St. Louis Post-Dispatch

October 14, 2004

Editorial

The U.S. Supreme Court may be on the verge of join­ing the rest of the civ­i­lized world in ban­ning the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made just one remark dur­ing Wednesday’s hour-long argu­ment over whether to exe­cute Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he mur­dered Shirley Crook of Fenton, Mo. Justice O’Connor said there was ​“about the same con­sen­sus” against the juve­nile death penal­ty today as there had been against exe­cut­ing men­tal­ly retard­ed mur­der­ers when the court out­lawed those exe­cu­tions in 2002.

That com­ment could be espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Justice O’Connor is the cru­cial 5th vote for end­ing the exe­cu­tion of 16- and 17-year-old mur­der­ers. And the key legal ques­tion is whether a con­sen­sus has emerged that juve­nile exe­cu­tions are ​“cru­el and unusu­al” pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment.

In 1993, Simmons and a 15-year-old accom­plice broke into Ms. Crook’s home, bound her with duct tape and threw her in the Meramec River, where she drowned. Simmons, who now is 28, was sen­tenced to death.

Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court took the unusu­al step of get­ting out ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court, rul­ing 4 – 3 that a con­sen­sus had emerged against exe­cut­ing 16- and 17-year-old mur­der­ers sim­i­lar to the con­sen­sus against exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed. The num­ber of states pro­hibit­ing the exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly retard­ed had risen to 30 by the time of the 2002 Supreme Court deci­sion. The num­ber of states pro­hibit­ing the exe­cu­tion of 16- and 17-year-olds has risen to 28. The Missouri Supreme Court also not­ed that only 3 states have exe­cut­ed a juve­nile in the past decade, mak­ing such exe­cu­tions tru­ly unusu­al.

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon appealed the court’s deci­sion, argu­ing that leg­is­la­tures, not courts, should decide whether juve­niles can be exe­cut­ed.

A key ques­tion at Wednesday’s argu­ment was whether the court should con­sid­er world opin­ion and prac­tice. According to Amnesty International, since 1990 only China, the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United States have exe­cut­ed chil­dren and ado­les­cents — not exact­ly the kind of com­pa­ny we want to keep.

When Missouri State Solicitor James Layton said Wednesday that only the ​“mores of American soci­ety” mat­tered, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg point­ed out that Thomas Jefferson had referred in the Declaration of Independence to a ​“decent respect to the opin­ions of mankind.” Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia shot back, ​“What did John Adams think of the French?“

In some ways, this is the legal par­al­lel of the polit­i­cal argu­ment play­ing out in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign about how much the United States should heed world opin­ion. The answer is the same in both spheres: We should con­sid­er world opin­ion, but not allow it to dic­tate the result. In the case of juve­nile exe­cu­tions, world opin­ion and American opin­ion are mov­ing in the same direc­tion. It is safe to say that there is an evolv­ing con­sen­sus through­out the civ­i­lized world to end juve­nile exe­cu­tions.

Scientific research also shows that juve­niles’ brains are less devel­oped in areas that medi­ate impulse con­trol and deci­sion-mak­ing. Weighing pub­lic opin­ion and sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence togeth­er tips the scales toward mer­cy. It is time for the law to fol­low and to spare the lives of 72 juve­niles now on death rows across the United States.

Sources

St. Louis Post-Dispatch