US bans death penalty for juveniles

The US Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes the Supreme Cort ruled today , ending a practice used in 19 states.

The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers and bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes.

The executions, the court said, were unconstitutionally cruel.

It was the second major defeat at the high court in three years for supporters of the death penalty.

Justices in 2002 banned the execution of the mentally retarded, also citing the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

The court had already outlawed executions for those who were 15 and younger when they committed their crimes.

Today’s ruling prevents states from making 16 and 17-year-olds eligible for execution.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, noted that most states do not allow the execution of juvenile killers and those that do use the penalty infrequently. The trend, he noted, was to abolish the practice.

“Our society views juveniles … as categorically less culpable than the average criminal,” Kennedy wrote.

Juvenile offenders have been put to death in recent years in just a few other countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia. All those countries have gone on record as opposing capital punishment for minors.

The Supreme Court has permitted states to impose capital punishment since 1976 and more than 3,400 inmates await execution in the 38 states that allow death sentences.

Justices were called on to draw an age line in death cases after Missouri’s highest court overturned the death sentence given to a 17-year-old Christopher Simmons, who kidnapped a neighbour in Missouri, hog-tied her and threw her off a bridge.

Prosecutors said he planned the burglary and killing of Shirley Crook in 1993 and bragged that he could get away with it because of his age.

Currently, 19 states allow executions for people under age 18: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Texas and Virginia.

In a dissent, Judge Antonin Scalia decried the decision, arguing that there has been no clear trend of declining juvenile executions to justify a growing consensus against the practice.

“The court says in so many words that what our people’s laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: ’In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,’ he wrote in a 24-page dissent.

“The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation’s moral standards,” Scalia wrote.