Justice Stevens' change of heart

(Q) Justice John Paul Stevens, the Chicago native who once was part of a Supreme Court majority that reinstated the death penalty in America in 1976, Wednesday indicated for the first time that he believes capital punishment is unconstitutional.

Writing to concur in the court's judgment in Baze v. Rees, the case out of Kentucky that questioned whether the method used for executing prisoners was unconstitutionally harmful, Stevens said he had become convinced that the death penalty no longer served a legitimate societal function.

Stevens noted that that when the Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, it did so by identifying three purposes served by capital punishment: 1) incapacitation of the offender; 2) deterrence and 3) retribution.

He wrote that with the advent of longer prisoner sentences and the option of a life term without parole made incapacitation a weaker rationale. He then questioned whether the death penalty deters crime, long a subject of debate among researchers. "Despite 30 years of empirical research in the area, there is no reliable statistical evidence that capital punishment in fact deters potential offenders," he said. Continue reading @ Swamp Politics

Bush and big crowd greet pope on his birthday

(Q) Pope Benedict XVI chose to address bluntly the sex scandal that has torn at the church here even before he landed Tuesday on his first official visit to the United States, saying he was “deeply ashamed” by the actions of pedophile priests.

His comments aboard his plane, in answer to a written question submitted by a reporter and selected by the Vatican, appeared to soothe many Catholics but left others demanding more action than words.

“It’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give the love of God to these children,” the pope said, adding that the church would work to exclude pedophiles from the priesthood.

“It is more important to have good priests than to have many priests,” he said.

The words were his strongest ever on the issue, one he clearly wanted to emphasize as he arrived on a six-day visit to Washington and New York. His comments were in response to the first of four questions he answered on the plane — chosen from 20 the press corps had submitted in advance.

It was unclear whether these would be the last words from Benedict on the issue, which ruptured the faith between parishioners and priests and has cost the church some $2 billion, or whether it was an opening signal of both reconciliation and more to come. Church officials have said they expected the pope to address the scandal more than once during his visit, and there is speculation that he may even meet with some victims. Continue @ NYT