pronunciato anche l'ex presidente americano Jimmy Carter.

Baltimore Sun

KENTUCKY/USA:Should a teenage killer have to pay with his life?----Justice: A 1981 case of rape and murder still stirs a deeply emotional debate on execution of juveniles.

 Kevin Stanford was 17 when he was arrested for the rape and murder of a Louisville gas station attendant. He was 18 when a jury sent him to Kentucky's death row. And he was 25 when the U.S. Supreme Court looked at his case and ruled that imposing the death penalty on juveniles was not cruel and unusual punishment.

As the court revisits that question today, some 15 years later, its decision in Stanford's case still stands. But Stanford, now 41 and with gray in his beard, no longer wears the bright-red jumpsuit that for 2 decades marked him as an inmate on death row.

Gov. Paul E. Patton, a pro-capital punishment politician who oversaw two executions while in office, commuted Stanford's sentence to life without parole last December on his final day as Kentucky's chief executive - a decision he says was based solely on Stanford's age at the time of the crime.

"Obviously, children can be as vicious as anyone on Earth and, obviously, Kevin Stanford's case was a vicious, vicious crime," Patton said in a recent interview. "But the issue to me was that a person that age cannot be held responsible to the point where they should have to pay with their life."

Patton's decision could have far-reaching implications. A central issue before the Supreme Court now is whether public sentiment has shifted since its 1989 ruling in the Stanford case allowed states to execute killers who were 16 or older when they committed their crimes.

The high court will hear arguments in the case of a Missouri man, Christopher Simmons, who was sentenced to death for robbing and killing a woman when he was 17. Simmons confessed to the killing, which he planned with 2 teenage friends after assuring them that "their status as juveniles would allow them to get away with it," court records show.

'The worst thing'

In Kentucky, Patton's decision renewed debate over the issue, stirring bitter feelings and prompting Stanford to reflect on his status, the 1st time he has spoken publicly since his sentence was commuted.

At the state prison in western Kentucky where he has spent more than 1/2 his life - the past 9 months among the general population - Stanford complains that attention in his case was too narrowly focused on that single question, detracting from issues of poor lawyering or mitigating circumstances that might have allowed him to one day leave prison.

"I am frustrated, and this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me in my life, this sentence of life without [parole]," Stanford said. "On death row, ... that had a finality to it, it had some kind of closure. I knew it was going to end someday, one way or another."

At her home in Louisville, Mona Mills grows angry recounting her unsuccessful efforts to stop the governor from granting clemency to the man who killed her elder sister, Baerbel Poore.

"Of course, I knew what [Patton] was going to do, but you hold onto hope until that very last moment," Mills said. "This happened in 1981. All the years that have went by - my mother has passed away, my father has passed away, and that was my promise to my father, that I would see this through.

"A lot of people, maybe they look at me like I'm bloodthirsty or something," Mills said. "It's not revenge. I'm following what the jury chose. I want to see the law upheld, and I did want my family to be able to go on with their lives."

A heinous crime

Poore, then 20 years old, was working the late shift at a Checker Oil Station near her family's home in Louisville on Jan. 7, 1981 - a job she took to help support her infant daughter. Stanford, according to court papers, spent the day drinking Old Forester whiskey and smoking marijuana before setting out with friends to make some quick money.

Stanford was 17 years and 4 months old when he entered the Checker station with David Buchanan, 16, and Troy Johnson, 17, who brought along his brother's gun. According to court records, Stanford rummaged for cash while Buchanan took Poore into the bathroom and sexually assaulted her, an attack Stanford later joined.

They then drove Poore to a secluded area, where she was shot once in the face and once in the back of the head. Afterward, they returned to the station and took 2 gallons of gas, $140 and 2 large boxes of cigarettes.

A jury said Stanford was the gunman - something Stanford denies but Poore's family has never doubted - and sentenced him to death. Buchanan received a life sentence with the possibility of parole and is still in prison. Johnson cooperated with prosecutors and got nine months in a juvenile facility.

Stanford said he thought his appeals would offer a chance to air questions about his guilt or the failure of his original attorneys to present evidence about childhood neglect and sexual abuse that might have persuaded jurors to reject a death sentence. Instead, he found himself unwittingly at the center of the international debate about the propriety of executing juvenile killers.

"I hated that they used me for that purpose," Stanford said. But he does think his case helps illustrate inherent problems with imposing the death penalty on juveniles.

"You've got kids who are uneducated, they don't understand the judicial process - a lot of them probably don't understand consequences. But then, if they do understand consequences - if they do - you put a child in a courtroom full of strangers ... there's every strike against that person, that child, in that courtroom. He doesn't stand a chance."

A divided court

15 years ago, the Supreme Court saw the issue differently.

In its 5-4 decision upholding Stanford's death sentence, the court ruled that no national consensus had developed against imposing the death penalty on teenage killers and ruled that the practice did not violate Eighth Amendment protections against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Stanford's case reached the high court again in October 2002. A majority of the court refused to rehear it, but four justices issued a rare public objection and called imposing the death penalty on juveniles a "relic of the past" in a dissent written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter.

The dissenting justices noted that 28 state legislatures had barred capital punishment for juveniles, 5 after the 1989 ruling in Stanford v. Kentucky. (That test of an evolving standard of decency partly shaped the court's 6-3 ruling earlier in 2002 that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutionally cruel. 30 states had forbidden such executions at the time of the court's decision.)

"In the last 13 years," the dissenting justices said, "a national consensus has developed that juvenile offenders should not be executed."

A governor's decision

Paul Patton, the 2-term governor who commuted Stanford's death sentence, is a Democrat whose politics were shaped in part by his former career as a coal operator in eastern Kentucky and the assassination of his wife's sheriff father when she was a girl. In 1997, he authorized the state's 1st execution in 35 years, and he declined to block a second execution 2 years later.

"Keep in mind, I am pro-death penalty for certain crimes, committed when people are adults," Patton said in a telephone interview from Pikeville College, where he has kept an office since returning to private life early last December. "This was not a case of being against the death penalty; it was strictly based on the probable lack of maturity of someone who had committed a crime when they were under 18."

Patton said his decision was shaped by his work on juvenile justice and early childhood development issues. He said he supported bills in the state Legislature that would have halted the imposition of death sentences on juveniles, but says: "It wasn't something I championed, because it wasn't going to be politically feasible in Kentucky."

Mona Mills said she saw politics in Patton's decision in the Stanford case.

The governor announced his intention to commute the death sentence at a June 2003 news conference at which he also said he would pardon four political aides accused of violating campaign finance laws. At the same time he was weighing Stanford's case, Mills notes, the governor was reeling from a scandal involving an admitted adulterous affair that effectively ended his political career.

When she met with Patton last fall, Mills said, "there was a very cold feeling in the room. At one point, I tried to pinpoint him, because he kept saying, 'It's about the age.'

"I asked him, 'If he was a day before age 18, then you would be doing this, correct?' He said, 'That's correct.'"

At her dining room table, surrounded with copies of court records and photographs of her sister, Mills shakes her head at how it all has ended. She and her father went to Washington 15 years ago to hear the arguments before the Supreme Court in the Stanford case, and she does not understand why the court is revisiting the question.

"It doesn't even make a whole lot of sense to rehear it. Keep it like it is: Each state can impose what they want," Mills said. "I can't understand why - I mean, this world isn't a good place anymore, and a lot of 16- and 17-year-olds are just evil."

Defense attorney Margaret O'Donnell, who represented Stanford during his clemency appeal, welcomed Patton's decision and hopes it might have a subtle influence as the Supreme Court revisits the issue.

But O'Donnell knows it was not a salve to Poore's family, or to Stanford, or to his wife, Eileen. They had met briefly before he was imprisoned, but became close through letters and eventually married while he was on death row. Eileen Stanford lives about 5 miles from the prison and visits once a week.

"We were almost prepared for Kevin to be executed. I don't think we were prepared for life without parole," she said.

Patton said he knows his decision did not rest easily with many people. But he says he is certain that he did the right thing.

"That was the one case that came within my domain that I had authority over to change." he said.

"If it influences the court - I hope it does - because I personally believe that our country should not be one of the only countries in the world that executes children, and however you slice it, these are children."

 The United States Supreme Court is considering a case that could determine whether the execution of teenage killers violates the US constitution.

Capital punishment is allowed in 19 US states for those aged 16 and 17, and 73 juvenile murderers are on death row.

Executions for under-16s and the mentally retarded are barred.

The European Union, former President Jimmy Carter and many foreign governments are among those urging an end to the juvenile death penalty.

The case being examined by the Supreme Court judges centres on 17-year-old Christopher Simmons, who was given the death penalty for kidnapping and killing a woman in Missouri in 1993.

His sentence was later overturned on appeal by Missouri's Supreme Court, which argued that a national consensus had developed against capital punishment for offenders under 18.

Missouri's attorney-general appealed to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the death penalty should stand.

The debate throws the spotlight once again on the highly controversial and emotive subject of capital punishment in the US.

Opinion polls suggest a large majority of Americans still favour the death penalty.

'Cruel and unusual'

People with sleeping bags arrived at the Supreme Court in Washington before dawn to try to ensure a seat and by morning a queue of hundreds of people stretched down the street, the AP news agency reported.

Opponents of the death penalty hope the court will rule that the execution of juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution that forbids "cruel and unusual punishment".

But supporters of capital punishment argue age should not determine the gravity of a crime.

"The death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst. It is not just for adults," Dianne Clements, of victims' rights group Justice For All, told AP.

"It doesn't matter how old the killer is. What matters is that your loved one is gone."

The trend is, in practical terms, already against juvenile executions. In the last 10 years, only Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia have executed people who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.

Just a few other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and China, execute young offenders.

The nine judges have been divided in the past on capital punishment questions, voting 6-3 to bar the execution of mentally retarded offenders.

Is it wrong to put a juvenile on death row?---Families of victims, offenders weigh in on pending Supreme Court case.

 A decade ago, Carol Ann and Tony Sievers lost Hope. Their daughter, Hope Denise Hall, was a bright, aspiring television news producer and young mother when she was raped and brutally murdered in her Virginia apartment.

Her killer was just a boy. Shermaine Ali Johnson was 16 when he killed Hope in 1994. Now he's one of 72 death-row inmates in the US who were convicted of capital murders committed when they were 16 or 17 years old.

Wednesday Mr. Johnson's death sentence - and the sentences of those other men waiting to die in American prisons - is being challenged before the US Supreme Court. In Roper v. Simmons, a case originating from the Supreme Court of Missouri, the court will decide whether executing juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

Although the case will weigh the "national consensus" in the US, as the Missouri court put it, for the death penalty of minors, few people other than the inmates themselves have a more vested interest in the outcome of this case than the families of victims and offenders.

For Mr. Sievers, Hope's stepfather, the court is faced with a simple decision. "If you kill someone, you deserve to give your life," he says.

But for someone like Lee Bolton, whose son has been living on Texas death row for 9 years since being convicted for a murder committed when he was 17, "the death penalty is not the solution" to preventing juvenile crime. "It's wrong to kill a juvenile" because they aren't fully aware of the consequences of their actions, she says.

It's exactly those two views of the death penalty for juveniles that will be argued in the Simmons case.

In 1989, the Court ruled - in a 5-to-4 decision - that the US Constitution permitted states to sentence to death juveniles who were 16 and 17 at the time of their crimes. A year earlier, the justices had placed the age limit on executions at 15. What the court must weigh now is whether America's "standard of decency" has changed enough since then to deem the death penalty for all juveniles unconstitutional.

If the court were to decide that juvenile executions are unconstitutional, it would leave many victims' families feeling cheated. And it would spare the lives of a small percentage of death-row inmates and become a landmark victory for death-penalty opponents who have long decried the practice of executing juveniles.

"Across the globe, there is a revulsion [toward] executing youthful offenders," says Renny Cushing, executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), a national organization based in Cambridge, Mass., which represents family members of murder victims who oppose the death penalty.

American opinion has shifted against the death penalty for juveniles, says Mr. Cushing.

Many of the 38 states that still perform executions, says Cushing, now prohibit death sentences for offenders under 18. This year, Wyoming and South Dakota legislators outlawed the practice. Juries, too, seem less willing to impose death on minors. While 15 juveniles received death sentences in 1999, only two received the ultimate sentence in 2003, according to the American Bar Association. And only six states have executed juvenile offenders over the past 14 years, according to the Missouri decision.

Cushing and his group filed a brief supporting the Missouri court, which ruled that the death penalty for Christopher Simmons was unconstitutional. They wrote that "victims' emotions cannot justify the use of the death penalty because the legal system's purpose is not to heal emotional wounds." Simmons was 17 years old when he murdered Shirley Cook in 1993.

"Legal outcomes do not cure the emotional trauma faced by murder victims' families or bring emotional 'closure,'" the group wrote.

For Carol Ann Sievers, part of the healing process after Hope's death meant being able to forgive Johnson.

Although she still supports the death penalty in his case, she would be satisfied with whatever the court decides in the Simmons case as long as Johnson is never released from jail.

"I'm at peace," says Ms. Sievers, who now serves as the victims' rights advocate on the Virginia Parole Board.

Victims and their families of inmates cope in any number of ways. Many relatives turn to religion for answers.

"Prayer is the solution. That's what works for me, and that's what works for my son," says Ms. Bolton, whose son, Nanon Williams, was convicted for a murder during a 1992 drug deal gone awry in Houston. His sentence has since gained international attention amid accusations that ballistics evidence in the trial was mishandled.

Although she maintains that her son is innocent, Bolton still holds out hope that the court will do away with execution for juvenile offenders.

"If they at least have to be 18 to vote or go off to war, they should be at least 18 before you can kill them," she says. "I just really think those lives need to be saved."

After Bill Pelke found out his 78-year-old grandmother had been beaten and stabbed to death by a group of girls in Gary, Ind., he initially went along with the prosecutors and other family members who supported the death penalty for the group's ringleader, 15-year-old Paula Cooper. In 1986, she became the youngest inmate in the US on death row.

But Mr. Pelke later changed his mind about the sentence. He had what he calls a "transformation" while praying one day in November 1986. He became convinced that his grandmother would have been appalled that such a young girl would be put to death.

Although not all of his family members agreed with his change of heart, including his grandfather, Pelke went to work to overturn Ms. Cooper's death sentence, which was eventually commuted to life in prison when the Indiana Supreme Court changed the minimum age for juvenile executions from 10 to 16 in 1987. It's now 18. He remains an outspoken death-penalty opponent.

But religion has also been used by death-penalty proponents as a justification for such severe punishment. "I do believe - because I'm Catholic - the old adage from the Bible that says, 'An eye for an eye,'" says Mr. Sievers.

Although Cushing says courts should weigh the impact on victims' families when deciding penalties for the worst juvenile offenders, that's not reason enough to pursue the death penalty, he says.

Many prosecutors in states with the toughest death-penalty laws would agree with Cushing. There are societal and legal issues to consider on that point, says Timothy Murtaugh, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Jerry Killgore. In capital-murder cases, the job of the state's prosecutor is to pursue capital offenses vigorously, and that means going after the death penalty for juveniles.

"The vast majority of 16- and 17-year-olds know it's wrong to kill another human being," Murtaugh says.

"A bright-line rule categorically exempting 16- and 17-year-olds from the death penalty - no matter how elaborate the plot, how sinister the killing, or how sophisticated the cover-up - would be arbitrary at best, and downright perverse at worst," wrote Alabama Attorney General Troy King in a brief in support of Roper, the petitioner in the case.

Still, some victims of even the most vile and premeditated murders have forgiven young killers.

Regina Hockett's daughter, Adriane, was shot and killed in a Tennessee parking lot moments after she left her mother's side. The two men who killed Adriane were looking to kill a white person to "put themselves on the map." Instead they killed Adriane, a 12-year-old black girl.

"I thought it was wrong for them to take my daughter's life. Why should I think it's OK for the state to take their lives," asks Ms. Hockett. "The day after her life was taken, I was able to forgive them."

Adriane's killers are now on Tennessee's death row for another murder.

US Supreme Court hears arguments on juvenile death penalty

WASHINGTON  - The US Supreme Court heard arguments on the legality of the death penalty for criminals under age 18 in a case that has received international attention.

 The outcome appeared in the balance with the nine member court divided and the result likely to be decided by the two moderate justices. 

The Supreme Court has been asked to rule on the fate of Christopher Simmons, who was condemned to death for the 1993 murder in Missouri of a woman who was abducted, tied up and thrown to her death from a bridge. He was 17 at the time. 

The Missouri Supreme Court commuted Simmons' sentence to life in prison in 2003, and the state has appealed that decision.

 The US Supreme Court abolished the death sentence for those aged under 16 in 1988.

 But the United States remains one of five countries that allow the execution of those aged 16-18 and there has been growing domestic and international pressure to halt that as well.

 Only a few states still order executions for juveniles. They include Texas and Alabama.

 The Simmons case would decide the fate of 73 people currently on death row across the United States for crimes committed when they were minors.

 The three most conservative members of the court seemed to lean toward allowing the practice to continue. Opinions given for previous cases indicate that the court's four more progressive justices favor abolishing juvenile execution.

 Justice Anthony Kennedy, who along with Sandra Day O'Connor  are considered the moderates, asked whether world opinion should be taken into account.

 "No," answered James Layton, representing Missouri state which wants Simmons executed.

 "Isn't it relevant?" Justice Stephen Breyer asked, adding that he was not implying that it was up to the world to impose law on the United States.

 Kennedy said, "What we do here should influence the rest of the world."

 O'Connor, who joined Kennedy in passing a 2002 decision barring the execution of mentally ill people, appeared to agree.

 Quoting President Thomas Jefferson, one of the framers of the US Constitution, she said, "To lead the world you must show a decent respect of mankind."

 The Missouri attorney argued that "there are 17-year-olds that are equally culpable as 18-year-olds."

 But Justice Ruth Ginsburg interrupted him to highlight that in the United States people under 18 years old cannot "buy tobacco, vote, sit on a jury."

"Why would someone be death eligible but not eligible to be an adult member of the community?" she asked.

O'Connor compared society's evolution toward opposing the juvenile death penalty to its position on executing the mentally ill.

"There was an inexorable trend concerning mental retardation, not here," Layton said, adding that if the number of executions of minors has decreased in the last few years it could rise in the future.

In the last 10 years, only three states -- Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia -- have executed persons who were under 18.

Only two teenagers were condemned to death in 2003, compared with 15 in 1999.

Kennedy said he was concerned that eliminating the death penalty for young criminals would remove a "deterrent", notably among gang members.

But Simmons' attorney, Seth Waxman, replied that the death penalty was a useless deterrent against minors since "they weigh risks differently" to adults

 Supreme Court Questions Juvenile Death Penalty

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON  - The U.S. Supreme Court questioned on Wednesday whether world opinion against the death penalty for juveniles should influence its decision on the constitutionality of executing those who committed murder at age 16 or 17.

The high court considered arguments on whether juvenile offenders should be eligible for the death penalty when they are too young to vote, serve in the military, get married or sit on a jury.

 James Layton, the state solicitor in Missouri, argued the legislature, and not the courts, should be the one to decide the youngest age that a murderer can get the death penalty.

 He said the decision on whether the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment applied to juvenile offenders should be based on what happens in this country, and not on world opinion.

 Seth Waxman, an attorney arguing on behalf of a convicted killer who was sentenced to death for a murder he committed at 17, argued a national consensus has emerged against the juvenile death penalty, just like the one against executing mentally retarded criminals.

 "The line, 18, is one that has been drawn by society," said Waxman, who served as the government's chief advocate before the Supreme Court during the Clinton administration.

 Waxman told the justices that Somalia was the only other country besides the United States that has not condemned the juvenile death penalty.

 As evidence of the growing consensus against such executions in the United States, Waxman said only three states during the past 10 years have carried out an execution for crimes committed at age 16 or 17.

 JUVENILES SAID TO LACK MATURITY

 He cited scientific evidence that juveniles lack maturity and have deficits in reasoning, judgment and controlling impulses. Waxman said 18 was considered by society as the defining line between childhood and adulthood.