The Tennessean

August 2, 2004

Editorial

Executing teenagers is just as wrong as exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly chal­lenged.

Dozens of for­eign coun­tries, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the United States and a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Soviet Union along with the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association all have said so. Now, it’s time for the U.S. Supreme Court to agree.

The court will decide this fall whether to uphold a Missouri Supreme Court deci­sion that set aside the exe­cu­tion of a 27-year-old man sen­tenced when he was 17 for the bru­tal mur­der of a Missouri woman.

Christopher Simmons was con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1993. He and an accom­plice bur­glar­ized the home of Shirley Crook whom Simmons bound and gagged before dri­ving around in a mini­van. He then pushed her off a rail­road tres­tle to drown in the riv­er. Prosecutors argued that Simmons act­ed delib­er­ate­ly, plan­ning the crime and brag­ging about it aloud, rather than act­ing on impulse as his defend­ers con­tend­ed.

But the state Supreme Court jus­tices cit­ed the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing on the men­tal­ly retard­ed in 2002 which banned exe­cu­tions because ​“nation­al con­sen­sus” had deter­mined the pol­i­cy was wrong.

Simmons’ crime was heinous, but he was also 17 years old. There’s plen­ty of evi­dence that 17-year-olds aren’t ful­ly devel­oped and thus inca­pable of mak­ing good deci­sions. A group of some 30 reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions have cit­ed that evi­dence in their briefs to the court.

They aren’t alone with both the ABA and the AMA on their side and for­mer President Jimmy Carter and Mikhail Gorbachev among oth­ers. Other coun­tries, includ­ing Canada and Mexico, have expressed their out­rage.

The rest of the world can’t under­stand the U.S. posi­tion. We remain the only coun­try that offi­cial­ly per­mits the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles. And the United States does so uneven­ly at best. Of the 37 states that sen­tence with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, only 19 allow juve­niles to be exe­cut­ed. Texas accounts for half of all juve­nile exe­cu­tions.

The major­i­ty of states frown upon the prac­tice. So does the world. That’s not just a con­sen­sus; it’s a man­date to end the outrage.

Sources

The Tennessean