You Can't Make Me

Senator Strom Thurmond's beloved stomping ground has once again been chided. The Palmetto state seems to have an issue with governmental hierarchy; particularly when it pertains to the United States Supreme Court. Why? I don't really know. But for some reason, I envision the Civil War days when South Carolina became the first state to actually secede from the Union (they did after all, draft legislation for the protocol).They were so quick on the draw, I believe, in part because they have some kind of aversion to the big ole central government - federal government - telling them what to do; or more appropriately, what not to do. Like owning slaves. The nerve of anybody interefering with a state sovereign's human slave labor force.

Now, some one hundred forty years later, the highest court in South Carolina seems to be following the same philosophy. Under its laws, a jury in a capital murder case, or the equivalent thereof, recommends life without the possibility of parole, or a death sentence.

This part of the state's sentencing guidelines became an issue several years ago when the trial court judge in a murder case refused to grant the defense attorney's request for a jury instruction that if given a life sentence, the defendant would not be eligible for parole. Life meant life.

The obvious import of this was that a defendant who might otherwise receive a life sentence, would get a death sentence because jurors don't typically want a maniacal sociopath pounding the pavement in their neighborhoods. The assumption would be that if given a life sentence, the defendant might someday be paroled.

Not presenting the whole picture to the jury is a very effective tool for the state to win a death sentence.

This case wound its way to the High Court where it was summarily reversed and remanded to state court for another sentencing hearing ordering the state to comply: an instruction, if requested by the defendant's attorney, must be given to the jury. Specifically, the Court held that "when a capital defendant's future dangerousness is at issue, and the only sentencing alternative to death...is life imprisonment without possibility of parole, due process entitles the defendant to inform the jury of his parole ineligibility." (Simmons vs. South Carolina)

In this new millennium, South Carolinians have once again graced the halls of our hallowed Court (well, at one time hallowed), for the exact same crime, so to speak.

On November 26, 2001, the Supremes heard oral arguments with regard to Mr. Kelly, a murderer who, according to trial testimony, had made a knife in prison, tried to escape by holding a female guard hostage, had sadistic tendencies early in life and had desires to kill anyone who irritated him. The prosecutor, in closing argument, called Kelly a "dangerous, bloody butcher." (Kelly vs. South Carolina)

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