http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13554447/
"WASHINGTON - New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito broke a tie Monday to rule that Kansas’ death penalty law is constitutional.
By a 5-to-4 vote, the justices said the Kansas Supreme Court incorrectly interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment to strike down the state’s death penalty statute.
The dissenters, the four liberal members of the high court, bitterly complained about the decision."
"Marsh was convicted in the June 1996 killings of Marry Pusch and her 19-month-old daughter, M.P. Marsh confessed that he had been waiting in Pusch’s house when she and her child came home. Pusch was shot, stabbed and her throat was slit. Her body was set on fire. M.P. died several days later from severe burns.
The Kansas court used Marsh’s case to find the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional because it could force juries to impose death sentences if aggravating evidence of a crime’s brutality and mitigating factors explaining a defendant’s actions are equal in weight. "
I really wish this case made Kansas' death penalty unconstitutional. I consider myself to be a conservative, yet I am still 100% against the death penalty. Why spend so much money on killing the criminal, while it would be cheeper to keep them in jail for life?
And I always thought one of the reasons for the death penalty was its ability to deter crime, but most people agree that his is not true. It has never been shown to lessen crime.
I hope that one day the Supreme Court justices agree that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
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