allow the death penalty may impose it on killers who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crimes.

The juvenile case rejected by the court Monday involved a Kentucky man sentenced to death for abducting, sodomizing and killing a gas station attendant when he was 17. Kevin Stanford, now 39, has been on death row since 1982. In 1989, the high court used Stanford's case to uphold juvenile executions.

Stanford's lawyers argued such executions violate not only the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment but an international treaty signed by the United States. Like the retardation question, the issue of juvenile killers turns on the defendants' capacity to understand their situation, and their level of culpability.

In his dissent, Stevens wrote that since the 1989 case, "a national consensus has developed that juvenile offenders should not be executed."

Currently, 16 of the 38 states that allow the death penalty prohibit it for those under 18. The minimum age for the death penalty in Florida is 17.

The federal government also prohibits capital punishment for juveniles prosecuted in federal court.

Dianne Clements of the victims' rights group Justice For All said the dissenting justices appear to be trying to draw public support -- not the support of court colleagues -- with the strongly worded opinion.

"When you say juvenile, your mind's eye paints a picture of a cherubic child," she said. "It's not a fair fight."

Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said the focus now shifts to states, where lawmakers should consider whether executions of juvenile offenders are appropriate. Any new laws could persuade other justices to join the four, he said.

Breyer also filed a separate opinion to say the court should consider whether it is unconstitutional to leave inmates for extended time on death row. He said Florida inmate Charles Foster has spent more than 27 years in prison and "if executed, Foster, now 55, will have been punished both by death and also by more than a generation spent in death row's twilight. It is fairly asked whether such punishment is both unusual and cruel."

In response, Thomas said Foster wouldn't be in his current situation if he hadn't slit a man's throat and then cut his spine when he realized the man was still breathing during a robbery.

Foster, a 10th-grade dropout with a history of mental illness, successfully challenged his sentencing proceedings twice. He was resentenced to death in 1993 for the 1975 murder of Julian Lanier, a 68-year-old Ohio tourist whom he and two young women had met in a Panama City bar.

The use of the death penalty has gotten increased attention in recent years as cases have emerged in which it was shown defendants received poor legal representation and genetic evidence proved the innocence of people sent to death row.

In Illinois, clemency hearings began this month for most of the inmates on that state's death row. Executions are on hold there and in Maryland.

On Monday, the court also:

-- Refused to intervene in two disputes over public access to beaches in California. Two Santa Barbara County landowners say the government unfairly seized their property. In one case the county built a beach access path and in the other it claimed an easement the size of a football field.

-- Refused to review a challenge of police powers in car searches. The case involved police searching a vehicle without a warrant after the driver failed to produce proper identification or proof of ownership. Justices had been asked to overturn a California ruling that expanded police powers and allowed the searches.

-- Information from Knight Ridder and Hearst Newspapers was used in this report.

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