Juvenile death sentences nullified
on Mar 1, 2005 at 10:06 am
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Tuesday that the death penalty “is a disproportionate punishment for juveniles,” and thus it violates the Eighth Amendment to impose a death sentence on a youthful murderer who committed the crime before age 18. Today, the Court said, “society views juveniles as categorically less culpable than the average criminal.”
While conceding that drawing the line against capital punishment at age 18 might be debatable, the Court said: “The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest.”
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced the decision in Roper v. Simmons (docket 03-633). The case involved a Missourian, Christopher Simmons, who was 17 at the time of a crime that led to a death sentence.
“The differences between juvenile and adult offenders are too marked and well understood to risk allowing a youthful person to receive the death penalty despite insufficient culpability,” Kennedy wrote. “When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the state can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the state cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.”
His opinion was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens. Justice Stevens wrote a brief concurring opinion, praising the Court for modernizing its view of the Eighth Amendment. Both Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia wrote dissenting opinions. Scalia’s dissent was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas. Scalia recited at length from his dissent after Kennedy announced the ruling.
The decision overturned a 5-4 decision by the Court in 1989, in Stanford v. Kentucky, allowing the execution of murderers who committed their crimes when they were 16 or 17 years old. (The Court had ruled in Thompson v. Oklahoma in 1988 that individuals under age 16 at the time of their crimes could not be given death sentences.) In the Stanford decision, the Court majority found there was no national consensus against executing those between ages 15 and 18.
In overturning the Stanford ruling, the Court on Tuesday also cast aside a statement made by four Justices in that 1989 decision that the Court should not use its own independent judgment to decide whether the death penalty was too great a punishment for particular groups of individuals or crimes. The rejection in Stanford of that role for the Court, Kennedy wrote, is “inconsistent with prior Eighth Amendment decisions.” (Kennedy was one of the four who endorsed that statement; he did not explicitly explain on Tuesday his change of mind, but he noted that the Court had abandoned that statement when it ruled, in 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, that the death penalty is unconstitutional for mentally retarded individuals.)
In finding now a national consensus against execution of juvenile offenders, the Court majority noted that 30 states now bar such sentences — 12 that have abolished the death penalty for all persons, and 18 that retain the death penalty but do not allow it for juveniles. Even in the 20 states that have not formally banned it, by legislation or court ruling, the majority said, “the practice is infrequent.” In the 16 years since 1989, it noted, six states have executed juveniles for their crimes, but, in the past 10 years, only three have done so: Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia.
Kentucky, Kennedy’s opinion noted, will not execute Kevin Stanford — the individual involved in the 1989 case — because the governor commuted his death sentence in 2003.
Kennedy conceded that, in contrast to the pace of states’ abolition of the death penalty for the mentally retarded, the rate of change regarding juveniles has been slower. Though less dramatic, the opinion said, the change remains significant. “Since Stanford, no state that previously prohibited capital punishment for juveniles has reinstated it,” Kennedy wrote. The Court also said that the trend away from executing juveniles was a consistent one.
Besides relying upon that trend, the Court also cited scientific and sociological studies showing significant differences between juveniles under 18 and adults, including less sense of responsibility, susceptibility to negative influences, and the lack of fully-formed character. “The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character,” the majority commented. “From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.”
The Court also found that the two social purposes that the death penalty serves — retribution and deterrence — have less force, or none at all, with regard to juvenile offenders. The same characteristics of youth that make then less culpable than adults also suggest they will be less susceptible to deterrence, the opinion suggested.
The Court, in finding a new consensus against executing juveniles, also relied upon what it called “the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty.” While it said that is not “controlling,” since it was the Court’s responsibility to interpret the Eighth Amendment, it added that since 1958 the Court “has referred to the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive” in defining the meaning of that Amendment.
Taking a side in the ongoing debate within the Court over the role that law in other nations and in the world should play in the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, the majority declared: “It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.”
Justice O’Connor, in a dissenting opinion speaking only for herself, said the Court had not found a genuine national consensus against juvenile executions, so, she said, it simply relied on its own independent moral judgment that death is a disproportionate penalty for any 17-year-old offender. “I do not subscribe to this judgment…The Court has adduced no evidence impeaching the seemingly reasonable conclusion reached by many state legislatures that at least some 17-year-old murderers are sufficiently mature to deserve the death penalty in an appropriate case.”
Justice Scalia, in a markedly bitter dissent, condemned every facet of the Court’s approach to the Eighth Amendment issue. He said the consensus discerned by the majority was on “the flimsiest of grounds,” and he argued that the Court illegitimately had cast aside the judgment of the people’s representatives, and substituted its own proclamation of itself as “the sole arbiter of our nation’s moral standards.” He also lambasted the majority for its reliance upon what he called “like-minded foreigners.”
