
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 10, 1992                   TAG: 9203100208
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PLAINTIFF'S RACIST VIEWS RULED INADMISSIBLE THOMAS ONLY DISSENTING JUSTICE I

The Supreme Court barred prosecutors Monday from using a convicted murderer's racist views or membership in a racist prison gang as reasons to justify a death sentence.

Unless the murderer's views or gang membership were linked to the crime or to his dangerous character, it was unconstitutional to tell the jury about them to induce jurors to impose capital punishment, the court decided by an 8-1 vote.

The court's new member, Justice Clarence Thomas, the only dissenter, echoed the views of the Department of Justice by arguing that the purpose of prison gangs was to promote "criminal or deviant" conduct. Membership in such gangs, Thomas argued, should be taken into account by the jury as evidence of "bad character" that could justify execution.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, one of the court's leading conservatives, wrote that Delaware prosecutors had sought to use the "abstract beliefs" of murderer David F. Dawson - a member of a white supremacy gang, the Aryan Brotherhood - in asking a jury to sentence him to death. That violated Dawson's First Amendment rights to hold such views, or belong to a group with those views, the chief justice declared.

Thomas' dissent complained that the Rehnquist opinion took a "troubling and unnecessary" step to protect prison gang members under the First Amendment.

The court's ruling returned Dawson's case to Delaware's Supreme Court without overturning his death sentence for a murder he committed in 1986 after escaping from state prison.

The court also ruled Monday that states are free, under the Constitution, to limit the time state officials may serve in office, and then ban them from those posts for the rest of their lives.

It turned aside, without comment, the first constitutional challenge to reach it in the campaign to impose term limits, an issue that may be on the ballot in as many as 18 states this fall.

Although the court did not offer its own views on term limits' constitutionality, its order left intact a California Supreme Court ruling that had upheld state officers' term limits against a sweeping constitutional attack.

by CNB