[□]
[□ | □]
[□ & □]
" Stevens was joined in the dissent by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg , David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.The case is Ayers v. Belmontes , 05-493.The court also announced yesterday that it was declining to review two highly publicized cases.Without comment , justices decided against hearing the appeal of Michael Skakel , the nephew of Ethel Kennedy 's who was convicted of beating to death his Greenwich , Conn ., neighbor Martha Moxley when the two were teenagers 31 years ago . But stay away from poetry - - books of poesy on your shelves may dumb down your child.A research team headed by demographer Jonathan Kelley , of Brown University and the University of Melbourne , analyzed data from a study of scholastic ability in 43 countries , including the United States . It was death penalty day yesterday at the Supreme Court , coincidentally 30 years to the day since Gary Gilmore became the first person to be executed under the country 's modern capital punishment laws.The court heard three death penalty cases from Texas even as executions are on hold in an increasing number of states , from Maryland to California , and as the number of new death sentences continues to fall . Instead , the judge , after listing specific mitigating factors , issued a more generic direction to consider any other circumstance that " extenuates the gravity of the crime even though it is not a legal excuse for the crime .