The recent ruling that they handed down in regards to the death penalty is completely wrong.
They are telling us that a 17 year old is not mature enough to know the heinousness of their crimes.
Siting foreign countries in their ruling.
So, if a 17 year old is not mature enough to know that murder is wrong and what the consequences of this action is, then how can a 13 year old be mature enough to get an abortion without parental consent?
What they have effectively said to America, is that 17 year olds don't know that their actions have consequences, but at the age of 18, all of a sudden they know.
A 13 year old can murder an unborn baby in the womb. They have the maturity for making that decision, but don't know that murder is wrong?
The Constitution of the United States is being torn apart, piece by piece, by these radical judges on the bench.
From the major opinion of Justice Kennedy:
The overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty is not controlling here, but provides respected and significant confirmation for the Court’s determination that the penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18. See, e.g., Thompson, supra, at 830–831, and n. 31. The United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile penalty. It does not lessen fidelity to the Constitution or pride in its origins to acknowledge that the express affirmation of certain fundamental rights by other nations and peoples underscores
the centrality of those same rights within our own heritage of freedom.
Pp. 21–25.
Dissenting:
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, dissenting.
The Court’s decision today establishes a categorical rule forbidding the execution of any offender for any crime committed before his 18th birthday, no matter how deliberate, wanton, or cruel the offense. Neither the objective evidence of contemporary societal values, nor the Court’s moral proportionality analysis, nor the two in tandem suffice to justify this ruling.
SCALIA, J., dissenting.
In urging approval of a constitution that gave lifetenured 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).
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. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to “the evolving
standards of decency,” ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people’s laws barely 15 years
ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people’s laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: “[I]n the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.”.....Consulting States that bar the death penalty concerning the necessity of making an exception to the penalty for offenders under 18 is rather like including old-order Amishmen in a consumer-
preference poll on the electric car. Of course they don’t like it, but that sheds no light whatever on the point at issue. That 12 States favor no executions says something about consensus against the death penalty, but nothing—absolutely nothing—about consensus that offenders under 18 deserve special immunity from such a
penalty....
In other words, all the Court has done today, to borrow from another context, is to look over the heads of the crowd and pick out its friends....
We need not look far to find studies contradicting the Court’s conclusions. As petitioner points out, the American Psychological Association (APA), which claims in this case that scientific evidence shows persons under 18 lack the ability to take moral responsibility for their decisions, has previously taken precisely the opposite position before this very Court. In its brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U. S. 417 (1990), the APA found a “rich body of research” showing that juveniles are mature enough to decide whether to obtain an abortion without parental involvement.
For the complete opinion of the court, go here.
There are a couple Justices that serve on the Supreme Court who actually understand the Constitution.
This very issue was brought to the court in 1989.
The ruling then?
The death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment.
Siting international anything, in reference to the United States and our Constitution is tyranny. Judges that use their morality and look to foreign countries to affirm their opinion should be removed from the bench.
There needs to be a referendum by the people of the United States to limit the powers of the Supreme Court to that of law opinion and not changing the Constitution of the United States to suit their needs at that particular time the whim hits them.
E.J. Smith
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