Death Penalty Abolished For Juveniles

This past Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling that bans the execution of minors. My post, however, is going to be about the death penalty in general. My own feelings on this subject are rather complicated. I respect the rights of the individual states to decide, for themselves, whether they want to have the death penalty. For me, it’s a state issue. Personally however, I do not approve of the death penalty. My distaste for this form of “punishment” doesn’t go so far as to go against the majority view of society, however.

I live in Michigan, which is a non-death penalty state. It is written into our State Constitution. A proposal must be presented to the voters and passed for that to be changed. There have been many efforts by both state legislators and other groups to put a proposal on the ballot. Thankfully, their efforts have failed. Even if they could somehow write the proposal, I don’t think that the state citizens would approve of it. I know I certainly will not vote for such a proposal if it ever comes up.

That said, I still do not think that it is up to the Supreme Court to decide this kind of state legislation. After all, murder is a state crime punished by state law. In that sense, I am in agreement with Justice Scalia. Who, by the way, doesn’t have a problem with people who are against the death penalty as long as that the states can come to that revelation on their own. I am also in agreement with Justice O’Connor who indicated that setting up a cut-off age was unnecessarily rigid. Certainly there are 17 year olds who have every bit of maturity as an adult and cases should be given individual consideration. As to whether this violates the Federal Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, I don’t think so. Society in general, does not view it as cruel and it’s definitely not unusual. Whether that would hold up in a place like Europe, I doubt it. But then again, this isn’t Europe.

While I am happy with the decision, I am not happy with how they came to it.