Too young to die?

The (Albany, NY) Times Union

October 16, 2004

Editorial

The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to decide if juve­niles should face cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment

At long last, the U.S. Supreme Court is revis­it­ing an issue it has avoid­ed since 1988: whether the death penal­ty should be imposed on juve­niles who com­mit cap­i­tal crimes. The court last had a chance to address the ques­tion in 2003, but chose to pass and let the states puz­zle it them­selves. This time the jus­tices should come down with a clear rul­ing that ends this archa­ic prac­tice.

Yet if there were any hints how the court will vote, they weren’t obvi­ous in the jus­tices’ remarks dur­ing argu­ments heard Wednesday. It may come down to a swing vote — most like­ly by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or Anthony Kennedy — to side with, or against, the four jus­tices who are on record as oppos­ing juve­nile exe­cu­tions — John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Those four jus­tices share the sen­ti­ments of almost every oth­er coun­try on earth. Even coun­tries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China, where minors have been exe­cut­ed in recent years, are now on record in oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for juve­niles. ​“We are lit­er­al­ly alone in the world,” Seth Waxman told the jus­tices Wednesday. Mr. Waxman rep­re­sents Christopher Simmons, who is on Missouri’s death row for kid­nap­ping and throw­ing a neigh­bor off a bridge to her death when he was 17.

It was a hor­rif­ic crime, and one that Missouri pros­e­cu­tors said was method­i­cal­ly planned and exe­cut­ed. But the ques­tion the court must decide is whether a 17-year-old is mature enough to grasp the con­se­quences of his or her actions, no mat­ter how bru­tal or pre­med­i­tat­ed. The court already has resolved that ques­tion for those 15 years old or younger. It has banned their exe­cu­tions on the grounds they are too imma­ture to under­stand the enor­mi­ty of their actions. So now the ques­tion involves only 16- and 17-year-olds, and how much more mature they might be than they were at 15.

To try to answer that ques­tion Wednesday, the jus­tices lis­tened to sci­en­tif­ic tes­ti­mo­ny on the devel­op­ment of the teenage brain. What they ought to do, though, is ask the jurors in the Lee Boyd Malvo case for their views. That Virginia jury dead­locked on whether Malvo should face exe­cu­tion for his role in the Washington-area sniper spree that killed 10 peo­ple in 2003. Some of the jurors refused to con­sid­er cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because they viewed the defen­dant as an impres­sion­able youth who fell under the influ­ence of John Allen Muhammad, who was sen­tenced to death in a sep­a­rate tri­al for those mur­ders.

Today, Lee Boyd Malvo is serv­ing a life sen­tence, a heavy penal­ty to pay for his crimes. It is also an appro­pri­ate penal­ty for all juve­niles who take the lives of others.