Supreme Court to Review Death Penalty for Teens

The U.S. Supreme Court, agreeing to resolve a lingering question of morality and murder, said Monday that it would decide in the next year whether the nation may continue to impose the death penalty on teenagers who kill.

At issue is whether it is cruel and extreme to execute someone who committed a murder before turning 18.

Currently, 73 young men are on death row in 12 states for murders they committed when they were 16 or 17. More than half of them are in prison in Texas or Alabama.

Outside the United States, all nations have pledged to end executions for juvenile murderers. In the past decade, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Pakistan and Iran have carried out executions of young killers but are now committed to ending the practice, according to Amnesty International.

“The United States is the only country in the world that still regularly executes juvenile offenders,” the group said Monday. Since 1990, it has counted 34 executions of youthful murderers worldwide, 19 of them in the United States.

The Constitution forbids “cruel and unusual punishment,” but it does not define those terms. Since 1958, the high court has said it will look to “evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society” to determine what punishments are too extreme.

Although all the current justices say the death penalty is constitutional, they have voted to limit its use. For example, they ended capital punishment for rapists in 1977 and for those judged insane in 1986.

Two years ago, the justices halted execution of murderers who were mentally retarded, ruling that it is unconstitutional to impose the ultimate penalty on persons whose diminished mental capacity made them less able to control their impulses and to foresee the full consequences of their actions. These murderers with substandard intelligence should stay behind bars, but they should not suffer execution, the 6-3 majority said in the case of Atkins vs. Virginia.

In his opinion for the court in that case, Justice John Paul Stevens said America had reached a “national consensus” that it was wrong to execute persons who were mentally retarded.

After that ruling, opponents of the death penalty renewed their drive to halt the executions of juvenile murderers.

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up the issue grew out of a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court last year. In a 4-3 decision, the state high court cited the opinion by Stevens as reason for overturning the death sentence imposed on Christopher Simmons. He was 17 in 1993 when he robbed a woman, bound her in duct tape and threw her from a railroad bridge. Prosecutors said he had bragged to an accomplice that he could get away with murder because he was a juvenile.

Simmons sat on death row for a decade before Missouri’s high court voided his death sentence and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Missouri Atty. Gen. Jay Nixon appealed on behalf of prison Supt. Donald Roper, and the U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it would hear the case of Roper vs. Simmons in the fall.

The votes of four justices are required to take up a case; the votes are cast behind closed doors and the court does not reveal the names of those who voted to hear a case.

Stevens and three other liberal justices have already said they believe it is “shameful” to execute juvenile murderers. Last year, Stevens called it “a relic of the past and ... inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.” Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer said they agreed.

The three most conservative justices say the Constitution leaves these death penalty decisions to the states, their prosecutors and their juries. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented when the court struck down the death penalty for the mentally retarded

The outcome almost surely turns on Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy. They vote to uphold most death sentences, and in criminal cases they tend to line up with the chief justice. However, both joined the liberal majority to end executions for the mentally retarded.

The court focused on the issue of juvenile murders in the late 1980s. In one ruling, a 5-4 majority threw out the death sentence for a Missouri youth who committed a murder at 15. This decision set 16 as the minimum age for imposing capital punishment.

In a subsequent ruling, the court in a 5-4 decision upheld the death sentence for a 17-year-old from Kentucky. O’Connor cast the deciding vote in both cases. Since then, the rule has stood that states may impose a death sentence on a murderer who is as young as 16. Few do so, however.

Since 1990, state officials, all in the South, have carried out 19 executions of young men whose crimes predated their 18th birthday, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of these, 11 were in Texas.

Most states, including California, either set a minimum age of 18 for capital punishment, or in practice, have not sentenced anyone younger than 18 to death. The federal government also sets a minimum age of 18 for capital punishment.

Victor L. Streib, dean of the Ohio Northern U. law school and a strong foe of the death penalty for teenage murderers, said the court should set 18 as the minimum for capital punishment.

“The only debate is whether we draw the line between childhood and adulthood,” he said. “And whether it is drinking or voting or gambling, it is age 18. The international standard everywhere, but here, is 18.”