My Aunt was killed when I was younger. I believe in the Death Penalty and with the new decision that the Supreme Court has done will move people off death row, into life sentences. If I think correctly the State of Texas does not have life with out parole. Some of the people that are on death row, are very disturbed people. I found this and thought you might be interested.
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
Last modified Wednesday, March 2, 2005 12:07 AM CST
SC rules in death penalty cases
By The Associated Press
HOUSTON - For almost 12 years, Melissa Pena has waited for the execution of five gang members who raped and killed her teenage daughter and a friend and left their bodies to rot in a Houston field. On Tuesday, she learned that day would never come.
"They should die for what they did to my daughter. This is not right," Pena said.
A closely divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that it's unconstitutional to execute juvenile killers, ending a practice in Texas and 18 other states that has been roundly condemned by many of America's closest allies.
The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers, 28 of whom are on Texas's death row. It also bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes, saying such executions violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Twenty-two of the people put to death since 1976 were juveniles when they committed their crimes; 13 of them were in Texas.
The ruling triggered cries of outrage from Texas victims' rights activists, victims' relatives, as well as renewed demands for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty - a demand Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately refused.
But Perry asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to review the state's cases affected by the Supreme Court ruling.
At least two bills pending before the Legislature would prohibit the execution of violent offenders under the age of 18.
"If a bill that brings Texas law in line with the court's ruling reaches my desk I will sign it," Perry said in a prepared statement. "Regardless of what the Legislature does, however, Texas will abide by the court's ruling."
Perry told reporters he would consider signing legislation allowing sentences of life without parole for juveniles, which is now not an option for Texas juries. A life sentence in Texas means a defendant is eligible for parole in 40 years.
Rep. Garnet Coleman of Houston said it was time to end Texas executions, but Perry replied: "The answer is no."
Among the Texas killers affected by the Supreme Court ruling were:
€ Efrain Perez and Raul Villarreal of Harris County (Houston), convicted with three others of the gang-rape and beating deaths of Jennifer Ertman, 14 and Elizabeth Pena, 16. Perez and Villarreal were 17 at the time. Pena's father, Adolph, on Tuesday wore a T-shirt with the girls' photos printed on it. "These people are animals," he said at a news conference held by Harris County murder victims' relatives. "They're the scourge of the streets. If they get out, they will kill again."
€ Robert Springsteen of Travis County (Austin), convicted at 17 in 2001 of the infamous "Yogurt Shop" slayings in which four teenage girls were bound, gagged and fatally shot in the head at a yogurt shop a decade earlier.
€ Jorge Alfredo Salinas, who at 17 carjacked a man in Hidalgo County (McAllen) in July 2001, fatally shot him in the head, and left the man's 21-month-old daughter to die of dehydration and exposure strapped in her car seat in a brush area near the Rio Grande.
Eleven of the juvenile murderers on Texas' death row were convicted in Harris County.
One of them, Johnnie Bernal, was one day shy of his 18th birthday when he shot and killed Lee Dilley as he stood outside a Houston drive-in with his high school prom date.
"Does it make sense that just because he was 17 years and 364 days old he's going to be spared?" asked Harris County prosecutor Roe Wilson, who expressed disappointment that the ruling doesn't allow for individual review of cases.
But Jim Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, said the decision was long overdue.
"This shows a clear consensus that it's really inappropriate," Marcus said. "It's inappropriate for the same reason that we don't trust juveniles with the right to vote. Juvenile brain and mental development is just not ready."
Janet Green, whose son, Harris County deputy constable Michael Eakin, was shot to death during a traffic stop in 1998 by 17-year-old Michael Lopez, said the Supreme Court was wrong to decide that juveniles are too immature to pay with their lives.
"I've been a teacher for 19 years and kids at 11 know right from wrong," Green said. "They just make poor choices."
Marcus noted that only two other states - Oklahoma and Virginia - have executed a juvenile in the past decade.
"Texas accounts for more than half of the juvenile executions in the modern era of the death penalty," he said. "It's a practice that's not even widely carried out in this country anymore - except in this state."
Texas executed 23 people last year, compared to Ohio, which ranked second with seven executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Alabama was second to Texas in the number of juvenile offenders on its death row with 14.
