The Duc Pond

The execution of those who were minors when committing capital crimes has been ruled unconstitutional. Finally, the United States takes one step towards the human rights standards of the rest of the developed world:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7774532

[T]he United States had carried out 19 of the 39 executions of child offenders that Amnesty has recorded world wide since 1990.

The other countries that carried out such executions were Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But Freer said even those countries now consider the practice illegal, although they have not all succeeded in halting it.

Using the death penalty against offenders who were under 18 when they committed a crime is explicitly banned by the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 192 countries — every country in the world except the United States and Somalia.

“But Somalia has no recognized government. The United States certainly has a recognized government,” Freer said.

Read the full decision here:
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-633.ZS.html

This decision, like many recent decisions, was very close. We won’t be so lucky in the future when Bush has his way with the Supremes.

The dissenting arguments are kind of interesting, though. They may be wrong, but they’re not uneducated. If I understand my quick skimming of the dissensions correctly, Scalia argues that there’s no national consensus to ban the juvenile death penalty (in line with his recurring theme that the judiciary should not do the work of the legislature). “Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50% of death penalty States can constitute a national consensus,” he says. Yes, but he’s talking about the 38 states that permit the death penalty! 30 out of the 50 states (60%) have banned executions of juvenile offenders, 12 of them by banning the death penalty altogether. Their opinion should not be discarded! But again, even though I disagree with him, I have to admit he makes some very good arguments in Section III of his dissension. They’re worth reading for a well-rounded understanding of the issue. He’s still wrong, though. Sorry.

O’Connor dissents by arguing “the seemingly reasonable conclusion” that “some 17-year-old murderers are sufficiently mature to deserve the death penalty in an appropriate case.” (emphasis hers) She does, however, disagree with Scalia by writing, “Over the course of nearly half a century, the Court has consistently referred to foreign and international law as relevant to its assessment of evolving standards of decency.” She notes that there is a “special character of the Eighth Amendment, which, as the Court has long held, draws its meaning directly from the maturing values of civilized society.”

With that I agree wholeheartedly.