FORMER PRESIDENT LEADS WORLDWIDE CALL FOR AN END TO JUVENILE DEATH PENALTY

The U. S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday, October 13, 2004, in Roper v. Simmons to determine the future of the juvenile death penalty. Amicus briefs in support of banning the practice have been filed by many prominent groups and individals, including:
  • Nobel Peace Prize Winners (including Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu and Lech Walesa)
  • American Medical Association
  • American Psychiatric Association
  • American Psychological Association
  • Major Religious Denominations
  • Children’s Defense Fund
  • Attorneys General of 8 States
  • NAACP Legal Defense Fund
  • Murder Victim’s Families for Reconcilliation
  • Forty-eight Nations.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter noted the U.S. was in an increasingly isolated place as one of only five countries in the world that still executes juveniles.

Carter recently stated:


“Growing opposition in the United States and almost universal international condemnation of the juvenile death penalty will be relevant to the Supreme Court’s deliberations in Roper v. Simmons this October.

I am hopeful that the Court will take this opportunity to acknowledge that evolving standards of decency at home and abroad - as well as basic principles of American justice - require rejection of child offender executions once and for all.”
(Associated Press, July 19, 2004)

DPIC’s Roper v. Simmons page.

View the Amicus Briefs.

DPIC’s Juvenile page.

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