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| Supreme Court Refuses to Revisit Execution of Teenage Killers |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/23/2002 |
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A bitterly divided Supreme Court refused Monday to consider ending the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. Four justices said the court should continue a reexamination of the death penalty begun in earnest last year. The court recently abolished executions for the mentally retarded. The court passed up a chance to reopen the question of whether executing very young killers violates the Constitution's ban on 'cruel and unusual punishment.' Currently, states that allow the death penalty may impose it on killers who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crimes. 'The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society,' wrote Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. 'We should put an end to this shameful practice.' Breyer also wrote separately to say the court should consider a second death penalty case that asks whether it was unconstitutional to leave inmates for decades on death row. He said Florida inmate Charles Foster has spent more than 27 years in prison and 'if executed, Foster, now 55, will have been punished both by death and also by more than a generation spent in death row's twilight. It is fairly asked whether such punishment is both unusual and cruel.' Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed, writing his own opinion to say that Foster 'could long ago have ended his anxieties and uncertainties by submitting to what the people of Florida have deemed him to deserve: execution.' Justices refused without comment to consider Foster's case, as well as the case of a Kentucky man sentenced to death for abducting, sodomizing and killing a gas station attendant when he was 17. The body of the 20-year-old victim was left sprawled over the rear seat of her mother's car, with her jeans and underwear pulled to her ankles. She had been shot in the face. Prosecutors said Kevin Nigel Stanford bragged about what he and two other teenagers had done. Stanford, now 39, has been on death row since 1982. In 1989, the high court used Stanford's case to uphold juvenile executions. The case is Stanford v. Parker, 01-10009. |
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