Top court upholds Kansas death penalty law

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court
on Monday upheld a Kansas law that requires a death sentence
when the evidence for and against such a punishment appears to
be equal.

The justices by a 5-4 vote overturned a Kansas Supreme
Court ruling that declared the state’s death-penalty law
unconstitutional for violating protections against cruel and
unusual punishment.

The 1994 law says if the evidence for and against imposing
a sentence of death is equal, Kansas juries must choose death
instead of life in prison. The decision is not expected to have
a broad impact on how the death penalty is carried out
throughout the nation.

Justice Samuel Alito, the court’s newest member who was
appointed by President George W. Bush, apparently cast the
tie-breaking vote to uphold the law.

The case first was argued when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
was on the court, but with her retirement and the justices
apparently deadlocked by a 4-4 vote, the case had to be argued
a second time after the more conservative Alito replaced her.

Besides Alito, the majority also consisted of
conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts and
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as
moderate-conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy.

“We hold that the Kansas capital sentencing system … is
constitutional,” Thomas wrote for the majority.

The case involved Michael Marsh, who was convicted of
murder for the 1996 fatal shooting of a 21-year-old woman and
for then setting her house on fire, killing her 19-month-old
daughter.

The jury in sentencing him to death found that the
aggravating circumstances warranting the death penalty were not
outweighed by the mitigating factors.

The court’s liberal members — Justices John Paul Stevens,
David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer —
dissented.

Souter cited the evidence of hazards in capital cases and
wrote that the Kansas system “is obtuse by any moral or social
measure.”

Fifteen states supported the arguments by Kansas that the
law should be upheld as constitutional. Kansas has not executed
anyone since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death
penalty in 1976.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)