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EDITORIAL: Death Penalty Cases Need a More Cautious Approach

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Jun. 27--Although most states permit capital punishment, court decisions in recent years have reflected the need for extreme care in the legal process leading to the death chamber.

That may be changing for the worse on the U.S. Supreme Court.

By a 5-4 vote, the court said Monday that the Kansas death penalty statute was constitutional even though it calls for jurors to impose a sentence of death if they deem arguments for and against capital punishment to be about equal.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that "a state enjoys a range of discretion in imposing the death penalty."

It's troubling that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court believes such discretion extends to mandating a death sentence even when the evidence presented during the sentencing phase doesn't make a strong case.

Justice David Souter, in a dissent, noted a number of dubious convictions in capital cases. A law that requires death even if aggravating factors presented by the prosecution fail to outweigh mitigating factors presented by the defense is "morally absurd," Souter said.

The new direction of the Supreme Court may have been signaled in a sneering concurring opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, who scoffs at the risk of executing an innocent person.

"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 ... justice for horrible crimes -- outweighs the risk of error," Scalia wrote.

Let's hope the majority of Americans remain appalled at the possibility of executing an innocent person.

The Supreme Court decision spares Kansas lawmakers from having to rewrite the state's 1994 death penalty statute.

But the decision is a clear retreat from caution in the process of determining death sentences.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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