A Step in the Right Direction

The Supreme Court yesterday put an end to the barbaric practice of executing people who comitted a capital crime when they were minors.

Jarvis quotes a blogger who says:

all the countries that until recently executed juveniles have since outlawed the practice, leaving the US the last remaining country in the world to practice this barbarism - behind Iran, China, Pakistan and other garden spots. (Interestingly, with Iran’s change in policy the entire “Axis of Evil” now shuns juvenile execution while the US - until yesterday - still practiced it.

The graphic below comes from the front page of today's New York Times.

The two things that jumped off that page to me were the fact that four of our supreme court justices support executing juvenile defenders including moderate Sandra Day O'Connor and the almost perfect correlation between the "red states" and the states who continue to kill children.

As you probably can tell, I am opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances.  I think its wrong, uncilivlized, and prone to mistakes.  The latter point is the one that really clinches it for me - to execute anyone wrongly is such an enormous mistake that it makes the whole issue of capital punishment incredibly distasteful to me.

Comments

[Sandra]

I agree with you that the death penalty is entirely distasteful but why do you have to make the equally distasteful and absurd statement that there is a correlation between red states and "states who continue to kill children." I'm not sure but I doubt the law enforcement plucked some innocents off the playground and threw them on death row. My guess is that murder and/or rape had something to do with it.

Maybe because you are so blinded by being a liberal or conservative; or, red or blue; or left or right - you don't even realize how medieval your partisanism sounds.

[Don]

I'm with you that the death penalty as a whole is unpalatable, except in the most extreme cases which is by its nature subjective. My problem with this ruling is the inconsistency the Supremes seem to demonstrate regarding the issues brought before them. If an offender is 17, he's too young to realize the gravity of killing another person and therefore can't be held completely responsible (as an adult would). However, a twelve year-old is cognizant enough to consent to a surgical procedure (abortion) without parental notification. The court needs to decide if minors are in fact minors or if they are not and apply the law with some consistancy, not along ideological boundries.

[Matt Cohen]

For a very interesting viewpoint, check out author/lawyer and self-proclaimed "death penalty agnostic" Scott ("Presumed Innocent") Turow's account of his time on the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment. It's a well thought-out treatment on the subject, and a rare example of a balanced view of a polarizing issue. I particularly enjoyed the audio version - abridged, but read by the author, which adds to the personal feel of the narrative.

Ultimate Punishment : A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374128731/

[DavidNYC]

I'm not sure but I doubt the law enforcement plucked some innocents off the playground and threw them on death row. My guess is that murder and/or rape had something to do with it.

The issue of whether a state (until the SCOTUS ruling) put kids to death had, of course, nothing to do with whether there were crimes committed by kids.

It had to do only with the fact that the legislatures in those states permitted the juvenile death penalty. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

And it is definitely fair to draw conclusions about a polity based on the kind of laws its legislatures pass and its citizens endorse.

[Tea Kettle]

It's nice to see that the US is finally going to stop executing minors. I have been against the death penalty for years, and am pleased to see that at least some baby steps are being taken in the right direction.

[Scott]

I'm a bit curious. Has the US ever actually executed a "kid?" By that, I mean have we ever actually executed a person who was under the age of 18 at the time they were executed? Or, is it more accurate to say that they were sentenced to death while they were a minor -- realizing, of course, that they no doubt would no longer be minors at the time they are actually executed.

[jeff]

Fred,
Your suggestion that "killing children" is a predisposition in red states is distasteful. Also, it's a flawed analysis on many points.

The 70 individuals who are 16-17 years old are far from being simply "children". These are young adults who committed horrible crimes and in weighing the factors surrounding the crime and the individual, they were prosecuted as adults. John Lee Malvo comes to mind as one of the more notorious in this bunch. On any measure, a 16 or 17 year old is simply not a child.

The second point is that many of the red states you point to were in fact blue states at one point in time. In fact, the blue/red state distinction is always dynamic, both California and New York were so-called red states when Ronald Reagan ran in 1984, and during the Clinton years many of the red states you point to (N/S Carolina, Virginia, etc.) were blue states. A state is not red or blue by virtue of something in the water or the air, it is so because one party wins elections and the other loses, the simple fact is that Democrats have been losing more elections since 1992 so the nations color map has shifted. Want your ideas to dominate, then win elections on the strength of the candidates you are fielding. Period.

Support for capital punishment in the United States is stable, the Gallup organization has been asking the question every year since 1936 and has found that support has drifted from a high of 80 percent to a stable base of around 70 percent. So even if you make the outrageous presumption that every Republican supports capital punishment, then a lot of Democrats are as well. But it is outrageous to suggest that, because a significant percentage of the Republican base, Christian conservatives, are actually opposed to it. Even some well known conservative commentators, such as Bill O'Reilly are outspoken in opposition to capital punishment. Taking that into consideration, it's then obvious that a very significant number of Democrats form the base of support for capital punishment, which not only invalidates the entire premise of your red/blue state critique.

[DavidNYC]

Has the US ever actually executed a "kid?"

Absolutely. One famous case is that of Willie Francis. You can read about it here. It was truly a harrowing case. Francis was 15 when he was convicted of murder and 17 when he was executed - for the second time.