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Alito breaks tie, Kan. death penalty stays
By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer 46 minutes ago
New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito broke a tie Monday in a ruling that affirmed a state death penalty law and also revealed the court's deep divisions over capital punishment.
Justices split 5-4 in the term's oldest case, which was argued in December before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement and then again with Alito on the bench.
The justices are in the final week of their term and handling some of the most contentious and important cases. They meet again Wednesday to announce more decisions.
The Kansas case was unique. The state law says juries should impose death sentences if aggravating evidence of a crime's brutality and mitigating factors explaining a defendant's actions are equal in weight.
Justice David H. Souter, writing for the liberals, said the law was "morally absurd."
But the five conservatives, including Alito, overturned a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that found the law violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas disputed the claim by critics that the law created "a general presumption in favor of the death penalty in the state of Kansas."
The ruling affirms the court's long-held position that states should determine how juries weigh factors presented by the prosecution and defense in capital cases.
Fifteen states filed friend-of-the-court briefs, predicting that a ruling for former death row inmate Michael Lee Marsh would have required states with capital punishment to set up systems for juries to weigh evidence at sentencing.
Souter said that "in the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecution," maintaining a system like the one in Kansas "is obtuse by any moral or social measure."
Marsh was convicted in the June 1996 killings of Marry Ane Pusch and her 19-month-old daughter, Marry Elizabeth. Pusch was shot, stabbed and her throat was slit. Her body was set on fire. The toddler died several days later from severe burns.
In its December 2004 ruling striking down the death penalty law, the Kansas court also invalidated Marsh's capital murder conviction for the child's death, saying Marsh's attorneys should have been allowed to present evidence that someone else was connected to the murders.
No one has been executed since the law took effect in 1994 and the last execution in Kansas was in 1965.
"I'm pleased this issue is resolved, and the status of our death penalty is settled," Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said. "Without this ruling, the decisions the juries made concerning the eight Kansas death-row inmates would be in jeopardy. I hope this will bring some closure to the families who have been waiting for this issue to be resolved."
Bill Lucero, the leader of a Kansas-based anti-capital punishment group, Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, called Monday's ruling disappointing. It "just doesn't make sense" to mandate death when aggravating and mitigating circumstances are equal, he said, adding that capital cases and the pressure they put on prosecutors to win death sentences lead to errors.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a separate opinion on Monday to defend the death penalty and the court's ruling in the Kansas case.
"The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes outweighs the risk of error. It is no proper part of the business of this court, or of its justices, to second-guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the world ...," Scalia wrote.
The case is Kansas v. Marsh, 04-1170.
Yep, an indication that the court is moving towards true federalism. Can't wait to see the rest of their decisions this week. Wednesday is next.CockySOB said:IT's a good ruling. The Kansas legislature passed a law authorizing capital punishment. The Kansas Supreme Court made a ruling to suspend the law based on arguments pertaining to the US Constitution (Eighth Ammendment). On appeal to SCOTUS, the Kansas Supreme Court rulign was overturned as a Constitutional issue.
The issue is back to the Kansas courts if anyone wishes to bring challenge to the law again. The next time though, the law will need to be addressed using arguments other the Eighth Ammendment of the US Constitution.
The Kansas case was unique. The state law says juries should impose death sentences if aggravating evidence of a crime's brutality and mitigating factors explaining a defendant's actions are equal in weight.
Free Speech Victory
The Supreme Court declines to repeal the First Amendment--though only by 6-3.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The shocking news in yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on Vermont's campaign-finance law is that three Justices essentially voted to repeal the First Amendment. The better news is that, sometime down the road, there might be a majority among the other six Justices to reconsider the Court's previous limits on free political speech.
The latter hint of optimism comes from yesterday's 6-3 ruling, in Randall v. Sorrell, to toss out Vermont's onerous limits on political contributions and expenditures. Befitting a liberal utopia, Vermont had tried to purge all money from politics in 1997 by passing a law that placed a spending cap of $300,000 on gubernatorial candidates, with lower limits on other state office seekers. It also restricted individual campaign contributions to as low as $200.
The Court said those limits were so low that they unconstitutionally restricted the ability of candidates to raise money and communicate with voters. Writing for a fractured majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said Vermont's limitations "impose burdens upon First Amendment interests that . . . are disproportionately severe."
This is progress, of a sort. The Court stopped well short of overturning Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 ruling that started the confusion over campaign spending, or McConnell, the 2003 ruling that upheld it. But by rejecting Vermont's draconian restrictions, a Court majority has at least conceded that some campaign-finance limits go too far in damaging free-speech interests. Limits on campaign spending in particular--as opposed to campaign donations--are increasingly suspect.
That said, the Court more or less spoke in tongues, with six separate opinions. Justices Anthony Kennedy (in one opinion) and Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas (in another) were the most forthright in repeating their opposition to Buckley. Justice Kennedy was especially pungent in noting the contradictions that are building in the Court's campaign-finance jurisprudence.
He predicted that yesterday's ruling "may cause more problems than it solves," adding that the Court is now on record in an earlier case as saying that a limit of $1,500 is no problem but that Vermont's $200 limit offends the Constitution. "Our own experience gives us little basis to make these judgments, and certainly no traditional or well-established body of law exists to offer guidance," he wrote, in notable understatement.
Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined Justice Breyer's opinion, which was narrowly argued on stare decisis grounds. But in his own concurrence, Justice Alito went out of his way to note that he did so on precedential grounds since the argument for overturning Buckley had not been sufficiently joined. That raises the question of whether he or the Chief Justice might eventually be open to taking the Court back from its increasingly intrusive and confused campaign-finance rulings.
As for the three First Amendment opponents, Justices David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to support Vermont's limits. Justice Stevens seemed to think it would be great for democracy if candidates were able to spend nothing to promote their message to voters over the airwaves; then, he wrote, every campaign might be like the Lincoln-Douglas debates. We're not sure what century he's living in, but let's hope Randall is the beginning of the Court's migration back to common sense on money and political speech.
