Supreme Court says no more executing minors...

[Diabalein Avidyia]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20050301/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_death_penalty_9


I am so sad to see this, of course I have some rather strong opinions on the subject usually along the lines of Killing anyone with a Life sentence or longer (yes you can get 300 year jail sentences) I absolutly fail to see what the point is behind societys paying for people so ****ed up they cant be trusted in the general population. 50k a year or more to keep these people away from us when we could have bullets engraved with their names for around 5$ total cost. toss the bodies on a big ass compost pile and be done with it.

[Meddik]

I'd like to see what percentage of Murders, or for that matter other felonies are committed by someone under the age of 18. At least in areas with a lot of Gang Activity, I'm guessing the level would be higher than most would expect.

[Darkefang]

Considering how flawed most people consider the current justice system, lots of us sure are quick to kill those convicted under that system.

[Biggwin]

I dont see it is flawed. I personally think more people should be executed. I also personally think there should be less appeals. 1 new appeal for any reason. A possible new appeal should new evidence arise. Not for any old bs that they are letting happen now!

[Loreleli]

Considering how flawed most people consider the current justice system, lots of us sure are quick to kill those convicted under that system.

Quick? time between conviction and being executed is about 12 years. Not very quick imho.

this is telling to my why minor law in capital offenses fails:

Justices were called on to draw an age line for executions after Missouri's highest court overturned the death sentence given to Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he kidnapped a neighbor, hog-tied her and threw her off a bridge in 1993. Prosecutors say he planned the burglary and killing of Shirley Crook and bragged that he could get away with it because of his age.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050301/D88IBA1G2.html

[Meddik]

Considering how flawed most people consider the current justice system, lots of us sure are quick to kill those convicted under that system.

Quite a few people agree that it is flawed in being too lenient.

[Riot Sio Zon]

Considering how flawed most people consider the current justice system, lots of us sure are quick to kill those convicted under that system.

Yeah the flaw is we don't kill enough quickly enough.

[Qmaus]

Capital punishment = good thing.
Capital punishment + public place = better thing.
Capital punishment + public place + nationally televised = Less capital crimes = much better thing.

I don't care if they're minors. A danger to society is a danger to society.
I don't care if they're insane either. If their insanity is bad enough to make them kill somebody, all the more reason to protect the rest of us from them.

[Biral]

Since 1973, 118 people in 25 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innnocence. Source (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=412&scid=6)

Thats 118 people who would probably consider the system at least slightly flawed. I'm not against the death penalty but if theres even the slightest doubt, there shouldn't be an execution. 12 years is fine with me if at the end of that time its absolutely clear that the person is guilty. If it was you on death row i'm sure you would want to exercise all your options as well.

[Nenjin]

Considering how close the vote was, I wouldnt' be surprised to see this reversed when the old guard starts stepping down.

[Biggwin]

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/drtab.htm) in that same time period 61,509 (assuming I added right) people were on death row. That means the margin of error is 0.19%

I dont have a problem with that! And personally that number should have been 117 instead of 118 because one of those guys was on death row for 30 years!

I firmly believe any murder commited while commiting another crime should be automatic death sentence.

[Darkefang]

Quick? time between conviction and being executed is about 12 years. Not very quick imho.
That is because the laws are still in place protecting death-row inmates right to appeal. There is a substantial amount of people who want to dismantle this system (see: Biggwin).

Capital punishment = good thing.
Capital punishment + public place = better thing.
Capital punishment + public place + nationally televised = Less capital crimes = much better thing.
No study has ever definitively shown a deterrence or anti-deterrence effect of a state having capital punishment. It seems like criminals would be scared of being put to death, and so they would avoid committing a crime that receives the death penalty. Unfortunately, criminals share one thought process, no matter what crime they are committing: They won't be caught.

Dumb criminals have an urge, and react to it, without planning. It is spontaneous and self-indulgent. Only after the fact will they think about the consequences (if even then).

Smarter criminals have a high opinion of their intellect. They have a low opinion of the police's abilities to solve crimes, and believe they are clever enough to cover up the clues that lead back to them.

Quite a few people agree that it is flawed in being too lenient.
I'm hearing a lot of noise about tort reform right now, and not because companies are getting lenient treatment

I don't have anything philosophically against the death penalty. I do have serious reservations about how it is implemented. Poor people that cannot afford their own attorneys are almost exclusively given the death penalty. It is not justice when two people can commit the same crime, and one get life in prison, the other a lethal injection, because one had more money to spend on their legal defense. In light of cases like Illinois', where law students found irrefutable evidence in something like 14 out of 15 cases they reviewed that the inmate was innocent, I don't think we can continue putting people on death row with a clear conscience. We certainly don't want to speed up the process.

[Riot Sio Zon]

There were 6675 inmates sentenced to death row since 1977 (up till 2002). Taking it back to 1973 where you use your 118, it will probably reach over 7000 sentenced people.

We are looking at a one and a half percent error rate with those numbers. People do make errors and they are unavoidable, but a less than 2% error rate over the course of 30 years isn't bad in my opinion. And granted that is exactly what these beliefs boil down to, opinion. My opinion is that punishment for those that commits crimes is a must. Any system will have flaws, unfortunately one flaw is the human one here, and that can't be fully accounted for. As it is though I will take a less than 2% error rate and allow for appeals, but dissallowing the death penalty because of a strict age limit blows me away. If there is the human factor in causing error, then there needs to be fudge room in sentencing as well.

Continuing with the data the error rate drops off greatly for every year you knock off. Meaning that if you look at the number of mistakes made from 90-2002 it is less than one half of one percent. Maybe we are getting better.

Unfortunately Biggwin the problem with your numbers is that they include roll over. Those numbers are number of people held on death row...but that means a person could count 30 times if on death row for 30 years. I didn't feel like registering for the data download for all the exact statistics back to 1973, but note the actual number of convicted felons sent to death row from 1977-2002 as being 6675.

On a semi humorous note from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/cp03pr.htm

NUMBER OF DEATH ROW INMATES DECLINED FOR THIRD STRAIGHT YEAR DURING 2003
So anyone else see the irony in that statement?

[Caowyth]

Thats 118 people who would probably consider the system at least slightly flawed.

Technically speaking, wouldn't this also be 118 people who considers that the system works? I mean, they were released right?

That's why it takes 12 years.

[Llabak Tharr]

Without direct evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrant against violent crime, even a 0.0000001 error rate is unsatisfactory.

[freonsmurf]

Two Man enter
One Man Leave.

[Darkefang]

My opinion is that punishment for those that commits crimes is a must.
You are implying that prison isn't a punishment. Go spend a night in any maximum security prison, and I think you'll change your mind.

There were 6675 inmates sentenced to death row since 1977 (up till 2002). Taking it back to 1973 where you use your 118, it will probably reach over 7000 sentenced people.
Keep in mind that most of these 118 cases were ones in which the inmate, or the inmate's family, was able to convince an investigator to continue pursuing the case after the conviction. There are likely also going to be cases where nobody was convinced to investigate the case further. I would imagine it is especially difficult to get anyone to investigate capital cases where the convicted has already been executed.

[Bondori]

Without direct evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent against violent crime, even a 0.0000001 error rate is unsatisfactory.

I agree 100%.

It's probably a lot easier to tell a family that the person who killed their loved one will receive life in prison instead of the death penalty than it is to tell a family that their loved one was wrongly convicted and put to death.

I think a minor would have a lot better chance of being rehabilitated during their time in prison (although that’s not being backed up by any kind of study).

[Loreleli]

I think a minor would have a lot better chance of being rehabilitated during their time in prison (although that’s not being backed up by any kind of study).

Yeah, especially a minor that tells his buddies he kidnapped and killed a 17 year old girl becuase he knew he could get away with it because of his age :crazy These teenagers are not 'minors' in the strictist sense of when these laws were inacted to protect them. They're more mature than 50 year olds would have been during that ERA. This is 25+ years post-MTV, these laws are a joke.

Reform family law & repeal minor protection law - especially with so-called car accidents ( drag racing/ running red lights, etc) resulting in death. Too many 'kids' kill with a car w/o a thought & don't serve a day. We had 1 a few years back, some girl killed 3 of her friends, she got her wrist slapped.

[Deltar Battlewall]

I absolutly fail to see what the point is behind societys paying for people so $#@! up they cant be trusted in the general population. 50k a year or more to keep these people away from us when we could have bullets engraved with their names for around 5$ total cost. toss the bodies on a big ass compost pile and be done with it.
Actually many states have discovered that it generally costs more (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=108&scid=7) to execute a criminal than it does to imprison them for life.

That means the margin of error is 0.19%

I dont have a problem with that!
That is, until you or a family member are falsely accused and become part of that 0.19%.

[Aldarion Shard]

I agree with the decision in principle - children should be held to a different standard than adults.

17 year olds arent children, though. The age of adulthood is 12. Other than that, I agree.

[Elerion]

Without direct evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrant against violent crime, even a 0.0000001 error rate is unsatisfactory.

:heart

This thread was sorely lacking some sanity before that

[nightfall]

Actually many states have discovered that it generally costs more to execute a criminal than it does to imprison them for life.

That's because we're ridiculous about it. It shouldn't cost as much as it does. Why sterilize the lethal injection? Why shoot them full of other medication first? They give them like 3 or 4 other shots before they stick them with the needle. Such a waste... Just strap them down and inject the damn stuff.[/code]

[NotThatOneKid]

Without direct evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrant against violent crime, even a 0.0000001 error rate is unsatisfactory.

What are you, a pinko-commie?

Amazingly enough, other countries have law and order (along with lower murder rates) and they don't have the death penalty. Maybe the problem is lots of people with guns who believe that they are justified in their actions.

[deuce]

Umm i think you guys agreed, he says that there shouldnt be put to death even if there might be the smallest percentage of people dieng because they're innocent, and the ends doesnt justify the means because it doesnt put fear into criminals.

And you said the same thing....So you're both commies?

[Lilum]

I'm just curiuos how many people who think the appeals process is too linient would feel the same way if they were ever wrongly convicted of a crime.

The most barbaric thing we as a society could do is kill an innocent man in the name of justice.

[TorchTheDresser]

Yeah, especially a minor that tells his buddies he kidnapped and killed a 17 year old girl becuase he knew he could get away with it because of his age :crazy These teenagers are not 'minors' in the strictist sense of when these laws were inacted to protect them. They're more mature than 50 year olds would have been during that ERA. This is 25+ years post-MTV, these laws are a joke.

With that type of mentality we could scale to death penalty to 10 year-olds in 20 years because they are more mature than an 18 year old would have been now.

We can all take the terrible story of the 17 year who committed murder because "he thought he could get away with it" and use it for an argument to sustain the death penalty (in albiet rare occurances) for minors, but I'd much rather let some hellish kid rot his life away in prison if it meant that one juvenile would grow up in his lifetime in prison and repent.

I never understood why so many could be for the death penalty in the first place. Is it just a big rush to get murderers to God for their judgment? Our legal system founded on the principle that it's better to let 100 guilty men go free than to make one innocent man suffer, and this principle goes all the way back to Deuteronomy. I think we'd all sing a different tune if we were the .01%.

Edit: this was suppose to be posted under Bondori but forgot to log friend out. So if you got flames, don't send them to torchthedresser.

[Biral]

I was thinking along the lines that they were on death row on the first place Cao, but you know what i mean.

[Nocte]

Don't hang with or near the criminal element, no problems or false imprisonment. I'm 100% sure the cops won't be sweeping into my house accusing me of murder at any time. If by some freak of nature they did. They'd be hard pressed to make a case. I go to work. I come home. I hang with a somewhat normal circle of friends. My acquaintances aren't psychos. The "If it were you" argument doesn't hold up.

/shrug

I'm all for public executions. The caveat being, I'm concerned with the disparity of ratio in race on death row. Age and sex I couldn't give a &$% about. There IS, however, a far greater number of black and hispanic men on deathrow than any other demographic. I don't have the facts and figuires on that, but I read it somewhere recently. I don't think this is necessarily a racial issue, per se, but a economical one. I wouldn't want a public defender keeping me from the gallows (Go go NH, we still have hangin' on the books!) More care should be made in the courtroom on potential capital punishment cases, perhaps with a real trial attorney, not the overworked, underpaid PD.

Anyhoo, asshats like this jackass: ( http://www.ccadp.org/michaelross.htm ) deserve to be strung up on public access television. He admitted to the crimes. Has 6 death penalties levied against him. Has given up the ghost, so to speak. Yet local politics are keeping him alive against his wishes. :crazy This guy was as good as dead a month ago, but church leaders and the public defenders office are keeping his ass alive.

I'd much rather let some hellish kid rot his life away in prison if it meant that one juvenile would grow up in his lifetime in prison and repent.

I'd much rather have the finances keeping his ass alive put to use improving the lives of children who add to society.

This debate is moot though. No one is going to change the other's mind- much like abortion or the dreaded "Iraq" topic. I'm down with Hammurabi. Others are down with Ghandi.

[Bondori]

I'd much rather have the finances keeping his ass alive put to use improving the lives of children who add to society.

In most cases and in most states it is more expensive to sentence somebody to death than it is to keep them alive in prison. By design the sentence is long, tedious, and expensive (lest an innocent man be hastily execute).

There really isn't a lot of middle ground from a monetary stand-point. If you want the death penalty to remain, you still want to make sure innocent men and women aren't wrongfully accused, which will lead to appeals and lawsuits and special DA's. But if you're letting them live the rest of their life in prison, then it burns to think that your tax dollars are going to support those creeps.

Of course, we couldn’t have inmates doing any kind of manual labor for the state to help pay for their incarcerations, because that would be “cruel and unusual” punishment (at least in the eyes of the court).

[Nocte]

Of course, we couldn’t have inmates doing any kind of manual labor for the state to help pay for their incarcerations, because that would be “cruel and unusual” punishment (at least in the eyes of the court).

Prisoner made products can no longer compete with the private sector in New Hampshire :lol Completely irrelevant to the topic, but it reminded me of that. Some local farmer raised holy hell that the prison was undercutting his prices.

[Sillis]

That's ok. The government still requires at least the USAF to use prison made furniture.

Not only does it STILL cost too much, it is also poorly made, too big, and sorely out of style. Not to mention even a footstool weighs one metric ton. They also deliver it when they damned well feel like it, and if you are not there, they are not above dropping it on the front step. Oh yeah, they make the military people unload it as well. Who is getting punished? :crazy

We can't even get that part of the equation right (aka "forced" labor). It is such a shame the people in prison enjoy a higher quality of life than the homeless and many poor. Food, shelter, health care. Just don't drop the soap I do suppose :evil

As to the topic at hand, I understand the logic behind the decision, but I personally disagree with it. 18 years old is just yet another arbitrary number with nothing to support it. I sure in the hell knew right from wrong by age 12 or so. Actually way before that. It is not rocket science.

Uh, murder ( insert assorted capital crime there) is bad. Ding ding! We have a winner.

[Yalum]

"Cruel and unusual" has nothing to do with it, a free man can't compete with slave labor unless he's also willing to work for slave wages. That's the argument that got Lincoln elected president, long before anyone cared about justice or racial equality, and it's still just as true today. Forced labor is incompatible with a free market economy.

[Deltar Battlewall]

Amazingly enough, other countries have law and order (along with lower murder rates) and they don't have the death penalty. Maybe the problem is lots of people with guns who believe that they are justified in their actions.
/applaud

In regards to the actual topic now: kids and the death penalty. I'm against capital punishment, so I support this as a "step in the right direction" move. I wonder though about the people I see talk about how the distinction between a 17-year-old and and 18-year-old shouldn't matter to death row eligibility. Does anyone here feel that teens should be considered "adult" enough to be sentenced to death, but it's still statutory rape if they have sex before their 18th birthday?

[ragweed]

In most cases and in most states it is more expensive to sentence somebody to death than it is to keep them alive in prison.

You know what, a .357 to the head is a lot cheaper than the 6 or so needles they give the guy when they do lethal injection. Then again I am also against lethal injection. To nice of a way to go, they basically put them tto sleep then pump them with more drugs to slow the breathing and heart rate down until they both stop. I highly doubt the majority of the victims were killed so painlessly. Making a ****ing mess with a large caliber bullet then just break out the fire hose to clean up.

/flame bait. :evil

[Soulstealer]

What ever happened to a tall tree and a short piece of rope? :smirk

Was, and still is the most cost effective means if you want my opinion, not like i gave you a choice though because i already said it!


Sure there are innocent people in jail, but that has nothing to do with the fact that death row inmates may sit for 20+ years before the deal is finished.

[Diabalein Avidyia]

Without direct evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrant against violent crime, even a 0.0000001 error rate is unsatisfactory.



we dont have evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterent because we dont kill anyone...by that I mean killing less than 1% of criminals deserving death=no deterent.


do I think we should kill every criminal? no, do I think we should just kill everyone whos in for life? hell yes. a 17 year old who comits murder because he can get away with it due to his age? the arresting officer should be shot for not killing him while he was "resisting arrest"

newsflash, even if every criminal serving a life sentence died tonight we would have overpopulated prisons. human life ceases to be sacred the second you become a danger to the general mass of society. 3 strikes and your dead is a law I could get behind. you want to see a deterent? give that a try and watch crime rates plumet...but you would have to actually kill people for it to work as deterent.

[Elerion]

Some of you guys are freaking batshit insane

[Lilum]

To the people saying "well a bullet only costs $0.37, and rope is cheap" please repeat after me. It is not the method of excecution that makes the death penalty more expensive than life in prison. It is all the appeals. The appeals happen to be necessary since it would be the worst thing we could do to excecute an innocent man.

[Sillis]

It is not just the appeals. It is the way they are segregated in prison. The extra facilities, the extra security, the special attention they receive, the higher wages paid to death row guards all jack the price through the roof. The actual execution is a pittance.

But between the two (appeals and special circumstances), it costs more definitely.

*edit* cleared up one comment and also would like to point out the language filter needs some work as it lets combination words slide quite easily :evil

[Nocte]

The last meal should be a Happy Meal too. NO PRIZE FOR JOO!!!

[Elerion]

If my last meal on earth was a McDonalds meal, I would probably kill myself before the needle could.

[Riot Sio Zon]

Money is a whole different issue, and one that while it bugs me, isn't the problem in my view.

Granted I still can't fathom why I ate better as a guard than as a college student in the dorms...but that is something else.

Back to the original topic though with there being a strict age limit imposed on who can and can not be executed, it just begs for people to take advantage of it due to age.

For or against the death penalty (because the death penalty isn't on trial) the fact that a person who otherwise would be executed now won't because they are too young to know better, that the heinous crime they committed and are now bragging about and spouting off that they would do it again, wasn't wrong because they were too young.

It isn't about what you believe their penalty should be, but that equal crimes with equal intent should be punished equally across the board.

The injustice with limiting any form of punishment whether or not you agree with it simply because of age to me is horrible. Limiting it because of understanding, sanity, or other mitigating circumstance is a separate issue.

Try to put aside your like or dislike for the form of punishment and tell me why equal crimes shouldn't be punished equally solely due to age. That is the issue here.

[Talius]

human life ceases to be sacred the second you become a danger to the general mass of society. 3 strikes and your dead is a law I could get behind.

So the concept of rehabilitation doesn't exist for you? The idea that someone could make a mistake? That someone, given the right opportunities, could go on to fix their lives? Of course not: you've made a moralistic sweeping hand judgement that everyone who ever does anything you wouldn't do isn't worth your time. A few more steps in the "right" direction, and we're back to the Inquisition.

I've never been against capital punishment, persay. But I can only think of a minority of situations in which it's justified. Psychosis is not one of them. A large majority of crimes committed by someone in a psychotic state is done in a transitory state, against their family, before they've been diagnosed or treated. Afterwards their condition declines highly, even with treatment, because of the grief and guilt they have when their brain chemicals settle out and they realize what they've done.

Psychopathy is probably the only situation where there's a strong case for the death penalty. These are the guys who kill because they can, feel no remorse, know right from wrong but disagree. They didn't do it because the toaster told them to, they did it because they felt like it. One psychopath in prison was quoted saying: "You shouldn't let me out. Eventually the time will be right and I'll kill someone else. It's just going to happen. Might as well keep me in here and spare them." His concern? Not for the people he'd kill, not for himself, but for the guards and doctors that would feel responsible for his actions. Psychopathy has no working chemical intervention, and therapy is documented to make them worse. That kid who killed because he could get away with it? Give him the PCL-YV. I wouldn't be surprise to see a high score. "I did it because I can, and I won't get caught" is psychopathy to the extreme.

That being said, if you can prove, without a doubt, that rehabilitation is impossible, then kill away. That is a very difficult thing to prove, and it would always have to be on a case by case basis, given the variance in psychopathic behaviour.

[Riot Sio Zon]

Once again, what the Supreme Court ruled on was that there is a very well defined line as to when someone is elegible to be executed and in this case the line only has to do with are they over 18 years of age.

[Nocte]

That being said, if you can prove, without a doubt, that rehabilitation is impossible, then kill away.

That would be his 3 strike premise.

[Talius]

3 strikes being three what? Murders? Or thefts? Three days of ditching school? It was stated in such an arbitrary way that it seemed like he was willing to kill anyone, as long as their in jail three times.

Can you clarify, Diabalein?

[Loreleli]

Neal's take on it was interesting to me:

The Supreme Court, you see, is expected to cite a Constitutional basis for its rulings. Not so in this case. Instead, Kennedy cites a "national consensus" and "international opinion." Boiled down, "national consensus" is just another way of saying "the will of the majority." So now it seems official. The Supreme Court will base its rulings on what is and what is not Constitutional based on the mood of the people; based on the whims of the mob. This is nothing less than the legitimization of the lynch mob. If there's a "national consensus" that old so-and-so must hang, then hang he does, regardless of whether or not such niceties as the rule of law have been followed or Constitutional rights met. Perhaps the next step is for the Supremes to hire a polling firm to measure the mood of the people before they issue rulings on Constitutionality.

The reference to "international opinion." Maybe some guidance from the Supremes is needed at this point. At what point does international opinion trump the dictates and limitations of our Constitution? Should the "international opinion" standard be used by the Supreme Court to decide whether or not a president's foreign policy initiatives are legal? Maybe Ted Kennedy and John Kerry should have tried to get a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of Bush's actions in Iraq. Using the "international opinion" standard Bush's actions would almost certainly have been found to be unconstitutional.

Sadly, most of this will go unnoticed by the dumb masses. The vast majority of Americans will direct their attention to the current NASCAR standings, tonight's edition of Entertainment Tonight and whether or not there's enough brewski in the 'fridge for the weekend.

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html

2 scum bags will not face the needle her in GA becuase of yesterday's ruling :

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/0305/02scotusga.html


The U.S. Supreme Court delivered good news Tuesday to two death row inmates in Georgia.

Larry Jenkins, convicted of a 1993 double murder in Jesup, and Exzavious Gibson, convicted of the 1990 killing of a grocer in Eastman, were both 17 at the time they committed their crimes.


When Jenkins learned of the decision, he screamed for joy, his sister Felicia Green said. "I feel truly blessed. We've been praying and praying," she said. "It's something that's been hard on us over the years."

But prosecutors and victims' relatives condemned the decision.

"We're all kind of sick about it," said Stephen Kelley, the district attorney in Wayne County, where Jenkins committed the murders.

"He [Jenkins] executed a mother and son," Kelley said. "Kidnapped them from a laundromat, took them out to the railroad tracks and executed them in cold blood."


On Jan. 8, 1993, Terry Ralston and her 15-year-old son, Michael, drove to their family-owned laundromat in Jesup, in southeastern Georgia, to collect the coins and close for the night. The next day, their bodies were found face down in a ditch. Michael had been shot six times from behind at close range, and his mother had been shot once at the base of her skull.



Alan Ralston, 55, lost his wife and oldest son that night in 1993. On Tuesday, he said he was stunned and confused by the court's decision.

"The jurors made the decision that he should be executed," said Ralston, who thought that decision was final. On Tuesday, he said he couldn't sort out his feelings about Jenkins leaving death row.

"The worry is starting all over again," Ralston said. "I'm getting more and more tense. Something in my stomach. I don't know quite how to describe it."

Ralston, a flea market vendor who now lives in Savannah, said he had opposed the death penalty before his wife and son were slain. "My views changed quite a lot after that happened," he said.

He was left to raise two younger sons with the help of his wife's parents. He lost his job as a snack food salesman, he said, "because I was not altogether there." In 2003, he said, he lost another son to a drug overdose.

Ralston's youngest, Josh, 22, said the murders "tore our family apart for a while." He lives on St. Simons Island and is a restaurant cook.

"It just seems outrageous to me that they can turn something like that around," the younger Ralston said. "He was supposed to die for taking somebody else's life."

In the central Georgia town of Eastman, news that Douglas Coley's killer would be taken off death row stirred up disturbing questions for the victim's father, Norman "Buddy" Coley, 83.

"What are they going to do?" he said. "Turn him out? He'll kill somebody else."

Russ Willard, spokesman for the Georgia attorney general's office, said the court's ruling invalidated the death sentences of Gibson and Jenkins.

Scheree Lipscomb, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman, said her agency is working with the attorney general's office on how to proceed.

The question, Willard said, is whether the men will have to be resentenced or whether their sentences will be automatically commuted to life imprisonment.

Buddy Coley described Douglas, his only son, as an honest man who operated the family-owned grocery store.

He was stabbed to death on Feb. 2, 1990. An autopsy found 39 "stab and slash and superficial cut wounds" on his body. The knife blade had broken off in his neck.

On Tuesday, Buddy Coley recalled the hopes that died with his 46-year-old son. "We were planning the next year that I would turn the business over to him. We had other plans. And when he killed him, that broke up the plans we had together."

Coley closed the store.

"I can't understand our government," he said. "They want to do right, and then they want to do wrong. Make a law, and then change it. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with America."

But one of Gibson's lawyers, Courtland Reichman, called the ruling "great news" for his client.

"The death penalty, as administered, is intended to be reserved for the most culpable offenders, that is, the worst offenders," Reichman said. "In the majority of cases, minors are less culpable."

----------------------------------------------

How can they be less culpable? The fact they stood trial means they know the difference between right and wrong. They were not found delusional by the courts :crazy The fact is these murders can be let out in as little as 15 years is repugnant to me.

10 to 12 years of appeals is plenty of time to find prove your innocence in modern times. We're not talking about 1970s forensics here.

This just shows Supreme Court needs to step in line & focus on LAW and the Constitution, not pop , fluffy bunny -feel good garbage. They over turned 2 State laws that were placed on the ballot and approved by the state populace.

[Diabalein Avidyia]

Talious the 3 sttrikes I was refering to is a law many states have addapted where if you comit 3 felonies get an automatic life sentence on your 3rd conviction...the premise is that you are a permanent screwup who cannot be rehabilitated.

[Caowyth]

Without direct evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrant against violent crime, even a 0.0000001 error rate is unsatisfactory.

Because throwing an innocent person in jail for LIFE is so much more humane...

Heck, by this logic, shouldn't we just throw out all jailtime? Since normal jailtime doesn't seem to be a deterrant to violent crime either.

There should always be a final penalty available for any criminal. Otherwise there is no deterrant for someone currently serving life to avoid killing a guard, breaking out of prison, etc.

Now personally, with any possible error rate, I don't think the death penalty should be able to be sought for circumstantial cases. Unless there is direct hard evidence showing that someone was involved in a crime that can get the death penalty, there should be no death penalty.

[Talius]

If it's any three strikes, I can't see that leading into automatic execution.
It probably depends on a lot of factors. I just can't support anything that doesn't encourage at least somewhat of a case by case evaluation.

[Auslander]

Don't hang with or near the criminal element, no problems or false imprisonment. I'm 100% sure the cops won't be sweeping into my house accusing me of murder at any time. If by some freak of nature they did. They'd be hard pressed to make a case. I go to work. I come home. I hang with a somewhat normal circle of friends. My acquaintances aren't psychos. The "If it were you" argument doesn't hold up.


You could never be in the wrong place at the wrong time? I suggest you do some reading on Guy Paul Moran. He lived a life exactly as you describe yours, and ended up serving about 10 years in prison for a murder that he has since been proven to be undeniably innocent of. The only mistakes he made were living next door to a child who was raped and murdered, and coming home early from work on the wrong day.

If Canada had a death penalty still in place, he would have been executed.

[Yalum]

I find Justice O'Connor's dissent in this case very compelling. Everyone seems to agree that age is a poor indicator of maturity, that most teenagers are congenitally stupid but there are some 14 year olds more competent than some 40 year olds, and they deserve to be tried equally. Kennedy's opinion is that the age of majority is the only tool we have available and we have no choice but to err on the side of caution, allowing no one under it to be executed.

(The other dissent, written by Scalia, says the capabilities of the condemned are irrelevant, and only the prevailing national consensus on the juvenile death penalty should be considered. I find this argument particularly weak, only twelve states have any such prisoners on death row, and five have banned the practice in recent years. If you put a robe on me and asked me to divine the national consensus from those numbers, Scalia wouldn't like the answer.)

O'Connor wants judicial discretion though, not a hard cutoff at 18, and perhaps there's room for legislative compromise on the subject. Now, the most likely outcome from this decision is that the juvenile death penalty disappears from the landscape and is never heard from again, so we need something to bring the death penalty opponents back to the table. The most obvious candidate is to raise the age from 18 to 21. Above it everything works as before, and below it we greatly increase the burden on the prosecution, requiring them to prove competence and maturity as well as guilt if they want to apply the death penalty.

But then the question becomes, what sort of standard do you use to prove such a thing?

[Lilum]

It isn't about what you believe their penalty should be, but that equal crimes with equal intent should be punished equally across the board.

Why should a person not granted equal rights be subjected to equal punishment. We don't let minor drink, vote, and do any number of other things because we believe that they are unable to appriciate the consequences of those actions. Why then when one of them kills do we assume they can all of a sudden appriciate what it is they have done?

Because throwing an innocent person in jail for LIFE is so much more humane..

If fifteen years from now we find a guy sentenced to life in prison is innocent it's just a tinier bit of a whoops than if we already stuck the needle in his arm.

[ciba]

Our justice system fails, yet again.

As for rehabilitation: I'm all for it. I think any crime theft or worse should be part of a three strikes law. If you get convicted of three crimes (where each successive crime occurs AFTER a the prior conviction), I believe individuals that meet this criteria have shown that any hope of rehabilitation is lost.