Juvenile death penal­ty makes no sense at all

The Honolulu Advertiser

October 18, 2004

Editorial

During the pres­i­den­tial debates, President Bush sug­gest­ed his ide­al of a Supreme Court jus­tice would be one who does not leg­is­late but sim­ply inter­prets the Constitution accord­ing to how it was writ­ten.

The full flower of this think­ing is the judge who is a ​“strict con­struc­tion­ist,” tak­ing the Constitution at its word.

Yet even the most con­ser­v­a­tive judge is affect­ed by, and takes into account, the chang­ing polit­i­cal, social and sci­en­tif­ic world in which he or she lives.

That point is dra­ma­tized by a case soon to be decid­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court. It involves the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles.

The case before the Supreme Court today deals with a heinous crime involv­ing a Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he tied up, gagged and threw into the riv­er an elder­ly woman he and a com­pan­ion had just robbed.

But the issue before the court is not whether Simmons, now in his late 20s, should be pun­ished for the crime. The ques­tion is whether that 17-year-old who com­mit­ted the crime should be put to death.

Our hope is that the Supreme Court will con­clude, right­ly, that he should not. The court has already found that exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent amounts to ​“cru­el and unusu­al” pun­ish­ment pro­hib­it­ed by our Constitution.

Unusual cer­tain­ly fits the bill here, too. Already, 28 states for­bid the exe­cu­tion of 16- and 17-year-olds. Internationally, only a hand­ful of nations such as Congo, China, Iran, Nigeria and Yemen, allow the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles.

Further, sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence is increas­ing­ly clear that young peo­ple clin­i­cal­ly lack the judg­ment and men­tal matu­ri­ty to make ratio­nal deci­sions. Our law already rec­og­nizes that. It does not allow, for instance, those younger than 18 to drink, serve as com­bat­ants in the mil­i­tary or vote.

Yet we think they are mature enough to be put to death for their actions? It makes no sense.

There are more than 72 juve­niles (or, most­ly for­mer juve­niles) on death row today. With all respect to their vic­tims, the lives of these peo­ple should be spared.