News & Observer

July 242004

Editorial

Americans increas­ing­ly are uneasy over the fre­quen­cy with which con­demned inmates are found to be inno­cent or to have had tri­als that were taint­ed by pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al or police over­reach­ing. But for good rea­son, there’s an added lay­er of unease about send­ing peo­ple to the death cham­ber whose crimes were com­mit­ted when they were juve­niles. While there’s lit­tle sen­ti­ment for exe­cut­ing the rare child who goes so hor­ri­bly astray as to com­mit mur­der, the issue is murki­er for teenagers on the bor­der of adulthood.

Still, mod­ern sci­ence has deter­mined that the parts of the brain that con­trol rea­son­ing abil­i­ties aren’t as devel­oped in 16- and 17-year-olds as they are in adults. And reli­able sci­en­tif­ic research should help mold pub­lic pol­i­cy. To its cred­it, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Missouri case that could result in states being allowed to stern­ly pun­ish teenagers who make such ter­ri­ble deci­sions, but with­out the lethal sever­i­ty reserved for those who had reached 18 when they com­mit­ted their crime.

The jus­tices will hear, prob­a­bly this spring, an appeal by the State of Missouri of a rul­ing by its state supreme court that exe­cut­ing Christopher Simmons — 17 when he killed a woman in 1993 — would con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. North Carolina law allows death sen­tences for those who were 17 or old­er when they killed someone.

In all, five men on this state’s death row would be spared if the Supreme Court sides with the Missouri jus­tices. The prin­ci­ple should be sim­i­lar to the one that led the high court to bar exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly retard­ed as cru­el and unusual.

There is a strong case for sus­pend­ing the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment entire­ly, giv­en how capri­cious­ly it tends to be imposed. But cer­tain­ly a civ­i­lized soci­ety, employ­ing knowl­edge and com­pas­sion, would reject it as a pun­ish­ment for those whose youth may have kept them from rea­son­ing as an adult.

Sources

News & Observer