Nina Totenberg read aloud snippets from Justice Kennedy's opinion (You can read the full opinion here.):
First we hear that of the 20 states in the US that still allow the execution of juveniles its "practice is infrequent." I don't know about you, but that strikes me as a good thing. I'm a bit squishy on the death penalty. I don't think it ranks as unconstitutional but I'm not not keen on exercising it very often. In the case of juvenile offenders doubly so. So I'm thinking this is a good thing, shows that juries and prosecutors are doing their jobs and saving the death penalty for only the most heinous crimes and the most unrepentant of criminals.
Next we hear that Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China have disavowed executing juveniles since 1990. Not a group of nations whose justice system I would want to emulate.
Then Kennedy, via Totenberg, goes into a whole rigamarole about how society recognizes that juveniles are, well, juvenile, citing chapter and verse from the American Psychiatric Association (which filed a friend of the court brief). Then he says that "adolescents are overrepresented statistically in virtually every category of reckless behavior."
Reckless behavior? Having sex without a condom is reckless behavior. Too frivolous for you? How about driving at unsafe speeds when, as the signs in my old neighborhood said, "children are present." This case was nothing like that:
There is little doubt that Simmons was the instigator of the crime. Before its commission Simmons said he wanted to murder someone. In chilling, callous terms he talked about his plan, discussing it for the most part with two friends, Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer, then aged 15 and 16 respectively. Simmons proposed to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up a victim, and throwing the victim off a bridge. Simmons assured his friends they could “get away with it” because they were minors.
(Snip)
Using duct tape to cover her eyes and mouth and bind her hands, the two perpetrators put Mrs. Crook in her minivan and drove to a state park. They reinforced the bindings, covered her head with a towel, and walked her to a railroad trestle spanning the Meramec River. There they tied her hands and feet together with electrical wire, wrapped her whole face in duct tape and threw her from the bridge, drowning her in the waters below.
He was also later heard bragging that he couldn't get the death penalty because he was too young.
This is not youthful behavior that one grows out of--barring a conversion experience, which I'll leave to a higher authority. This is cold-blooded murder. And I got even more pissed off when I came home, turned on the news and realized that this cold-blooded terrorist has also managed to slip out of the noose thanks to today's ruling.
Tom of The Right Coast(via The Corner) agrees. See here and here.
A sample:
(W)hat the court does when they make things up, more often than not, is make up stupid laws. If they are going to just make things up, couldn't they make up smart things, practical things?
Read them both.
It seems Justice Scalia also agrees:
Today’s opinion provides a perfect example of why judges are ill equipped to make the type of legislative judgments the Court insists on making here.To support its opinion that States should be prohibited from imposing the death penalty on anyone who committed murder before age 18, the Court looks to scientific and sociological studies, picking and choosing those that support its position. It never explains why those particular studies are methodologically sound; none was ever entered into evidence or tested in an adversarial proceeding.
Update: Orin Kerr says the ruling creates incentives for those who favor overturning the death penalty.
Update 2: "Court Backs 3-Oxen Dowries" and other landmark decisions.
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