please check attachment for an sample of brief a case, follow each instruction carefully. Due after 4 hours.The student will select (5) cases to review from the following list:(need one only)· Bell v

Case Study Two:

Stanford v. Kentucky

Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989)

Decision by the United States Supreme Court.

Facts

The case involved two different cases. The first case was about the 17 year old Kevin Stanford and the circumstances for this case took place in 1981. The second case was about the 16 year old Heath Wilkins and the crimes committed in that case took place in 1985 (Faltersack, 1990, p. 454-455).

The background on the first case was a robbery at a gas station committed by Stanford, who at the same time had repeatedly raped and sodomized a 21 year old woman, and then after taking her to another location, had murdered her by shooting her in the head (Faltersack, 1990, p. 454-455). Standford was convicted in the juvenile court but as an adult and he was sentenced to death for murder, sodomy, and receiving stolen property. The case went up to the Kentucky Supreme Court and Stanford presented the argument about his constitutional right to rehabilitation. The Court did not agree with Stanford and upheld the death sentence (Faltersack, 1990, p. 455).

The second case was about Wilkins who planned to rob a store and then murder the cashier to ensure that there were no witnesses. This plan ended up with him stabbing a 26 year old mother to death (Faltersack, 1990, p. 455-456). The case was tried in a juvenile court in which Wilkins was verified as an adult and he was sentenced to death for murder, armed criminal action, and carrying a concealed weapon, which he pleaded guilty to. The case went up to the Supreme court of Missouri where Wilkins argued that the punishment violated the cruel and unusual punishment clause in the Eighth Amendment. The Court rejected that argument and upheld the sentence (Faltersack, 1990, p. 456).

Standford and Wilkins filed petitions for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court which were granted in both cases. The Court was going to consider if a 16 or 17 year old person who commit a crime was protected from being sentenced to death by the Eighth Amendment (Faltersack, 1990, p. 457). In the case in the U.S. Supreme Court, both of them were petitioners and the states became respondents.

Issues

Does the imposition of death penalty on a 16 or 17 year old person violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause under the Eighth Amendment?

Decisions

No (5-4) (Oyez, (n.d.)). Justice Scalia wrote the opinion of the Court according to Dalton (1990, p. 164).

Reasoning

1. The Court viewed both historical evidence and modern American standards so decide whether or not there was a violation of the Eighth Amendment (Faltersack, 1990, p. 457). The modern standards were a given punishment by the legislative implementations, and 37 states had implemented the death penalty at that time. 18 of those 37 states had a minimum age for sentencing someone to death and that age was 16. The history showed that there was not a common approah in the U.S. in the past for this to be neither cruel nor unusual (Faltersack, 1990, p. 458-459). The number of death sentences for people under 18 in the past was not something to look at because that was misleading because less people under 18 commit capital crimes (Faltersack, 1990, p. 460).

2. The Court looked at the state’s legislation and the actual words used in the amendment in question, and therefore relied on objective factors instead of subjective factors of the justice in each system (Faltersack, 1990, p. 458).

3. The Court was of the opinion that it did not matter whether or not the federal statutes prohibited people under 18 for death penalty, because the number of how many states allowing it or not did not establish a common approach in the U.S. (Faltersack, 1990, p. 459).

4. The Court thought that as long as there was not a national common approach that had developed against death penalty for 16 and 17 year old persons, there was no violation of the Eighth Amendment (Faltersack, 1990, p. 457).

Seperate opinions

Justice Scalia: Concurring. He declared that the Eighth Amendment prohibited more now than the society in the past had labeled as inhuman and brutal. The meaning of cruel and unusual he thought may change over time and that is why the Court must make a dynamic interpretation of those words (Dalton, 1990, p. 164-165).

Justice Rehnquist, White, O'Connor, and Kennedy: Concurring. They joined Justice Scalia’s opinion (US Supreme Court, 1989, p. 362).

Justice Brennan: Dissenting. He said that he found that 27 states did not allow death sentences for persons under the age of 18. He argued that the numbers Justice Scalia relied on were miss resorted. Such statistic as number was just one kind of evidence that the Court had to consider. He also wanted the Court to consider the options of respected organizations, international evidence, and human rights treaties (Dalton, 1990, p. 166).

Justice Marshall, Balckmun, and Stevens: Dissenting. They joined Justice Brennan’s opinion (US Supreme Court, 1989, p. 363).

Analysis

This case brings up the question whether or not the courts should sentence juvenile offenders to death, and how society’s common opinon about this should be considered. The case showes how a juvenile offender is seen by society and that it might affect the way courts decide and also how the norms in society are affected by court decisions. If the society sees juveniles as impulsive and that their impact of thinking is not fully developed, that may lead to a common opinion that they cannot be sentenced to death because that would be a too extensive penalty. This case also showes that the court take the history into concideration but that they do not care much about statistics since they do not give an accurate picture of the trends of juvenile crimes. I found the Court’s reasoning, about how it did not matter if the federal statutes prohibited or permitted death penalty for persons under 18, was interesting. On one hand the issue had to do with the Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and it should not matter what most states permitted or not, and on the other hand if almost the entire country permitted something, does not that say something about how the Court should interpret that specific issue?

References

Dalton. L. (1990). Stanford v. Kentucky and Wilkins v. Missouri: A Violation of an Emerging Rule of Customary International Law. (William & Mary Law Review, 32 (1). 164-166. Retrieved from http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1921&context=wmlr

Faltersack, A. R. (1990). Stanford v. Kentucky: The Minimum Age for the Maximum Penalty - Death, 23 J. Marshall L. Rev. 453 (1990). The John Marshall Law Review, 23 (3). 454-460. Retrieved from http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1923&context=lawreview

Oyez. (n.d.). Stanford v. Kentucky. Retrieved January 26, 2016, from https://www.oyez.org/cases/1988/87-5765