WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 26, 2001
CAREERS & MAJORS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7B
Court to review death penalty
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court has reaffirmed its intention to decide if mentally retarded killers should be spared the death penalty, choosing a new case to review.
As state leaders debate the morality of the practice, the court will consider early next year if it is constitutional.
The court yesterday substituted a moot North Carolina inmate's case with one from Virginia. The court's first choice had been the appeal of Ernest McCarver, convicted of killing a cafeteria worker. North Carolina enacted a ban on such executions last month.
"Obviously they do want to take a stand on this issue, one way or the other," said Paula Bernstein, representative for the Death Penalty Information Center.
The court will review the case of Daryl Atkins, who was 18
when he was accused of murdering a man to get money for beer. Justices will revisit whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute a person with mental retardation.
Atkins has an IQ of 59, the court was told. People who test 70 or below are generally considered mentally retarded. A psychologist who testified for the state said Atkins used sophisticated words and was able to identify the last two presidents as well as Virginia's governor.
The victim in the Atkins case, 21-year-old Eric Nesbitt, was kidnapped in 1996 outside a convenience store and forced to withdraw money from an automatic teller machine. Atkins and an accomplice were accused of shooting Nesbitt eight times. Nesbitt was stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va.
Pro-death penalty groups said they would attack Atkins' case.
"Our participation in this case will be to help assure that cold-blooded murderers are not able to avoid the punishment they have earned with an unsupported claim that they suffer a mental deficiency," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.
Virginia prosecutors said Atkins did not argue that his mental retardation was grounds to overturn his death sentence.
Atkins revised his U.S. Supreme Court appeal after justices announced in March they would review the McCarver case.
In 1989, the year the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution allowed the execution of killers with mental retardation, two states — Georgia and Maryland — banned those executions. Now 18 states forbid them.
Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death
Penalty, said state policy makers had been giving the issue more attention and that the court may respond to that trend.
President Bush has said he opposes executing the retarded.
That same month Florida Gov Jeb Bush, signed a ban into law for Florida, while Bush's successor in Texas, Gov Rick Perry, vetoed a similar proposal.
"We should never execute anybody who is retarded," Bush said in June. "And our court system protects people who don't understand the nature of the crime they committed."
The Death Penalty Information Center said Texas executed six retarded defendants since 1982, two of them while President Bush was governor.
Prosecutors have disputed that, contending that the two men put to death during Bush's years as governor both tested higher on some IQ tests.
Church-state decision could be a landmark
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, tackling a stark church-state issue dear to President Bush, agreed yesterday to decide whether the Constitution permits using taxpayer dollars to pay religious school tuition.
The court will hear challenges sometime early next year to a 6-year-old school voucher program involving about 3,700 children in Cleveland. A ruling is expected by summer.
Supporters hope the conservative-led court will use the case to broaden its recent trend of approving limited uses of taxpayer money at religious schools. Opponents, too, say the court's ruling could be a landmark.
"This is probably the most important church-state case in
the last half-century," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
The case poses a direct query about the Constitution's position on government money and religion. Recent church-state cases, while important, have explored more peripheral matters, such as whether a prayer group may meet in a public school building.
The court announced several new cases it will hear in the coming term, which begins Oct. 1. Along with the voucher case, the court agreed to decide whether a national one-strike-and-you'revicted policy for drugs in public housing is unnecessarily harsh.
The court also signaled it is determined to decide the constitutionality of executing the mentally retarded. The court
dropped one case that asked that question because it had become moot, but immediately substituted another. The justices probably will hear arguments on the issue in January or February.
Vouchers let parents use government subsidies to pay at least some of the tuition at private and parochial schools. In Ohio, parents can get up to $2,500 in tuition help. All but a handful of the schools participating in the Ohio program are religious.
Supporters say vouchers, also known as school choice, give children an escape from dangerous public schools, public schools incentive to improve and parents some control over bureaucracies
"To be forced to send my child to a system that's failing is just idiotic," said Roberta Kitchen, legal guardian for 10-year-old
Toshika, whose tuition at a Lutheran elementary school is almost entirely paid for through the Cleveland voucher program.
Toshika is getting good grades, and wants to be doctor, Kitchen said. Her school provides small classes, attentive teachers and all the books and supplies she needs. With four other children to support, "there is no way I can afford all the tuition." Kitchen said. "The vouchers were a godsend."
Political opponents say vouchers siphon precious public money from the neediest schools.
"Vouchers are not the educational silver bullet," said Julie Underwood, general counsel for the National School Boards Association "They're not the path to improving public schools."
Illegal workers' rights reopened for debate
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court reopened debate on the rights of illegal immigrant workers yesterday, agreeing to decide if a company should be forced to pay an employee fired for supporting a union.
The National Labor Relations Board had urged the court to let stand a ruling in favor of the fired worker, who was in the country illegally.
Hoffman Plastic Compound Inc. is not contesting a board finding that it broke the law in firing Jose Castro in 1989. But the company said the Mexican national deserved no compensation.
Castro had a minimum wage job at Hoffman's plant in Paramount, Calif., when he and three other employees were laid off
after they supported efforts to unionize the plant.
The company was ordered to rehire the four and give them back pay.
That began an eight-year fight between Hoffman and the labor board over the rights of the illegal worker.
Hoffman then found out Castro had used identification of an American friend, named Jose Castro. to get the job.
"Undocumented workers are not lawfully available for employment and, thus, not eligible for an award of back pay," the company told the court in urging it to take the appeal.
The man known as Castro operated a plant blender, used to mix and cook plastic formulas. He did not speak English, nor did half of the other plant workers, according to court records.
Supreme Court to rule on drug-eviction policy
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will decide if families can be evicted from public housing because of one member's drug use.
Critics of the government's zero-tolerance policy say unwitting older people suffer the most, often being forced out of their subsidized housing because of trouble-making relatives.
The zero-tolerance policy allows a family's eviction if one member is caught once with narcotics, regardless of where the family member was arrested or whether others in the family were aware of the crime.
"We're concerned that the case is being heard at a time that the mood of the country conceivably is to relax civil liberties," said
Catherine Bishop, a policy opponent and attorney for the National Housing Law Project. "You sweep up innocent individuals in your zeal to stop crime."
One-strike eviction laws have been on the books since 1988 but were spottyly enforced before then-President Clinton made tougher national standards a campaign-year pledge.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development followed up with an enforcement program that stated a tenant could not avoid eviction simply by claiming ignorance of the crime or an inability to stop it.
Nancy Segerdahl, a representative for Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, said yesterday the Supreme Court would clarify for housing leaders how to handle evictions.