Battleboro (Vermont) Reformer
October 13, 2004

Too young to die?

One night in 1993, Shirley Crook was awak­ened by 2 bur­glars in her 

Missouri home. She was bound with duct tape. She was dragged out of the 

house. And, still alive and con­scious, she was tossed from a railroad 

tres­tle into a riv­er where she died.

Anglers found her body and with­in 2 days Christopher Simmons confessed 

to com­mit­ting the crimes with a friend. A jury lat­er con­vict­ed him of 

mur­der and a judge sen­tenced him to death.

The law did­n’t deem him mature or respon­si­ble enough to vote, buy 

cig­a­rettes, drink alco­hol, dri­ve or get mar­ried in some states, but it 

did con­sid­er him old enough to be executed.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will con­sid­er whether it’s appropriate for

Simmons, who was 17 at the time, to pay the ultimate price.

While we think Simmons, and oth­er minors who com­mit heinous acts, should

be pun­ished, we think it is wrong to kill young peo­ple — even if they 

are young peo­ple who have killed.

If the high court agrees, it will be a land­mark vic­to­ry for child and 

human rights advo­cates, but it will also be a win for death penalty 

oppo­nents, who view the pos­si­ble rul­ing as one more way to curtail the 

law.

Vermont banned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1964. Like a hand­ful of other 

states, offi­cials here rec­og­nized the law as fal­li­ble, unfair, arbitrary

and often racially discriminatory.

38 states still issue death sen­tences, how­ev­er, and there are near­ly 3,500 death row inmates across the coun­try right now.

We hope that some­day the high court will change that, too. For now, 

we’re advo­cat­ing for the 72 death row inmates who com­mit­ted crimes when 

they were between the ages 15 and 17.

Those who sup­port the death penal­ty for juve­niles say 16- or 

17-year-olds who kill are cul­pa­ble, aware of their actions and should be

tried as adults. Five states have tak­en this posi­tion in filings with 

the high court: Alabama, Delaware, Oklahoma, Virginia, Utah and, of 

course, Texas, which claims 13 of the coun­try’s 22 juvenile executions 

since 1974.

However, their protests seem like whis­pers next to those opposing 

exe­cut­ing minors: The American Medical Association, the American 

Psychiatric Association, the Children’s Defense Fund, religious leaders,

attor­neys gen­er­al from 8 states and 48 nations have weighed in with 

their own legal briefs.

They argue that law pro­hibits behav­ior for teens because they are not 

wise enough to under­stand the con­se­quences of their actions and, 

sim­i­lar­ly, the law should pro­hib­it death sen­tences for peo­ple too young 

to ful­ly real­ize what they do.

They point to psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies which offer evi­dence that teenagers 

can­not con­trol impuls­es, are sub­ject to peer pres­sure and that their 

brains are not mature.

And they note that the United States is one of only five coun­tries that still issue death sen­tences to minors.

The oth­ers? China, Congo, Iran and Pakistan.
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