Amen, I thought. (But then, I'm one of those with the philosophy of 'Why do we kill people who kill people to show that, uh, killing people is wrong.)

However, to my great surprise, it seems that many people disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling. The general gist of the arguement seems to be that it encourages minors to commit crimes because they know they can't be executed for it.

Your opinions?

I'm pretty nuetral on the death penalty issue. While I don't actively support it, I have to say it's pretty effective on preventing repeat offenders.

The death penalty is supposed to be a deterrant, not a way to stop repeat offenders, so that's a silly arguement.

I don't think there are studies supporting that the death penalty is an effective deterrant, while there are studies showing that it isn't. Nations without death penalties do not have higher homocide rates; must have lower, though that can't be attributed to simply a lack of death penalty, since very few other nations have the same other empowering circumstances that exist in the US.

The penal system's purpose should be to rehabilitate prisoners. You can't rehabilitate the dead.

It's also kind of hard to deter someone who doesn't really believe that they'll ever die with the thought of death.

Actually I think there is one study (based in Utah) that shows the death penalty deterring crime. The validity of the study though, is questionable.

(I think it just compares crime rates before and after the death penalty was instituted. There's a bajillion other things that could've caused crime rates to change.)

I think the level of violence in a society has very little to do with the presence or absence of the death penalty. Culture and the economy are much more important, I'd reckon.

A: Nobody actually believes that they, themselves, are stupid.
B: When deciding whether or not to commit a crime, the majority of people believe that they are smart enough not to get caught.
C: Thusly, criminals are not worried about the consequences of their actions, because they assume that they will not have to face any.

And so I conclude that any sort of significant drop in crime due to a deterrent punishment is impossible. (At least, as long as the 8th Amendment is obeyed.) The focus of the justice system should be to prevent recurrence (by killing/imprisoning/rehabilitating offenders) and to increase preventative law enforcement.

So I don't think we'll see a significant increase in crimes perpetrated by minors. We will see an increase in the prison population, though; first the juvenile prisons, and then the adult prisons as the children who previously would have been executed grow up and transfer (or grow up and then commit more crimes).

From a totally unfeeling perspective, the death penalty does have two advantages:

1) A dead man does not need rehabilitation. Frankly, the current system sucks at rehabilitation anyway. For repeat violent offenders, I think it should be a consideration.

2) He also does not need food, guards, etc, that would have to be supplied through taxpayer dollars.

Due to all the mandatory appeals and the long lag time, I believe killing somebody and incarcerating them for life costs about the same, actually. Also, I'm curious to know how they divorced the effect of the death penalty from any other factor that could change the crime rate and prove it's effectivness either way. Another plus for having a death penalty is that it gives DA's a card to play to convince someone to plea bargin down to a life sentence, saving the expense of the trial and the off chance they might actually get away with what they did.

Which is why some of the world's more tyrannical regimes summarily execute anyone who is even accused of doing anything remotely illegal. Make the population live in fear, and I think you'll soon see very few people committing much of anything.*

That only begs the question of whether or not, as inhabitants of a mostly democratic country, you'd ever want to live in a place like this.

*With some exceptions. China executes loads of people, and the death penalty is popular there. But crime is still rampant. This is because law enforcement is erratic sloppy and bribe-able. They make a great show every so often of putting people to death "as an example", but if you're a bona-fide mafia boss, you know the chances of getting caught are slim and even if they do arrest you, the judge is probably your wife's cousin's uncle. And could really use a new car.

But an imprisoned innocent can be released, but a dead one can't be brought back to life.

Both the pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty people are going to be happy with this.
The anti-death penalty people are going to be happy about this for obvious reasons.
The pro-death penalty people should like this because when they do accedently execute a minor so many more people will become anti-death penalty.

What I've noticed in the editorials opposed to this ruling is that people are more uptight about the majority statement which concluded that this constituted a cruel and unusual punishment and was out of step with world opinion on treatment of minors. I was unclear as to whether people were bothered that there was a something that could supercede the Constitution as a moral authority (other than possibly God), or that it was God-awful foreigners, or both. I'm glad the supreme court had the ability to close this down, mind.

For the Simple Version of the opinion, I think it was both a combination of "Ick foreigners" and "Nothing's higher than the Constitution".

For the Complicated Version, I think some legal scholars were a bit disturbed at having the Supreme Court decide the definition of "cruel and unusual" according to prevailing popular opinion. There's reason to be a bit nervous when interpretive legal definitions get staked on What Most People Think. The Supreme Court isn't meant to care about poll data.

Well, every member of the UN excepting the US and Somalia had already outlawed child executions (although some - like Iran, China and Pakistan continue to do so illegally). I personally fail to see how you can claim someone is too immature to be allowed to watch a porn film, have sex or drink alcohol, but they are mature enough to be killed by the state for their actions.

Personally though, I'm firmly 100% against the death penalty. There's all the usual arguments about it failing to act as a deterrent, it being coslty, the innocent people who get executed - which are true and valid points - but none of them are necessary. I'm happy with the simple argument that you cannot say killing people is a nasty thing to do if you then kill people.

For those that's not enough for, consider this. Someone touched on the point earlier that murders are either spur of the moment, unplanned happenings in which no thought is given to future consequences; well planned crimes committed by people who think they've worked out how to avoid capture, or committed by people who care little or nothing for the consequences. Britain's per capita murder rate is lower now than when we had the death penalthy (though you wouldn't believe it reading the press), as (I think) is Australia's (although don't quote me on that one).

If someone is locked up for a crime they didn't commit, they can be released and offered compensation should new evidence come to light. If they're dead - they're buggered. There's a British man named Kenny Richey we've been campaigning for. he's been on death row in Ohio for most af my life, who has finally got his death sentence overturned. He was quite patently innocent, and it took him this long to avoid execution. In more ambiguous cases, innocent people must be killed. There is no possible justification for this.

Those scholars are being disingenuous. It's been a given for decades that the Supreme Court follows the ballot box; when the concensus of US society has solidly come down one way or the other, the Supremes will eventually reinterpret the law in order to make that view the law of the land. It's an essential part of the whole constitutional law process; if you deliberately allowed the law to openly and routinely oppose the will of the majority, it's bad for the rule of law.

This isn't to say the Supremes should blindly follow every fad and successful ad campaign with a rewrite of Federal law; but they can't afford to ignore the vox populi either.