March 02, 2005

High court bans death row for minors

The Supreme Court yesterday declared by a 5-4 margin that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on convicts who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes.
    Ruling that capital punishment for minors violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the court reversed its 1980 decision that allowed executions of convicts who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crimes.
    Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the majority decision and was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

This decision was outrageous!
Not only did it commit unbelievable judicial overreach--abrogating the laws and statutes of the 50 states setting penalties for crimes--but it amounts to nationwide jury nullification in that respect, also for the underage defendants already on Death Row (and the courts won't be able to seek the death penalty for multiple killer and Islamist terrorist Lee Malvo) and they used foreign law to arrive at the majority opinion!
Why don't we just join the ICC and make it easier?
Or send all of our law cases to the Hague and join the EU?
The Leftist Liberals on the Court (and mark their names well: Kennedy, Breyer, Souder, Ginsberg and Stevens) know the jig's up if Chief Justice Rehnquist and/or Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retires and President Bush ruins their "majority" when he will appoint another Conservative justice to the Supremes!
As an American citizen, I feel pretty helpless to "do" anything about these SCOTUS decisions because these people aren't elected and aren't really accountable to we, the people.
Something about that's really not right.
They're meeting again today to decide about monuments featuring the Ten Commandments in public places...I dread their rulings now on almost anything!

Laura Ingraham, a former lawyer herself and a one-time clerk for Justice Thomas, is hopping mad on her morning show today, as well, and urges us all to read Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion in which he dubs his 5 Liberal Left colleagues "our robed masters":
Roper v. Simmons, Scalia, J., dissenting, SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Laura also links a wonderful new site called the Judicial Confirmation Network which is dedicated to getting a grass roots, Red State initiative motivated and empowered to fight the Lib Dem obstructionism on all fronts from circuit court judges now to USSC nominees in the future.
Check it out and sign their petition about the confirmation of Bush judicial nominees being voted on in the Senate today!
(They also have a link making it super easy to contact your Senators by email or Fax.)
As lovely Laura says, if you think the Dimocrat Senators are being awful about Bush's picks on the lower courts now, it is nothing compared to what they'll do when he puts up a Conservative for the Supreme Court--that is why it's vital that Frist go nuclear and not let them get away with this Borking now, before there's another Bork and our hopes are dashed for a very long time of doing something to change the Liberal makeup of the world's leading judicial banc who are singlehandedly trying to set government policy, supplanting both the executive and legislative branches!

And furthermore...Isn't it disgraceful that the same high court which has shown such tender mercies for teenage killers and rapists doesn't give the same consideration to children before they're born in their abortion rulings?!