Supremes vs. 'Texecutions'

In a strongly worded dissent, four U.S. Supreme Court justices on Oct. 21 argued that the high court should reconsider the legality of executing youthful offenders -- a major issue for Texas, home to one-third of the 81 U.S. death row inmates who committed their crimes as juveniles. Written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, the dissenting opinion concluded that, "the practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and inconsistent with evolving standards of decency." The narrow (and conservative) majority of the court stands in apparent opposition -- they refused to hear the case in question. But the four-judge dissent may be a signal that the court might again tackle the question of executing juvenile offenders later in the current session. (The term began Oct. 7 and concludes in June 2003.)

In his dissent, Justice Stevens wrote that, in the wake of last term's decision (Akins v. Virginia) barring the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the court should feel compelled to tackle the issue. "There are no valid procedural objections to our reconsideration of the issue now," Stevens wrote, "and, given our recent decision in Akins v. Virginia ... we certainly should do so." Stevens noted that most of the reasoning behind Akins should "apply with equal or greater force to the execution of juvenile offenders," he wrote. "The exception -- the number of states expressly forbidding the execution of juvenile offenders (28) is slightly fewer than the number forbidding the execution of the mentally retarded (30) -- does not justify disparate treatment of the two classes."

So far this year, Texas has injected three juvenile offenders, most recently Toronto Patterson on Aug. 28. Patterson's appeal to the Supreme Court was also denied -- a decision from which Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer also dissented. This most recent dissent arose from the appeal of Kevin Nigel Stanford, who in 1982 at the age of 17 was convicted in Kentucky. Stanford's first appeal to the Supreme Court, in 1989, was also rejected prompting a court decision upholding the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds.

The Supremes also this month agreed to take the case of another Texas death-row inmate, Thomas Joe Miller-El, who was condemned in Dallas in 1986 by a jury with only one black member; prosecutors had struck 10 other African-Americans from the jury, a much higher percentage than for any other race. Such tactics were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court two months after the conviction.