Feb. 28 USA: Juvenile Death Penalty: Fair or Unfair? In the dark, early-morning hours of Sept. 8, 1993, Shirley Crook was awakened by a light in her hallway. The Fenton, Mo., woman was subsequently robbed of $7, bound with duct tape and wire and driven to a park, where she was shoved off a railroad trestle to her death in the river below. Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death for robbing and killing the 46-year-old housewife. He was 17 years old at the time. Simmons should have died for his crime 2 years ago. But appeals from Simmons' attorneys resulted in a stay of execution, and his case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last October. A decision is expected in the coming weeks. At issue in Roper v. Simmons is whether executing 16- and 17-year-old murderers is no longer acceptable in the United States. Along with the lives of 72 young inmates, advocates on both sides of the death-penalty debate believe what's really at stake is the future of capital punishment in America. Death and the Court When Missouri's state supreme court declared Simmons' death sentence violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment, it based its finding in part on the perception of a growing reluctance to execute minors. Since 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for 16- and 17-year-olds in Stanford v. Kentucky, 4 states have raised their minimum age to 18 through legislative action, and 2 states' top courts also raised the age of eligibility, bringing the total number of states that prohibit the practice to 19. That's on top of the 13 states with no death penalty at all. Meanwhile, no state has lowered its eligibility age. This trend has not gone unnoticed by the court. In 2002, Justice John Paul Stevens noted the contrast between the tiny numbers of juveniles sent to death row and state legislatures' increased preoccupation with those offenders. He also cited polls that consistently showed only a small percentage of Americans support the execution of minors, even if they support the death penalty in general. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is particularly suspicious of letting the public drive the judiciary. But the findings of the Capital Jury Project, published last year, found that just 17.5 % of jurors favored the death penalty for minors - a figure that more than doubled when the offenders were mentally retarded. Atkins v. Virginia, the court's 2002 decision against the death penalty for the mentally disabled, has been seen as paving the way for a decision favorable to Simmons. In prior arguments, Justices Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer have cited new scientific data pointing to biophysical explanations for adolescents' diminished cognitive capabilities. The American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, among others, have argued that 16- and 17-year-olds are, in a sense, physically incapable of making judgments as well as adults, and are therefore not as culpable. "Older adolescents are not simply miniature adults, with less experience or wisdom. They are also not as equipped as adults to engage in moral reasoning and adjust their conduct accordingly," they wrote in an amicus supporting Simmons. Is 18 the Magic Number? The United States is increasingly alone in the world in its application of capital punishment. And the only other nations that subject minors to execution are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite more widespread media scrutiny, along with an arguably less forgiving attitude that can be traced back to the Columbine massacre, polls show the majority of Americans reserve mercy for even the most depraved teen killers. But for those who don't, it's a matter of justice. "You can absolutely forgive the offender and have no issue with that person being executed," said Dianne Clements, a founder of Texas-based Justice for All. In 1991, her 13-year-old son was shot and killed by another child. "Executed killers do not harm again," Clements said. "If you execute somebody, they're deterred." Robert Blecker, a professor of criminal law at New York Law School and an outspoken advocate of the death penalty, argues that the very fact that some minors commit atrocious crimes merits the option of capital punishment "There are some people who kill so cruelly and callously and with such wanton depravity that they deserve to die, and we have an obligation to execute them," he said. But, Blecker stressed, "only for the worst of the worst." While a teenager who brutally and deliberately murders his entire family probably deserves to be executed, Blecker said, someone like Beltway sniper Lee Boyd Malvo does not. The mitigating factors of childhood neglect and the influence of John Allen Muhammad, Malvo's adult accomplice, keep Malvo, who was then 17, out of the "worst of the worst" category, Blecker believes. While Muhammad was sentenced to die for the 2002 slayings, a plea agreement spared Malvo the death sentence last October. But an attorney in Prince William's County, Va., has said that if the Supreme Court decides against Simmons, he will seek execution for the now-20-year-old Malvo in a second sniper trial. Delaware has tried only 2 juveniles for capital murder in the past 15 years, but Deputy Attorney General Paul Wallace wants execution to remain an option. Severity of appropriate punishment is "an individualized decision, whether the person is an adult or juvenile," Wallace said. Delaware was one of six states to file an amicus brief supporting Roper. Wallace said that some teenage killers show "great maturity in their decision-making." But the lack of maturity in most teenagers may prove too morally compelling, said constitutional law professor Louis Dean Bilionis, who believes the argument for individualized punishment could prove wobbly. "The court has said that below a certain age you can't deal with juveniles individually, you have to deal with them as a group," said Bilionis, who teaches at University of North Carolina School of Law. "The history of capital punishment for more than a century has been one of narrowing its application to cases in which [it is] best defendable - it is not comfortably defendable when applied to juveniles." Robert D. Dinerstein, a specialist in mental disability issues at American University Washington College of Law, stressed that the law as applied to youth should not be about revenge. "I have a hard time, not to say there isn't evil in the world, to write a young person off so completely," Dinerstein said. "What does it mean to take a life that is so much in progress?" Though on opposing sides, Blecker and Bilionis believe a decision against capital punishment for under-18s is inevitable. And that gives death-penalty opponents in states like Texas hope. Democratic State Rep. Lon Burnam has re-introduced a bill raising the age of eligibility to 18. While pessimistic about its prospects in Texas' heavily pro-death-penalty legislature, he is eager for the Supreme Court to end his struggle. And even Lone Star Staters, Burnam said, are capable of rethinking capital punishment. "It's really widely exaggerated that there's a wide cultural foaming at the mouth for the death penalty here," he said. "I think it's shifting as people begin to recognize the degree to which we have railroaded people into convictions." But if the tide shifts in the Supreme Court, prepare for more crime, warned David Muhlhausen of the Heritage Foundation. "It's something we have to fear, no death penalty at all. If they win this [Roper v. Simmons] ... the next thing they'll want is to raise the age to 25," he said. In the amicus filed by 6 states for Roper, Alabama's attorney general wrote, "There is no magic in the age 18." 72 inmates sitting on death row for crimes they committed as teens hope at least 5 justices disagree. (source: Fox News) **************************************** Experts: Serial killers crave power Experts who study serial killers say many resort to violence to achieve power that has eluded them in their professional or personal lives. Killers such as the one who called himself BTK are "basically losers" who never distinguished themselves except through brutality, according to James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist and author of the book "Extreme Killing." "There's a lot of people that are obsessed with power, dominance and control, but they satisfy that through their jobs," Fox said. "What's true about serial killers is that they're basically losers. In their own mind, they have never distinguished themselves in the way they'd like to." The suspect in the Kansas slayings, Dennis Rader, held a degree in criminal justice and worked for the Wichita suburb of Park City, where his job allowed him to issue citations for minor infractions such as unkempt lawns. "Almost all of them have a very large need for control or power," said Eric Hickey, a criminal psychologist at California State University-Fresno who wrote the book "Serial Murderers and Their Victims." "It makes them feel like they're the big man in the community." Many serial killers share other similarities: dysfunctional backgrounds, feelings of abandonment and rejection, and a desire for recognition, experts said. BTK -- the killer's self-coined nickname that stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill" -- 1st struck in 1974 and stoked fears throughout the 1970s in Wichita. He went silent for 25 years until last March, when he sent a letter to the Wichita Eagle. Hickey said BTK may have wanted attention again, after his killings were eclipsed by those of a Washington, D.C.-area sniper and the Oklahoma City bomber, among others. "He wanted to start the game again, and he knew the stakes were high," Hickey said of BTK's cat-and-mouse tactics with police. Experts are divided over whether BTK really wanted to be caught, or simply wanted more attention while continuing to evade police. Tomas Guillen, a Seattle University professor who has written about serial killers, including BTK, said BTK's actions sent a message more riveting than any of his communiques to authorities and the media. "The killers are among us," Guillen said. "They're not coming in the dark where we don't see them. That's where they get their confidence." (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: Switch by Former Supporter Shows Evolution of Death Law Helene E. Weinstein owes her Assembly seat, in part, to capital punishment. In 1978, her father toppled the Assembly speaker, Stanley Steingut, a death penalty opponent, from his Brooklyn district, in an upset that sent shock waves through state politics. Two years later, Ms. Weinstein herself was elected to the seat, and consistently voted in favor of the death penalty. But in a shift that reflects the changing passions on capital punishment among the public and its elected officials, Ms. Weinstein these days harbors serious doubts about the death penalty. And now, having risen to become chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee, she is poised to doom New York State's on-again-off-again death penalty law. "It was an evolutionary process," Ms. Weinstein said the other day, explaining her shift. "But clearly the advent of DNA evidence and the dramatic number of individuals who have been exonerated and freed from death row in states around the country was something that was building in my mind." Such are the paradoxes of politics - of politics as practiced in Brooklyn, anyway - that Ms. Weinstein's father, Murray, not only still supports the death penalty, but now admits that his support for capital punishment began only during the campaign against Mr. Steingut. "I switched in 1978," he recalled. "Steingut was against it and I needed a point of distinction." Mr. Weinstein also expressed some doubt about the depth of his daughter's support for capital punishment. "I always thought she was uncomfortable in her position," he said, "but obviously she supported it all along to be consistent." Ms. Weinstein, who was 25 when she first ran for the Assembly, said she did not precisely recall when she became an advocate of capital punishment. "I assume when I first ran for office," she said. "I'm not sure that I had focused on it before. I felt comfortable voting for the death penalty. That was my position." Other issues also helped to cost Mr. Steingut his seat, particularly the view among many voters that he had lost touch with his district. But rising violent crime, a number of sensational murders and Gov. Hugh L. Carey's veto of legislation that spring to restore capital punishment all resonated loudly in the primary and general election campaigns for state offices that year. Mr. Steingut allowed the death penalty bill to get to the floor of the Assembly, but voted against it. Mr. Steingut, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1952, the year Ms. Weinstein was born, was singled out on two levels in 1978. Theodore Silverman, a local city councilman, wanted his wife to be Mr. Steingut's co-district leader but was rebuffed and vowed revenge. Andrew Stein, then the Manhattan borough president, was dismayed that Mr. Steingut had not been legally implicated by his association with figures in a nursing home scandal, so, he explained at the time, "subjectively and politically I made up my mind to destroy him." Ms. Weinstein was the chosen vehicle to defeat the speaker, but her residency was challenged, a maneuver that inadvertently heightened resentment against Mr. Steingut, who, with his father, had represented the district for more than a half century. She was forced off the ballot, and her father, Murray, a 50-year-old lawyer, replaced her. Less than two weeks later, he upset Mr. Steingut in the Democratic primary. Mr. Weinstein reluctantly relinquished the seat to his daughter 2 years later. "She was entitled to it," he recalled. "She really ran for it." After Ms. Weinstein came to Albany, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, like Mr. Carey before him, vigorously opposed the death penalty. He was defeated in 1994 by George E. Pataki, a Republican, who 10 years ago next month signed a law reimposing capital punishment for 1st-degree murder. Last June, the State Court of Appeals ruled that a central provision of the law was unconstitutional, effectively suspending the death penalty in the state. Governor Pataki proposed a quick fix, and the Republican-controlled Senate concurred last summer. But after holding 5 joint hearings, members of three committees in the Democratic-run Assembly, including Ms. Weinstein's, doubt whether any death penalty bill can pass constitutional muster or whether, politically, one seems as vital as it did a decade or more ago. Ms. Weinstein attributes those doubts to several factors: crime has sharply declined; the law now provides for the option of life imprisonment without parole; evidence has mounted that black and Hispanic inmates are disproportionately executed; and the number of death-row inmates who have been exonerated nationwide has given even hardened capital punishment supporters pause. "I saw the play 'The Exonerated,'" Ms. Weinstein said. "It had tremendous impact on me." Since the early 1990's, as crime plummeted, proponents of capital punishment have maintained that the death penalty has, at least, been a deterrent. "I believed when I voted for it that there was a deterrent effect," Ms. Weinstein said. "I am pretty convinced now that there isn't. No one ever thinks he's getting caught, and the likelihood that you're going to get caught, convicted and receive the death penalty is so remote." Ms. Weinstein recalled testimony at the Assembly hearings, which ended earlier this month, from a district attorney who supported capital punishment in principle but opposed reinstatement of the statute because death penalty cases cost taxpayers too much to prosecute and to defend and because no version could be legally foolproof. She also recalled testimony from another law enforcement official who said that if he were convicted he would rather be executed than be sentenced to life without parole, and the testimony of a judge who warned that a higher standard of proof than beyond a reasonable doubt must be required. And she said she had heard from witnesses who said the death penalty was more likely to be sought when the victim was white and the defendant was black. "The chance of unequal justice and the part that racism plays I found very disturbing," Ms. Weinstein said. Moreover, she added, hiring public defenders and other costs mean that about $170 million has already been spent on a death penalty that has not resulted in a single execution. "We could have spent more on other criminal justice and social programs," she said. After reviewing the testimony, Ms. Weinstein said the committee heads would report to the Assembly. "I think it was impossible for anyone to sit through the testimony and not come away with the conclusion that you cannot draft a death penalty law that does not have the possibility of convicting someone who is innocent," she said. "It seems clear to me that from all of what we've heard the chance of convicting an innocent individual remains a possibility, and there's no way to rectify that. People are seeing that the justice system is not infallible." Reminded of her position a decade and longer ago, Ms. Weinstein was asked how she could be sure she was right this time. "I'm not sure there's anything as dramatic or as important as the death penalty in terms of my vote," she replied. "I have certainly looked at legislative proposals I supported or opposed and become convinced there's room for a change of position. Times and evidence have changed. That is the wonderful thing about a mind: You can change when you hear evidence and make an intelligent choice." (source: New York Times) ARIZONA: The Last Day of August----A Scottsdale Murder - 21 years later It was the final day of August 1983. Harold August struggled to exhale for the final time as he lay dying in the master of bedroom of his Scottsdale home. Richard Rossi, the killer, would shoot one other person before fleeing with the money. It would be more than 21 years before he could say he was sorry. August was the only one murdered that day, but at least 4 lives would never be the same. For August's wife Clara, his 2 children and his neighbor Sherrill Nutter, that day changed every one of the days that have followed for 21 years. And like his victims', Rossi's life has never been the same. "I'm terribly sorry. I wish I wasn't the person I was then," Rossi says, his voice echoing in a death row interview room. He has been at the Florence Prison for the past 21 years waiting to die. It was a warm August afternoon in 1983 when Rossi, a Phoenix cocaine addict in need of drug money, entered Harold August's Scottsdale home near Hayden and Indian School roads. August, a 65-year-old World War II vet, father of 2 and husband of 39 years, put his glasses on and opened his tool set. The 2 had found one another through August's newspaper want ad. August planned to buy a typewriter from Rossi and spend the rest of the day repairing it. Rossi-the murderer Today inmate # 50337, Richard M. Rossi, sits in cellblock 6 of Special Management Unit II on death row in Florence. Undertones of a Brooklyn upbringing resonate in his accent as he discusses his existence in a 7 by 11 foot cement cell. Rossi never sold Harold August the typewriter. By the time he left the August home, Rossi had taken August's money and fired 5 exploding bullets. 2 of them found their target in August's next door neighbor. The other 3 shots hit August, the final bullet entering his mouth and killing him. "By the way, um, Clara August," Rossi says in the cinderblock chamber where he has been given 15 minutes to speak. "I've never had a chance to reconcile with her. I've never had the opportunity to tell her how sorry I was and that I'm not the monster that she really thinks I am." Rossi, now 57, has never seen a Web page, talked on a cell phone or listened to a compact disc. He spends his time writing articles about death row and prisoners' rights. Some of his more than 50 pen pals post his articles and poetry on a Web site he hopes to view one day. Recently one of those pen pals helped Rossi publish a book, Waiting to Die, a moving thesis decrying the death penalty with vivid depictions of life on death row. "[My book] isn't like the other books where the prisoner says, 'I'm innocent,'" Rossi says rapidly, with punctuated pauses. "Everybody in prison is innocent, you know." For Rossi, conversation is a rare treat. Clara-the widow In a bedroom at the brick ranch house where her husband was shot, Clara August uncovers a blue Selectric typewriter. It is nearly identical to the one her husband was attempting to buy when he was murdered. "This is one he had fixed for me," she says. In the living room Clara explains how Harold had given up an assistant psychology position at Scottsdale Community College to "follow me" to Maricopa Tech, where he enrolled in a small machinery class. The class whetted his appetite for fixing typewriters. Clara mentions details, names and dates as she tells stories. In conversation she doesn't mention her PhD, but she's quick to speak of her father, a Bohemian aristocrat and uncle to the famous author Franz Kafka. "I've only seen pictures of the cover on the Internet," she says of Rossi's book about life on death row, holding it for the 1st time. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves signify Clara's appreciation for writing. She speaks German, Spanish and English and expresses an acute appreciation for humanity's delicate dependence on language. As soon as she opens Rossi's book about life on death row, she reads the dedication aloud. "To my mother," Clara pauses. "I feel sorry for her." She continues, reading Rossi's poem in the introduction. Clara reads the words of her husband's murderer. She's sitting in the house where her husband died. The living room walls wear pastel and oil paintings she and her colleagues have composed since the tragedy. She is perhaps the most mentally acute 85-year-old her friends and family will ever encounter. "I think he's a very good writer," Clara says softly, looking up from the book. "I'd love to have a copy of this." She asks if she might be able to get a copy. Cruel and Unusual Justice The 1st time Clara saw her husband Harold she painted him. He was a U.S. Navy sailor during World War II. She was an artist, painting sailors and soldiers and sending the portraits to their families. The last time she saw him was that August morning in 1983, just before leaving to teach a new Advertising in the Arts class. Hours later, in the hall outside the classroom, a pair of detectives told Clara there had been an accident in her neighborhood. "I just remember how sweaty and hot it was in the backseat of that unmarked car. It was a warm August day," Clara says. She then spent hours in a windowless, colorless interrogation room before detectives finally told her Harold had been murdered. The next few days were complete numbness for Clara. "I became emotionally ambivalent," she says of the confusion. Clara's neighbor Sherrill Nutter was in the hospital with gunshot wounds. Nutter would later testify that she overheard August telling his murderer, "You've got my money, and you've shot me. What else do you want?" Then, she says, Rossi fired the final and fatal shot. Sherrill-the neighbor It was nearly 22 years ago that Nutter was pulling herself across this same living room floor on her elbows, sliding on her own blood, struggling to get to the back door. Nutter had entered the home when she heard commotion in the normally-quiet August home. Rossi, jittery from cocaine, shot her twice in the chest before fleeing. Nutter had crawled to the back porch where a neighbor heard her whimpering for help. Amazingly, Nutter, still a Valley resident, survived the incident. Sitting in that same living room, Clara corrects a family member after he asserts that Rossi is an animal. "He's not an animal. He's a human being who regrets what he did under difficult circumstance," she says. "He was a drug addict. That distorted his whole moral concept and his whole outlook on life." The courts considered Rossi's crime "especially heinous, cruel and depraved." But Rossi says his actions were not especially heinous. Instead, he says he was an upstanding citizen with a business degree battling a drug addiction. "It could happen to anybody," Rossi says. "Once you get involved with drugs, it takes hold of you. You become a different person." Rossi and many of his readers consider him an intelligent man. "I could still be a very productive person to society," he says. "But they don't want to give you a chance to do it, and I think that's a big problem with society today." Clara has also heard that Rossi is intelligent. "I understand that he's a very bright man, that he's not just an ordinary criminal," Clara had said before looking at Rossi's book. "But an ordinary criminal is what he turned out to be." Life without Harold Conversation and curiosity are the 2 things Clara misses most about her husband. "Harold was always interested and curious. He always wanted to see what was on the other side of every mountain we encountered," she says. After that 1st World War II painting, Harold and Clara shared 40 years of life, adventure and conversation. "My husband had always wanted to live where he could ride a horse in any direction without seeing a fence," Clara says of their move to Scottsdale in 1959. Clara is well-spoken. Her metaphors are poetic between allusions to literature and history. "Harold loved the mountains," she says. "He was a Phoenician in the truest, historical sense of the word, as in an explorer, as in Hanno of Carthage." But since his death, "intellectualism has died," Clara says. "I don't want to be the one who pushes the button," she adds of Rossi and his date with death. "But the judge and jury appointed him that for good reasons." Thirsty for the conversation and curiosity of her deceased husband, Clara now spends much of her days browsing television channels and skimming publications. An Eye for an Eye Rossi says he has died a little every day on death row. While he has spent the last 21 years of his life fighting his death sentence, he says death would be better than life without parole. "Life without parole is worse than death," Rossi says. "Because the pain here is so bad," he says, pausing longer than normal, breathing the pain, "that you don't want to endure it forever. And if I had to live the rest of my life knowing I'm going to die an old man, no family, no money, no friends, no compassion, being in pain with no medication to treat the pain. What do you look forward to every day? There is no hope." Rossi does hope for a new trial. He says that hope and his pen pals are his only lifeblood on death row. "A lot of people in prison change. A lot don't," Rossi says. "A lot of us would never commit a second crime if we had a second chance. But society right now doesn't recognize a 2nd chance." "Tell Mrs. August I'm very, very sorry," Rossi says. "I wish I wasn't the person I was then. But I have changed. I've deprived her of her companionship and her husband for the rest of her life and for old age." As she hears Rossi's apology Clara is visibly moved. She is sure of many things. She is sure he is a good writer. And she is sure she misses her husband. She is also certain her life has been changed, taken. "I'm not a vindictive person," Cara says of Rossi's death sentence. After 21 years she has finally heard an apology from her husband's murderer. As understanding and intelligent as she is, Clara still doesn't know exactly what justice should look like for someone like Rossi. (source: The Scottsdale Times)
