I've been updating the post on yesterday's Supreme Court decision frequently, and there's been some discussion. You may want to check it out.
I suppose I'll start posting new links in this post, however. Country Store has rounded up some material, and PoliPundit has had some good posts (one, two, three) on this, particularly the last one.
Tony Blankley has a good editorial at the Washington Times: Black robes and betrayal (via Power Line). I think it's important to understand the crime under issue as well, so the court's decision becomes a little bit less abstract in our minds:
The crime, as described yesterday by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Roper v. Simmons, writing for the majority: "At the age of 17, when he was still a junior in high school, Christopher Simmons ... committed murder ... 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 with his friends ... 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 'getaway with it' because they were minors." A few hours later he proceeded to do just that, breaking into a home, covering the victim's head in a towel, wrapping her up in duct tape and tying her hands and legs together with electrical wire. Then he drove her to a bridge and threw her off into the water, where helpless, she drowned.
The question before the Supreme Court was whether this presented a case of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment to our Constitution. No, the court was not concerned with whether being assaulted in your home, wrapped in a towel, duct tape and electrical wire and thrown off a bridge was cruel and unusual punishment. That's OK. The court is only concerned with whether it was cruel and unusual to execute the strapping 17-year-old murderer who did it.
As DJ Drummond at PoliPundit points out:
Justice Kennedy wrote the majority decision, and in so doing cited the 8th and 14th Amendments were violated in assigning the death penalty to Christopher Simmons, for the crime of premeditated murder. Not only did Simmons admit he planned the murder beforehand, bragged about it afterwards to numerous persons, he also recruited Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer into the crime with the specific promise that *‘they could “get away with it” because they were minors’*. In short, Justice Kennedy assisted a murderer in his effort to suborn the consequences of his crime.
(last emphasis mine.) Blankley continues:
As Justice Antonin Scalia fumed in his dissent: "Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50 percent of death penalty States can constitute a national consensus. Our previous cases have required overwhelming opposition to a challenged practice, generally over a long period of time." In this case, a majority of relevant states approve the practice.
Recognizing that they were arguing a rather weak set of facts regarding a national consensus, the majority supplemented its argument with the self-aggrandizing assertion that "In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the 8th Amendment." Outrageously, the court asserts such power because, as Justice Scalia characterized, "juries cannot be trusted with the delicate task of weighing a defendant's youth along with other mitigating factors." This assertion, of course, undermines "the very foundations of our capital sentencing system."
You don't need to read Orin Kerr's post to see how that's exactly what they intended, but I'd recommend reading his post in any case 
Also, for those not familiar, this overturns a 15 year old decision by the court that said the exact opposite. Scalia was incredulous:
In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people's representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since "[t]he judiciary ... ha[s] neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment." The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, "bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them." Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years--not, mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed.
(emphasis mine)
Update: Professor Bainbridge has another great post:
Outrage over the Supreme Court's recent death penalty case continues to mount. Interestingly, most of the critics are focusing not on the merits of the decision (i.e., the legitimacy of executing juveniles), but on the process by which the Supreme Court handed down its edict.
Um, Yeah. Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
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