Hundreds on death row affected
Behind the Supreme Court rulings
By Deirdre Griswold
He was called "Governor Death" before his brother's Florida
political machine and the Supreme Court made George W. Bush
president of the United States. As governor of Texas, he sent
more people to their deaths than any other U.S. politician.
Now, the same conservative court that declared Bush the
winner of the 2000 presidential election has made two rulings
limiting the application of the death penalty.
The first came on June 20, when the court ruled six to three
that it was unconstitutional to execute people who are mentally
disabled.
Of the 38 states that have the death penalty, nearly half of
them--18--already have such prohibitions. The court overturned
an earlier Supreme Court decision that had allowed such
executions, ruling that a "national consensus" has since
developed against executing people with reduced mental
abilities.
According to Amnesty International, the United States has
executed 35 mentally disabled people since the death penalty
was restored in 1976.
Right-wing stalwarts Antonin Scalia, William H. Rehnquist
and Clarence Thomas opposed the decision. Two other
conservative justices, however--Sandra Day O'Connor and David
H. Souter--joined the four liberals in the decision.
The ruling involved the case of Daryl R. Atkins, an African
American man who faced execution in Virginia. Former State
Department officials and all 15 members of the European Union
had submitted briefs on his behalf. The U.S. diplomats argued
that the execution of mentally impaired people created problems
for this country's relations with the rest of the world.
Judge-imposed death sentences struck down
The second Supreme Court ruling on death penalty cases came
June 24. The court ruled seven to two in Ring vs. Arizona that
judges cannot impose capital punishment; only juries can.
If applied retroactively, this decision would immediately
invalidate death sentences for 168 people held in five
states--Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska--where
judges have put them on death row. Another 529 people in four
other states--Alabama, Delaware, Florida and Indiana--may also
be affected, because juries there are limited to "advising"
judges on sentences.
Juries are less likely to impose capital punishment than
judges.
In this ruling, three of the five more conservative justices
voted with the majority.
The movement against the death penalty will be analyzing
these decisions to determine whether they are a step in the
direction of abolishing or strengthening capital punishment as
a whole.
The fact that several very conservative justices voted for
them shows the dilemma the capitalist state finds itself in.
Capital punishment has been abolished in most of the
industrialized countries of the world. The United States and
Japan are the only two governments to have executed mentally
disabled people in recent years, according to Amnesty
International. Many countries refuse to extradite accused
persons to the United States because of the large number of
executions here.
All over the world, there is growing apprehension over the
arrogant doctrine of the Bush administration and the Pentagon
that says they have the right to intervene wherever and
whenever they choose around the globe, in the name of an
endless war against terrorism. When U.S. citizens travel
abroad, they are bombarded with questions about what is
happening in this country.
How can Washington unilaterally abrogate agreements, from
global warming to limits on nuclear weapons?
How can it ignore the sentiment of the vast majority of the
world on racism, on land mines, on hunger, on AIDS--and on the
death penalty?
How can it imprison thousands of people without any due
process of law, as it has done in the military prison camp at
Guantanamo and in Immigration and Naturalization Service
detention centers around the country?
These criticisms come from bourgeois elements as well as
from mass movements of the workers and oppressed. That's why
those representing the United States internationally feel its
image needs a makeover.
Inside the United States, monopoly control of the media
gives the impression that the public welcomes the lurch toward
dictatorial powers by the Bush administration. But that is like
saying the people of the United States wanted the Vietnam War,
when in reality it was presented to them as a fait accompli by
the capitalist establishment.
Workers in the United States don't want a police state or an
endless and costly state of war. But they are being barraged
with propaganda that if they complain, they're soft on
terrorism.
Bush threatened every potential dissenter with his
statement, "You're either with us or with the terrorists."
It takes courage to go against the weight of the government
and the all-pervasive mass media. But when conditions become
unbearable, individual resistance grows into a militant
movement against the establishment.
That is a lesson of history that the ruling class
understands and is always preparing for.
Of all the branches of government, the Supreme Court is
supposed to be most detached from immediate politics and most
capable of thinking of the long-term interests of the system.
That's why its members are appointed for life. They are
expected to be able to take some flak if a change of course is
deemed necessary.
From 1953 until 1969, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice
Earl Warren earned a liberal reputation because of decisions
like Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), which struck down
segregation in the public schools. This decision anticipated
the massive civil rights movement that was already beginning to
shake the South.
Warren had not been considered a liberal when President
Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated him to the court. On the
contrary, as the governor of California he had been personally
responsible for the racist internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II. But he recognized the great danger to U.S.
imperialism inherent in the continuation of segregation at a
time when national liberation movements were sweeping the Third
World.
Warren retired in 1969, right after Richard M. Nixon became
president. By 1973, when the court legalized abortion in Roe
vs. Wade, six of the nine justices had been appointed by
Republican presidents. There were four Nixon appointees.
Yet five of the six--Potter Stewart, Harry Blackmun, William
Brennan, Warren Burger and Lewis Powell--voted to legalize
abortion, along with Democratic appointees Thurgood Marshall
and William O. Douglass.
This is not to suggest in any way that the Supreme Court can
be relied on as a liberal force in society. Rather, the point
is that whether the court is dominated by Republican or
Democratic appointees, it has to consider the rise of mass
movements--like the movements for civil rights and for women's
rights.
What happens in the streets is decisive. The current court
would like the movement against the death penalty to go away
once the death penalty's most egregious features have been
removed. But the whole "justice" system is weighted against the
poor and the nationally oppressed. As long as there are death
rows under capitalism, they will be stuffed with workers,
especially people of color, and not with CEOs or Pentagon war
criminals.
Recently released figures for 2001 show that serious crimes,
including murder, are once again on the rise, after dropping
for about a decade. This blows out of the water the view that
more prisons and heavier sentences reduce crime.
All the "law and order" politicians who tried to claim
credit for a lower crime rate were merely capitalizing on the
economic boom. Crimes go up in periods of economic recession
and uncertainty, as many people's lives go into chaos.
Where there is greater economic security for the people,
there is much less crime. That is a fact borne out by the
statistics in socialist countries--and even in capitalist
countries where the working class has won better job and income
guarantees than in the United States. The answer to crime is
jobs, not jails; housing, not jails; education, not jails--and
an end to the death penalty.
Reprinted from the July 4, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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