The St. Louis Post Dispatch has a long analysis of the Missouri Supreme Court's decision this week throwing out a juvenile offender death sentence.

The text of the opinion in the case is here.

If the decision stands, prosecutors in Missouri will no longer be able to seek the death penalty against an offender who was under 18 at the time of the crime.

Here are the current statistics on executing juvenile offenders, from the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty ( NCADP):

Approximately 80 juvenile offenders are on death rows in the United States. Six of the past seven executed juvenile offenders have been from Texas and have been African American. Scott Hain, a white juvenile offender, was executed earlier this year by the state of Oklahoma.

Twenty-eight states now ban the execution of juvenile offenders – 16 states that permit the death penalty and 12 states that ban all executions. Hawkins argues that juvenile offender executions must be banned, just as the executions of people with mental retardation have been.

We need to get the remaining twenty-two states on board.

The Washington Post has an interesting profile of California Lt. Governor Bustamante. Some details:

He got his college degree this year.

He supports the death penalty.

He backed farmers against environmentalists.

While his entire career has been in politics, he was a staffer for most of it.

He wasn't the choice candidate of the Democratic party in California:

Although prominent Democrats were warned by state and national party officials and California labor leaders not to put their names forward as replacement candidates, Bustamante surprised many and took the plunge. "He was nobody's choice as party standard-bearer," said one Democratic strategist in California.

Bustamante said his strategy is, first and foremost, to urge voters to reject a Davis recall, but then to punch his name as a replacement. After a month of stiff resistance, elected Democrats and the state's powerful unions have come around to support his "no on recall, yes on Bustamante" campaign. The state Democratic Party will likely endorse him soon.

Bustamante's relationship with Gray Davis is described as "frosty."

In his favor, from our viewpoint:

His strong opposition to Proposition 187 which denied government services to illegal immigrants. It passed but was later invalidated by the courts.

Questionable: The large sums of money he receives from groups that run Indian casinos. We're not enamored of Bustamante's justification:

Bustamante defends himself by saying he is not some millionaire like Schwarzenegger who can fund his own race.

Where does that reasoning stop? Is there any group he would not accept money from? Here's more on the loophole that allows Bustamante to accept the money.(scroll to the middle of the article.)

In our view, there's only one clear, rational option for Californians on October 7: Vote no to the recall.

Update: The Mercury News editorializes that Bustamente needs to learn Econ 101.

``Gasoline -- and the business of selling gasoline -- is part of interstate commerce that belongs to Congress to regulate, if at all,'' Anthony Sabino, a law professor in New York told the Los Angeles Times. ``With all due respect to Mr. Bustamante, he is either very ignorant of the law, or he's getting incredibly bad advice from his advisers, or it's a publicity stunt.''

Do we have to pick just one?

Ouch.

The Associated Press reports that race may become an issue in the Kobe Bryant case. Polls already show more blacks are sympathetic to his plight than whites. And many compare Kobe's case to OJ Simpson's--in which the vast majority of people think OJ got away with murder.

Two CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls conducted in late July and early August found that 63 percent of blacks surveyed felt sympathetic to Bryant, compared to 40 percent of whites. About 68 percent of blacks said the charges of sexual assault are not true, but only 41 percent of whites said the same.

....Both blacks and whites mentioned O.J. Simpson, whose acquittal at his criminal trial for the 1994 deaths of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman divided the groups. Most whites concluded the verdict was wrong, while most blacks favored it.

Bryant and others, including Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, have been viewed as athletes first and black men second, said Tony N. Brown, assistant sociology professor at Vanderbilt University.

But, he noted, that "doesn't last long. At the first sign of trouble, race comes right in the picture."

Well, we've succumbed. We're headed up to Vail for today and tomorrow-we'll be hosting a barbecue back home Sunday night, so blogging will resume either late Sunday or Monday. Have a great weekend.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Friday said it will rule on September 5 whether to whether to delay the recall election.

Civil rights groups are calling for the Oct. 7 election to be delayed, contending that the hurry-up timeframe is forcing counties to change their voting plans in ways that disenfranchise minority voters -- and that such changes require federal approval under the Voting Rights Act.

Under federal law, the Department of Justice must pre-clear any revisions to the voting process in Monterey and three other California counties with a history of low voter participation.

Unless federal lawyers approve Monterey County's plan to conduct the vote on short notice by consolidating some polling places, the judges could delay the election on whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis, perhaps until the March presidential primary.

Accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui won another round in court in his battle for witness access.

Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, granted Moussaoui's request for testimony from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed architect of the hijacking attacks on New York and Washington, according to sources familiar with the ruling.

A joint team of Pakistani and FBI agents caught Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, one of the hijackers' alleged moneymen, March 1 at an al Qaeda safe house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a few miles from the capital, Islamabad.....Mohammed and al-Hawsawi are both being held at undisclosed military locations.

Previously, the Judge ruled Moussaoui must be allowed to interview Ramzi Binalshibh. He has also asked to interview al-Hawsawi.

The Government is expected to appeal this latest ruling which remains under seal.

A law banning the possession of small amounts of maijuana has been ruled unconstitutional by an Alaska appeal court.

The ruling affirms a 1975 Alaska Supreme Court decision that found it legal to possess less than four ounces of marijuana in one's home. That ruling found that the state constitution's strong privacy law superseded legislative attempts to ban marijuana.

For background on the issues involved in the decision, go here.

Update: Marijuna Ruling Smokes Foes

Via Tom Tomorrow and Oliver Willis we learned that Iraqi Blogger Salam Pax, who was highly touted by the American and British media (and pro-war bloggers) during the war, had his house searched by American soldiers. It wasn't pleasant.

Here's some, but go read the whole thing:

They came at around 12 midnight they were apparently supposed to do a silent entrance and surprise the criminal Ba’athi cell that was in my parents house, unfortunately for them our front gate does a fair amount of rattling so my brother heard that and opened the door and saw a couple of soldiers climbing on our high black front gate....

Sen. Hillary Clinton absolutely has ruled out a 2004 bid for the Presidency.

"I am absolutely ruling it out," Clinton said during a visit to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, N.Y. She had insisted in recent months that she will not consider entering the race for president this year even if that is what some Democrats want.

Smart move....she'll be killer in 2008.

Update: Sorry, We meant 2012.

A new CBS News poll shows public confidence is dropping for Bush's handling of Iraq:

Asked whether the U.S. is in control in Iraq, 42 percent said yes, and 47 percent said no.

Republicans remain more supportive of Bush than Democrats and Independents. Bush's approval rating remained at 55%.

Don't miss Daily MoJo on the connection between the film The Battle of Algiers, the prison camp at Guantanamo and Israel's secret prison. It's all in World Behind Bars.

South Dakota Congressman Bill Janklow has been charged with second degree manslaughter , a felony carrying a maximum ten year sentence, arising from his recent car accident in which a motorcyclist was killed.

One life ended, one life forever tarnished. Both were avoidable. How sad.