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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