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High Court Stops Juvenile Executions
Death penalty
for youths ruled
‘cruel and unusual’
(AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Tues
day that the Constitution forbids the ex
ecution of killers who were under 18 when
they committed their crimes, ending a prac
tice used in 19 states.
The 5-4 decision throws out the death
sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers
and bars states from seeking to execute
minors for future crimes.
The executions, the court said, violate
the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and
unusual punishment.
In 1988, the court outlawed executions
for those 15 and younger when they com
mitted their crimes. Three years ago ju s
tices banned executions of the mentally
retarded.
Tuesday’s ruling prevents states from
making 1 6 -and 17-year-olds eligible for
execution.
"The age of 18 is the point where soci
ety draws the line for many purposes
between childhood and adulthood. It is,
we conclude, the age at which the line for
death eligibility ought to rest,” Justice
Anthony Kennedy wrote.
Juvenile offenders have been put to
death in recent years in only a few other
countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China
and Saudi Arabia. Kennedy cited interna
tional opposition to the practice.
“It is proper that we acknowledge the
overwhelming weight o f international
opinion against the juvenile death pen
alty, resting in large part on the under
standing that the instability and emotional
imbalance of young people may often be
a factor in the crime,” he wrote.
Kennedy noted most states don’t allow
the execution o f juvenile killers and those
that do use the penalty infrequently. The
trend, he said, is to abolish the practice
Worst Insurgency
Bombing Kills 120
(AP) - Weeping and beating their
chests, hundreds o f Iraqis in
spected co rp ses at a hospital
morgue in Hillah on Tuesday, look
ing for friends and relatives miss
ing in a suicide bombing that killed
at least 120 people, the single dead
liest attack in the two-year insur
gency.
Meanwhile, the toll rose as hos
pital officials said at least five suc
cum bed to w ounds overnight.
More than 140others were injured
in the blast, which targeted mostly
Shiite police and National Guard
recruits lined up for physicals at a
medical clinic.
Monday’s bombing presented
the boldest challenge yet to Iraq’s
efforts to build a security force that
can take over from the Americans.
At the morgue, distraught rela
tives placed the dead into coffins
and loaded them onto pickup
trucks for the trip to mosques and
hom es where the bodies w ill be
w ashed before burial, a M uslim
tradition in Iraq.
The bom bing com es as the
Sunni Arab insurgency tries to
disrupt the form ation o f the first
g o v e rn m e n t led by m a jo rity
Shiites. The Shiites have refrained
from striking back — m ostly at
the behest o f their most revered
leader, G rand A yatollah Ali al-
Sistani. He wants nothing to im
pede Shiites from coming to power
and will not allow them to engage Iraqis mourn near the site of
than 120 people. (AP photo)
in a sectarian war.
HIV Doubles
Among Blacks
Stark evidence
shows widening
of racial gap
suicide bombing that killed more
Local Rapper Shot 12 Times, Survives
P olice are on the hunt for the
su sp ect w ho shot local rap p er
L ad ariu s D avis, 24, w ho p e r
form s u nder the nam e K orbell.
He w as shot a dozen tim es after
because “our society views juveniles... as
categorically less culpable than the aver
age criminal.”
In a dissent. Justice Antonin Scalia
disputed that there is a clear trend of
declining juvenile executions to justify
a grow ing consensus against the prac
tice.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and
Justices Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day
O ’Connor, joined Scalia in the losing opin
ion to allow the executions.
g ettin g into an arg u m en t at a
Police conclude that the crim e
local bar, fam ily m em bers say. occurred in the vicinity o f N orth
Davis survived the shooting Interstate A venue and Skidm ore
and underw ent m ultiple surger S treet and w as g a n g -re la te d , a l
ies at Legacy Emanuel Hospital. though fam ily m em bers d o n ’t
b eliev e D avis w as in v o lv ed in
g a n g s.
P o lice are still g a th e rin g in
fo rm atio n on a p o ssib le su s
p e c t.
(AP) - The HIV infection rate
has doubled among blacks in the
United States over a decade while
holding steady among whites -
stark evidence of a widening racial
gap in the epidemic, government
scientists said Friday.
Other troubling statistics indi
cate that almost half of all infected
people in the United States who
should be receiving HIV drugs are
not getting them.
The findings were released in
B o sto n at th e 12th A n n u al
Retrovirus Conference, the world’s
chief scientific gathering on the
disease.
Researchers and AIDS preven
tion advocates attributed the high
rate among blacks to such factors
as drug addiction, poverty and
poor access to health care.
The HIV rates were derived from
the widely used National Health
and Nutrition Examinations Sur
veys, which analyze a representa
tive sample o f U.S. households
and contain the most complete
HIV data in the country. Research
ers at the Centers for Disease Con
trol and Prevention compared 1988-
1994 data with figures from 1999-
2002.
The AIDS virus in blacks has
risen from 1 to 2 percent.
The surveys look only at young
and middle-aged adults who live
in households, excluding such
groups as soldiers, prisoners and
homeless. Thus, health officials
believe the numbers probably un
derestimate true HIV rates in this
country.
Still, they show a striking rise
in the prevalence o f the AIDS
virus from 1 percent to 2 percent
o f b la c k s. W hite ra te s held
steady at 0.2 percent. Largely
because o f the increase among
blacks, the overall U.S. rate rose
slightly from 0.3 percent to 0.4
percent.
Treatment is widely viewed as
a central component in preven
tion. Powerful AIDS drugs that
came into wide use in the mid-
1990s can knock down levels of
the virus in the body, reducing the
chances that the patient will infect
others.
Nearly 1 million people in the
United States have contracted the
AIDS virus since the outbreak be
gan in the early 1980s. About
40,000 people test positive each
year, and more than 18,000 die.
Human Rights Abuses
(A P )-M an’sinhum anitytom an
was documented anew Monday by
the U.S. State Department as it sur
veyed human rights abuses last
year in scores of countries and found
systematic torture in Syria, serious
abuses in China and the killing of
civilians by government-backed
militia in Sudan’s troubled Darfur
province.
Egypt, a close ally o f the United
States in Mideast peacemaking, was
condemned for security forces tor
turing prisoners and for mass ar
rests. Iran’s “poor human rights
record worsened,” the State De
partment report said.
North Korea, which President
Bush has denounced as part of an
“axis of evil,” is one of the w orld’s
most repressive and brutal regimes,
the report said. An estim ated
150.0(X) to 200,000 people are be
lieved to be in detention camps in
remote areas, and defectors report
many have died from torture, star
vation and disease.
C hina used w ar on terror as a
pretext for cracking dow n on
peaceful U ighur separatists and
does not perm it outsiders to m oni
tor the hum an rights situation in
the country, the report to C on
gress added.
Judge’s Family Murdered
(A P)— A federal judge who was when she returned home from work
once the target o f a failed murder M onday evening, according to
plot by a white supremacist was authorities and friends.
under marshals’ protection Tues
W hite suprem acist M atthew
day following the shooting deaths Hale, 33, who was convicted in April
o f her husband and 89-year-old 2004 of soliciting an undercover
mother, and investigators were look FBI informant to kill her, is awaiting
ing into possible connections to sentencing on murder solicitation
hate groups, among other leads.
and obstruction of justice.
Authorities acknowledged the
U .S . D is tric t Ju d g e Jo a n
Humphrey Lefkow found the bod possibility that hate groups could
ies of Michael F. Lefkow, 65, and be involved in the killings but cau
her mother, D onna Humphrey, tioned against early conclusions.
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(AP) - A ttackers ambushed
U.N. peacekeepers on patrol
in northeastern C ongo on Fri
day, killing nine Bangladeshis
in the deadliest assault on the
world body’s largest peace
keeping m ission, the United
Nations said.
The slain peacekeepers were
among 21 Bangladeshispatrol
ling near a camp housing civil
ians displaced by persistent fight-
ing in Ituri province.
Since 1999, fighting in the
vast northeastern district of Ituri
has killed more than 5O.(XX) and
forced 500,000 to flee their
homes, U.N. officials and hu
man rights groups say.
There are 11,4 15 U.N. troops
in Congo - the largest U.N.
peacekeeping mission, with the
force eventually expected to
reach 16.000.