Justices Can’t Decide on Executing Teen Killers

A divided Supreme Court ruled today that sentencing children 15 and younger to death offends “civilized standards of decency” but left it up to states to set a minimum age for handing out capital punishment.

In what had been expected to be its most important capital punishment decision of the year, the justices could not muster a majority of votes to resolve the key question: Does execution of teen-age killers violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment?

But the court, on a 5-3 vote, overturned the death sentence of William Wayne Thompson of Oklahoma, who was sent to Death Row for a murder he committed when he was 15.

Only three justices joined Justice John Paul Stevens’ plurality opinion concluding that it violates the Eighth Amendment protection to impose the death penalty against anyone under age 16 at the time of the crime.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in a separate opinion, wrote that it was premature for the court to set a minimum death penalty age and that state legislatures should be given more time to develop a national consensus on the issue. Nonetheless, she agreed with the plurality that Thompson’s death sentence should be overturned.

The ruling brings the United States closer into line with the rest of the countries in the Western World, which either specifically or in practice prohibit the execution of children.

Joining Stevens in the ruling were Justice William J. Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Byron R. White dissented. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who joined the court in February, did not take part.