Man Who Killed at 17 Is Put to Death

The Supreme Court overturned a stay Thursday and allowed Oklahoma to execute a man who killed two people when he was 17.

The 5-4 vote illustrated the court’s bitter division over capital punishment for people who commit crimes as juveniles.

Scott Allen Hain had won the stay a day earlier from an appeals court.

Oklahoma asked the high court to intervene, arguing that Hain’s appeals had run out.

Hain was put to death Thursday night for helping to burn to death a man and woman in 1987.

The execution of people who were juveniles when they committed their crimes is a particularly charged issue for the court, which has held that states can put to death people who were 16 or 17 when they killed. The United States is one of the few countries that allow such executions.

In October, the four most liberal justices said the court should raise the age for executions to 18.

“The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society,” Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

The same four justices opposed Hain’s execution, while the most conservative court members voted for it: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that executing mentally retarded people is unconstitutionally cruel. Some death penalty opponents hoped the court would look next at juveniles.