The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it does not violate the Constitution to put to death offenders as young as 16 and those who are mentally retarded.
In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the high court held 5-4 that the Constitution permitted juvenile offenders to be tried as adults and executed because of the apparent lack of a national consensus opposing such executions. There are at least 27 people on death row for crimes committed while under the age of 18.
”Of the 37 states whose laws permit capital punishment,” Scalia said,
”15 decline to impose it on 16 year old offenders and 12 decline to impose it on 17 year old offenders.”
These statistics, Scalia wrote, fail to establish ”the degree of national consensus” needed ”to label a particular punishment cruel and unusual” under the 8th Amendment of the Constitution. Previously the high court has struck down capital punishment practices that fail to comply with
”evolving standards of decency.”
The court also rejected as insignificant the argument that the death penalty is inappropriate in these circumstances because defendants who are 16 and 17 years old seldom receive it. Of 2,106 death sentences handed down between 1982 and 1988, only 15 were imposed on individuals who were 16 or under at the time of their crime and only 30 were imposed on those who were 17.
In a second opinion by Justice Sandra Day O`Connor, the high court refused 5-4 to outlaw the execution of the mentally retarded. Again the court`s rationale, as explained by O`Connor, was that there is ”insufficient evidence of a national consensus” opposing these executions.
Signing Scalia`s opinion in cases from Kentucky and Missouri were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Byron White, O`Connor and Anthony Kennedy. O`Connor refused to join a portion of Scalia`s opinion suggesting that the court, beyond its assessment of state laws, is not obligated to consider whether a death sentence is proportionate to a defendant`s
”blameworthiness.”
In the Kentucky case, Kevin Stanford, then 17, repeatedly raped and sodomized a 20-year-old woman, Baerbel Poore, during a 1981 gas station robbery near Louisville. Stanford and a companion then drove her to a secluded area, where he shot her point-blank in the face.
The Missouri case concerned the 1985 stabbing death of Nancy Allen, a 26- year-old mother who was slain in the robbery of a convenience store. Heath Wilkins was 16 when he committed the murder.
According to Brennan, 27 states would refuse to authorize a death sentence for Stanford, while 30 states would not permit Wilkins` execution. His count included the 12 states, such as Illinois, that permit capital punishment but forbid its application to those under 18, plus the 15 states that do not authorize such sentences.
But Brennan and the dissenters were emphatic in rejecting the view advanced by the majority that political majorities, as reflected by state laws and jury verdicts, must determine what is ”cruel and unusual punishment.”
Brennan wrote that juveniles generally ”lack the degree of blameworthiness” required by the Constitution before a death sentence can be imposed.
”The potential deterrent effect of juvenile executions on adolescent offenders is also insignificant,” Brennan said.
In the mentally retarded case, however, while the court upheld death for retarded individuals, it set the sentence aside on different grounds. O`Connor was able to muster the votes of four liberals and order that a new sentence be given for a Texas man, Johnny Paul Penry, who was diagnosed as having the mental age of a 7-year-old.
Penry was sentenced to die for the 1979 murder of a Livingston, Tex., woman, whom he stabbed to death with a pair of scissors after raping and beating her.
In ordering that Penry be resentenced, O`Connor said the trial court had failed to have the jury consider Penry`s background in determining whether he deserved the death penalty. ”Full consideration of evidence that mitigates against the death penalty is essential,” O`Connor wrote, ”if the jury is to give a reasoned moral response to the defendant`s background, character and crime.”
Neither conservatives nor liberals were satisfied with Monday`s decisions.
Commenting on the ruling concerning juveniles, Patrick McGuignan of the conservative Free Congress Foundation predicted that more litigation would be needed to sort out its precise meaning.
”The law in this area still has so many caveats that, unfortunately, the justices will almost certainly continue to function as platonic guardians,”
McGuignan said.
Colleen O`Connor of the American Civil Liberties Union charged that the court ”had abdicated its role in enforcing the bill of rights” and instead let ”these difficult issues” be decided by ”the majoritarian views of the states.”
Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, complained that the high court had produced a ”monstrous decision” that allows states to take ”the lives of children scarcely past the age of puberty.”
In a statement issued in Chicago, the American Bar Association said the juvenile death penalty ruling ”is squarely in opposition to the fundamental premises of an enlightened juvenile justice system.”
Bar Association President Robert Raven urged states to enact laws recognizing ”the special nature of childhood demands that we conclusively presume that minors under the age of 18 are not mature and responsible to the same extent as adults.”
In a third decision Monday, the high court ruled 5-4 that police in Hammond, Ind., did not violate the rights of Gary Eagen under the Miranda rule in questioning him about the attempted murder of a woman in 1982. Eagan, sentencecd to 35 years in prison, successfully challenged his conviction on grounds the police advised him they would appoint a lawyer for him ”if and when you go to court.”
Rehnquist said the court has never insisted that Miranda warnings be given in the exact form described in that 1966 decision. Under the Miranda decision, a suspect must be advised of his right to remain silent, to have a lawyer present during interrogation and to have a lawyer appointed if unable to hire one.
