WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Supreme Court refused Monday to consider abolishing the execution of juvenile killers. By a 5-4 margin the court declined to hear the appeal of a Kentucky man who has been sentenced to die for abducting, sodomizing and killing a gas station attendant when he was 17.
Last term, the high court banned the death penalty for mentally retarded people, ruling it was “cruel and unusual punishment.” Four of the more liberal justices said Monday that the court’s review should extend to those who commit capital crimes before they are 18.
Justice John Paul Stevens on Monday called the practice of putting juvenile offenders to death “shameful.” “The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society,” he wrote in his dissent from the majority opinion.
In refusing to hear the appeal, the majority offered no comment.
Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined Stevens in his dissent.
Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer had said over the summer that they wanted the court to take up the issue of juvenile killers on death row. The case of Kevin Nigel Stanford, of Louisville, would have allowed them to do so.
Stanford, now 39, has been on death row since 1982. He was convicted of shooting a 20-year-old woman in the face and leaving her body kneeling in the back seat of her mother’s Chevrolet Impala, jeans and underwear around her ankles.
Stanford’s lawyer Margaret O’Donnell said that like the mentally retarded, teenagers were not as culpable as adults for crimes they committed. She cited research on brain development showing that adolescents are “less able to control their impulses and make reasoned judgments” than adults are.