High Court Ends Death Penalty for Youths (AP)

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, 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. Tuesday’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 don’t 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.

[...]

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as expected, voted to uphold the executions. They were joined by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

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, 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.

Scalia’s right. I’m not a big fan of capital punishment for minors but find it incomprehensible that it could suddenly be unconstitutional. The 8th Amendment was ratified in 1791. The fact that 19 states still allowed youth executions until this morning belies the argument that the citizenry considers the practice cruel.

Update (1348): Steve Bainbridge and Steven Taylor have more analysis.

For those on the Left critical of my strict constructionist interpretation, see my post on yesterday’s ruling in the Padilla case. There are some strong advantages to having judges interpret the Constitution as written.

Update (3-2): Matt Yglesias agrees, observing,

The “evolving consensus” business is weird and curiously circular. It seems extraordinarily inconsistent with the general principles of American federalism to take the fact that most states don’t do something as evidence that a minority of states should be forbidden from doing it.

Quite right.

Tony Blankley adds, “As a former prosecutor, I am convinced that from time to time juries find before them 16- or 17-year-old defendants who understand full well the vicious nature of their murders, and deserve — after receiving the full panoply of due process — to be fried, gassed, hanged, shot, injected or otherwise sent promptly to Hell.”

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Kan. Woman Charged in Slaying, Kidnapping (AP)

A baby girl who had been cut out of her mother’s womb was found after a frantic search, and authorities arrested the woman they say strangled the mother and stole the child. The baby was in good condition Saturday. The child was found Friday at an eastern Kansas home. A red Toyota similar to a description given earlier by police was in the driveway. Lisa M. Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kan., was arrested later Friday and charged with kidnapping resulting in death.

Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, was found Thursday in a pool of blood inside her small white home in Skidmore, a town in northwest Missouri. Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, had earlier been talking with her mother on the phone, and hung up saying a woman she had chatted with online had just arrived at her door, authorities said.

U.S. Attorney Todd Graves said Montgomery contacted Stinnett through an online message board, and authorities zeroed in on her using computer forensics. Montgomery was seeking to buy a dog from Stinnett, who raised rat terriers, he said.
Stinnett, married for little more than a year and expecting her first child, worked at an engine factory in nearby Maryville. Her husband was at work when she was killed, authorities said.

The baby was named Victoria Jo and was united with her father, Zeb Stinnett, late Friday, Stormont-Vail Regional Health Center in Topeka said in a statement Saturday on its Web site. She was listed in good condition at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. Zeb Stinnett called the girl “a miracle.” “I want to thank family, friends, Amber Alert and law enforcement officials for their support during this time,” Stinnett said in the news release.

Montgomery is the mother of two high school-age children, but Graves said she had been pregnant with another child that was never born. It’s unclear when she lost the baby or under what circumstances, but the complaint said she had lied to her husband about giving birth. Graves declined to give a motive for the crime.

Absolutely bizarre. And, isn’t this always the way:

The grisly slaying shocked neighbors in the towns where the two women lived. “They’re very normal country people,” said Sandra Bullock, 45, who lives about a mile down the road from the Montgomerys. “It’s too hard to believe.” Stinnetts’ neighbor Bill Dragoo was equally surprised. “It blows my mind that this happened,” he said. “She was such a shy person. They didn’t deserve this.”

Who does?

Update: The Amber Alert report has more:

A woman was charged Friday with killing a pregnant woman and kidnapping the baby that was cut from her womb. Authorities found the infant was found in good health, ending a day of frantic searching.

U.S. Attorney Todd Graves said Lisa M. Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kan., was charged with kidnapping resulting in death in the slaying of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was found nearly dead Thursday in her Skidmore home. Paramedics tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Although DNA tests were pending to confirm the baby’s identity, authorities called off the Amber Alert issued for the child. “We’re confident we have the little girl that was taken from Skidmore,” Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey said during a news conference in Maryville.

Graves said Montgomery contacted Stinnett through an online message board. Montgomery was seeking to buy a dog from Stinnett, who raised rat terriers, he said.

Even more bizarre.

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Kerry Accuses Bush of Hiding Troops Plan (AP)

Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Friday accused the Bush administration of hiding a plan to mobilize more National Guard and reserve troops after the election while glossing over a worsening conflict in Iraq. “He won’t tell us what congressional leaders are now saying, that this administration is planning yet another substantial call-up of reservists and guard units immediately after the election,” Kerry said. “Hide it from people through the election, then make the move.”

The Democratic presidential candidate listed examples where he sees Bush misleading voters about Iraq, seeking to turn the conflict into a liability for Bush even as the president polishes his credentials as the best candidate to deter terrorists and protect the nation. Kerry portrayed the president as out of touch with a serious and dangerous situation. “With all due respect to the president, has he turned on the evening news lately? Does he read the newspapers?” Kerry said. “Does he really know what’s happening? Is he talking about the same war that the rest of us are talking about?”

Matt Drudge also has this:

STATEMENT FROM REP JOHN P. MURTHA [D-PA]:

I have learned through conversations with officials at the Pentagon that at the beginning of November, 2004, the Bush Administration plans to call up large numbers of the military guard and reserves, to include plans that they previously put off to call up the Individual Ready Reserve.

I have said publicly and privately that our forces are inadequate to support our current worldwide tempo of operations. On November 21, 2003, a bipartisan group of 135 members of the House of Representatives wrote to the President urging an increase in the active duty army troop levels and expressed concern that our Armed Forces are over-extended and that we are relying too heavily on the Guard and Reserve.

We didn’t get a reply until February 2004, and now as the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, it seems that the Administration will resort to calling up additional guard and reservists, again with inadequate notice.

It certainly appears if the Democrats are getting frantic over Kerry’s poor showing in the polls, willing to say or do just about anything to see if it helps. The sheer desperation–and it’s only mid September–is amazing.

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AP – Bush Wins; House Leaves Patriot Act As Is

The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people’s reading habits. The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law’s powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call’s normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for 23 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

“Shame, shame, shame,” Democrats chanted as the minutes passed and votes were switched. The tactic was reminiscent of last year’s House passage of the Medicare overhaul measure, when GOP leaders held the vote open for an extra three hours until they got the votes they needed. “You win some, and some get stolen,” Rep. C.L. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, a sponsor of the defeated provision and one of Congress’ more conservative members, told a reporter.

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said he switched his initial “yes” vote to “no” after being shown Justice Department documents asserting that terrorists have communicated over the Internet via public library computers. “This new world we live in is going to force us to have some constraints,” Wamp said.

The effort to curb the Patriot Act was pushed by a coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans. But they fell short in a showdown that came just four months before an election in which the conduct of the fight against terrorism will be on the political agenda. Besides successfully fending off the effort to weaken the law, the veto threat underscored the administration’s determination to strike an aggressive stance on law enforcement and terrorism.

***

Supporters of the law said the Patriot Act has been a valuable tool in anti-terror efforts. The law, enacted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, gave the government stronger powers to conduct investigations and detain people. “I would say, in my judgment, that lives have been saved, terrorists have been disrupted, and our country is safer” because of the act, said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a man President Bush is considering to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Otter and Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., led the effort to block one section of the law that lets authorities get special court orders requiring book dealers, libraries and others to surrender records such as purchases and Internet sites visited on a library computer. They contended the provision undermines civil liberties and threatens to let the government snoop into the reading habits of innocent Americans. “We are all in that together,” Sanders, one of Congress’ most liberal lawmakers, said of the anti-terror effort. “In the fight against terrorism, we’ve got to keep our eyes on two prizes: the terrorists and the United States Constitution.”

***

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., read a letter from the Justice Department stating that “as recently as this past winter and spring, a member of a terrorist group closely affiliated with al-Qaida” had used Internet services at a public library. The letter mentioned no specifics, Wolf said. “If we can stop what took place in my area,” said Wolf, whose district is near the Pentagon, a Sept. 11 target, “then I want to stop that, because we’ve gone to enough funerals.”

Critics of the Patriot Act argued that even without it, investigators can get book store and other records simply by obtaining subpoenas or search warrants. Those traditional investigative tools are harder to get from grand juries or courts than orders issued under the Patriot Act, which do not require authorities to show probable cause. “We don’t want tyranny,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

According to a list read by a House clerk, lawmakers switching their votes from “yes” to “no” included GOP Reps. Michael Bilirakis of Florida, Rob Bishop of Utah, Tom Davis of Virginia, Jack Kingston of Georgia, Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, Nick Smith of Michigan, Thomas Tancredo of Colorado, and Wamp. Some Democrats switched from “no” to “yes,” including Robert Bud Cramer of Alabama, Rodney Alexander of Louisiana, and Brad Sherman of California.

While the House, unlike the Senate, traditionally uses hardball tactics to ram bills through that the majority party supports, changing the rules after the fact seems beyond the pale–although I don’t know precisely what the Rules Committee had stipulated.

Zach Wamp was briefly my Congressman (I lived in Chattanooga for 18 months during his Freshman term) and Frank Wolf is my current Congressman; both are quite conservative and their votes don’t surprise me. I’m a bit surprised that Bud Cramer, whose voting record is also quite conservative, was persuaded to vote the other way–it’ll hurt him in Alabama, although he may be sufficiently entrenched as to be bulletproof.

Substantively, I find it hard to get worked up about the specific Patriot Act provisions in dispute here. While I find the declaring of American citizens as “enemy combatants” unconscionable, that’s not at stake here. Giving Federal agents the ability to look at Internet records and whatnot with judicial authority under “reasonable suspicion” rather than “probable cause” doesn’t both me. Those things aren’t particularly intrusive and we already use the lower standard for such things as vehicular searches–which strikes me as much more problematic than looking at library records.

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