The U.S. Supreme Court restored death sentences this week for three Kansas murderers by an 8-1 vote, undercutting predictions by some
that a majority of the justices is ready to strike down capital punishment
nationwide, reported the Los Angeles Times.
The Court ruled in Kansas v. Carr that a
jury in a death penalty case does not need to be advised that mitigating
factors which can lessen the severity of a criminal act, do not need to proven
beyond a reasonable doubt like aggravating factors. The defendants argued that
without this instruction the jury would have understood that the mitigating
factors had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaking in court, Justice Antonin Scalia described the "notorious
Wichita Massacre" in which two brothers broke into a home, tortured five
young men and women and then took them to a snowy field where they were
"shot in the back of the head, execution-style."
Amazingly, one young woman survived when a hair clip
deflected a bullet, and she later testified against Reginald and Jonathan Carr.
A jury convicted the pair of the four murders and sentenced them to death.
The Kansas Supreme Court reversed both death
sentences as well as another for Sidney Gleason, a paroled inmate who
participated in the robbing and killing of an elderly man over $35 and a box of
cigarettes. Gleason then murdered two others who knew about that killing.
The state justices said the jurors may have been
confused about whether they had to agree on a single reason for extending mercy
to the killers.
All the members of the court joined Scalia's opinion
in full, except Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who issued a partial dissent. She
did not endorse the state court's decision, but instead said the justices
should have passed up the chance to review it."The standard adage teaches that hard cases
make bad law," she said. "I fear that these cases suggest a
corollary: Shocking cases make too much law. Because I believe the court should
not have granted certiorari here, I respectfully dissent."
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