U.S. Courts Put More Barriers to Capital Punishment WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV. 9, 2002 (Zenit.org).- U.S.. courts are showing more doubts about the death penalty. On Wednesday, one minute before Texan prisoner James Colburn was to be taken from his cell to the death chamber, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution — at least for 30 days, the Associated Press reported.
Only a day earlier, the justices had rejected an appeal on behalf of Colburn, who is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. The appeal said Colburn could not assist his lawyers at his 1995 trial because he was so heavily sedated.
Last June the Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 to abolish the execution of mentally retarded criminals. The change was “one of the most significant restrictions on who can be given the death penalty since the court permitted states to resume capital punishment in 1976,” the Washington Post reported June 21.
The decision classified executing the mentally retarded as “cruel and unusual punishment,” a practice outlawed by the U.S. Constitution. These executions had already been banned in 18 of 38 death-penalty states.
The Supreme Court said its view was reinforced by polls showing most Americans opposed the practice, as well as by the arguments presented in friend-of-the-court briefs from the European Union, professional groups such as the American Psychological Association and religious groups such as the U.S. Catholic Conference.
A study published on the Web site of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty says that more than 300 people on death row are known to be mentally retarded. They contend that 44 such people have been executed since 1976.
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court returned to the death penalty and, by a 5-to-4 vote, upheld the execution of juveniles, the Washington Post reported Oct. 22. The majority refused to reconsider an appeal which contended that it was unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual punishment” to execute murderers who committed their crimes at age 16 or 17.
Yet, it was the first time since the court upheld the execution of 16- and 17-year-old offenders (in 1989) that four justices went on the record in favor of reversing that ruling, the Post said. Executing anyone younger than 16 remains barred under a 1988 court ruling.
In the United States, there are eighty-one 16- and 17-year-old murderers on death row. Of those, one-third are in Texas. The rest are distributed among 13 other states. Twenty-one juvenile offenders have been executed since 1976. The most recent was Toronto Patterson, who died by lethal injection in Texas on Aug. 28.
Eyeing the federal law
Another important court decision took place when a judge declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional, Reuters reported Sept. 24. U.S. District Judge William Sessions ruled that parts of the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 deprived Donald Fell, accused of kidnapping and killing a woman, of his rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Those amendments guarantee due process and the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses.
The ruling did not strike down the federal death penalty across the United States, nor did it affect cases in state courts in the 38 states that have capital punishment, Reuters said.
In his ruling, Sessions noted that the 1994 law had been rendered useless by a series of recent federal cases, including a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that said only juries — and not judges — can hand out death sentences, the Associated Press reported Sept. 25. The government is appealing the ruling.
Two months earlier U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff became the first federal judge to declare the federal law unconstitutional. He cited evidence indicating that innocent people have been put to death.
Sessions, unlike Rakoff, said capital punishment itself isn’t necessarily unconstitutional. He said the sentence still might be carried out constitutionally if Congress fixed the law. Other federal judges have upheld the Federal Death Penalty Act.
Reviews in Illinois
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois is reconsidering 139 cases of convicted felons, the Christian Science Monitor reported Oct. 18. The cases were reopened by Governor George Ryan, who is considering whether to commute the capital sentences of 160 death-row inmates. He ordered the reviews after DNA evidence exonerated 13 death-row inmates two years ago, after which he declared a temporary moratorium on all state executions.
Ryan, who ends his term in January, has still to make a final decision on the fate of the condemned. In April, a study on capital punishment in Illinois, recommended no less than 85 changes to way the death penalty is carried out, the New York Times reported April 16. A majority of the 14 members of the commission appointed by Ryan believed the capital punishment should be dropped altogether, the study said.
Among the changes proposed is videotaping interrogations of suspects and establishing a state panel to review decisions on whether to seek the death penalty. The report also called for an independent forensic laboratory, a statewide DNA database, and the elimination of several categories of capital crimes.
The report included a detailed analysis of all 275 death penalty cases since Illinois re-established capital punishment in 1977. More than half of the sentences were reversed, it says, because of trial court errors and mistakes by prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Shortly after the Illinois report, the state of Maryland announced it was declaring a moratorium on executions. Governor Parris Glendening announced he would stay all executions until the University of Maryland completes a study of 6,000 homicide cases to determine whether the state system for imposing the death penalty is fraught with racial and geographic bias, Reuters reported May 9.
“Reasonable questions have been raised in Maryland and across the country about the application of the death penalty,” said Glendening, noting that recent studies have produced evidence pointing to racial bias in capital murder cases in largely white and suburban Baltimore County.
Maryland has executed three inmates since the state’s death penalty was reinstated in 1978. The latest was in 1998. Five inmates were on death row when the moratorium was announced.
Meanwhile, last Tuesday’s voting saw Florida reaffirm its support for capital punishment. For the second time in four years, about 70% of the voters approved a ballot measure to add the death penalty to the state Constitution, the AP reported Thursday. In 2000, the state Supreme Court voted 4-to-3 to eliminate the amendment to the Constitution.
On April 18, in a commentary on the recommendations in Illinois, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Domestic Policy Committee, said that the prelates “renew the call for measures to restrain, restrict and end the use of the death penalty” in the country. Reliance on the death penalty, he observed, “diminishes all of us, increases disrespect for human life, and offers the tragic illusion that we can teach that killing is wrong by killing.”
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Tags: Death Penalty
