Update on Death Penalty for Juveniles: Supreme Court Decides Roper V. Simmons

IN THE OCTOBER 2004 ISSUE of SOCIAL EDUCATION, our preview of the Supreme Court's upcoming term highlighted the Court's decision to review the constitutionality of imposing the death penalty on juvenile offenders. On March 1, 2005, the Court determined in Roper v. Simmons, No. 03-633, that the Constitution forbids states from imposing the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes. Christopher Simmons, the offender in this case, was 17 years and five months old when he planned and carried out the murder of Shirley Crook. The killing was not the sudden impulsive act of a robbery gone badly. Rather, as Justice Kennedy noted in the Court's majority opinion, Simmons had planned the murder in great detail, telling his friends in "chilling, callous terms" how they could break into the victim's home at night, tie her up, and throw her off a bridge. Moreover, Simmons had assured these friends, they could "get away with it" because they were still juveniles. True to his plans, Simmons eventually persuaded a 15-year-old accomplice to help him break into Crook's home in the middle of the night and force the terrified woman from her bed. They then drove her to a state park, walked her to a railroad trestle spanning the Meramec River in Missouri, tied her hands and feet with electrical wire, wrapped her face in duct tape, and threw the fully conscious woman off the bridge to drown in the river below. Crook left behind a husband (who had been out of town on an overnight trip the evening of the murder), a daughter, and two sisters. Nine months later, Simmons was a little over 18 years old when he was convicted of Crook's murder. He was sentenced to death and began the appeal process that culminated in the Court's 5-4 decision that spared his life on March 1. He is now 28. The opinions in Roper v. Simmons are remarkable in that they so clearly outline the philosophical differences between the majority (Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) and the dissenters (Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and O'Connor). These fundamental differences in outlook go well beyond the justices' disagreement over the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty. The first divide concerns the nature of the Constitution itself: Is it a "living" document whose meaning changes over time? Or, should the justices follow the drafters' original intent and relegate constitutional changes to the amendment process? The second disagreement concerns the role that laws and decisions of foreign courts may play in the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. The third involves the propriety of allowing American courts to decline to follow Supreme Court precedent when they believe that precedent to be outmoded. Evolving Standards The Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishments." In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy noted with approval that the Court has referred to "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" when determining which punishments are "so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual." In other words, a majority of the Court believes the Constitution's meaning can change over time, so that punishments the Eighth Amendment did not ban in the eighteenth century (because no one, including the drafters, would have considered them cruel and unusual) might well be deemed unconstitutionally cruel and unusual today. Justice Kennedy believes this to be the case with regard to the imposition of the death penalty on persons who were 17 years old when they committed murder. He noted that modern scientific and sociological studies show that juveniles' immaturity renders them less culpable than adults. He pointed out that since 1989, five capital-punishment states that permitted juveniles to be sentenced to death have abandoned the practice--"four through legislative enactments and one through judicial decision. …