Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18. (hereinafter cited as Roper). The 5–4 decision overruled Stanford v. Kentucky, in which the court had upheld execution of offenders at or above age 16. Roper overturned statutes in 19 states.
Background
In a line of cases reaching back to Weems v. United States (1910) the Supreme Court has elaborated that the Eighth Amendment protects the dignity of all persons, "even those convicted of heinous crimes". Excessive and disproportionate punishments are prohibited as cruel and unusual punishment by the Court's precedent. The Court has applied an "evolving standards of decency" test to decide which punishments are unconstitutionally excessive.
The Court has limited the death penalty to offenders who commit the "most serious crimes" and who are "the most deserving of execution" based on their culpability and blameworthiness. The Supreme Court has restricted death sentences by crime (see Coker v. Georgia and Enmund v. Florida) and class of offender (see Thompson v. Oklahoma, Ford v. Wainwright and Atkins v. Virginia).
When the Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia that decision was justified by retributive and deterrent purposes of state death penalty statutes. When Atkins was decided in 2002 the Court, quoting from Coker v. Georgia, brought its own judgment "to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment" and decided that diminished personal capacity makes the death penalty an excessive punishment for the intellectually disabled because the public purposes of retribution and deterrence are not served by executing the mentally impaired.
In 1987, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States found in Roach and Pinkerton v. United States that the United States is violating their human rights under Article I, VII, XXVI of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man by executing them for crimes committed under the age of 18.
In 1988, a plurality barred execution of offenders under the age of 16 in Thompson v. Oklahoma.. The following year Stanford v. Kentucky, upheld the possibility of capital punishment for offenders who were 16 or 17 years old when they committed the capital offense. The court found there was no national consensus that the execution of older adolescents was cruel and unusual under "evolving standards of decency" because the sentence was still permitted by a majority of death penalty jurisdictions.. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, concurring in the Stanford judgment, was critical of the plurality's refusal "to judge whether the nexus between the punishment imposed and the defendant's blameworthiness is proportional."
In the Roper decision, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said the Stanford plurality had failed “to bring its independent judgment to bear on the proportionality of the death penalty for a particular class of...offenders". Finding that "penological justifications for the death penalty apply to [juveniles] with lesser force than to adults", The Court reversed Stanford.Roper, at 571.
Case history In the state of Missouri in 1993, 17-year-old Christopher Simmons concocted a plan to commit burglary and murder, having previously told friends that he "wanted to kill someone" and that he believed he could "get away with it" because he was a juvenile. Simmons convinced two of his friends to join him: 15-year-old Charles Benjamin and 16-year-old John Tessmer.Roper, at 556. On September 9, Simmons met with Benjamin and Tessmer at 2 a.m. to carry out their plan, but Tessmer decided to leave before any crimes were committed. Simmons and Benjamin later broke into the home of Shirley Crook, a 46-year-old neighbor, where they duct-taped her mouth and eyes shut before abducting her in her van., at 56. Simmons drove Crook's van to Castlewood State Park and parked near a railroad trestle bridge, where Simmons and Benjamin unloaded Crook from the van.Br. of Roper 6. They then covered her head with a towel, wrapped her in electrical wire, and threw her off of the trestle bridge into the Meramec River while she was still alive and conscious.Roper, at 556–557; at 618 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Crook's body was discovered that afternoon by a group of fishermen.Roy Malone, Teens Killed Woman, Got $6, Police Say, , September 11, 1993.
Simmons was heard "bragging about the murder" later that day and told his friends that he had killed a woman., at 957. The day after the murder, police arrested Simmons and Benjamin at their high school after receiving a tip that they were involved in the murder. At the police station in Fenton, Missouri, Simmons waived his right to attorney and agreed to answer questions.Br. of Roper 5. Simmons initially denied involvement but later confessed to the murder and agreed to perform a videotaped reenactment at the crime scene.Br. of Simmons 2. Simmons further told detectives that he recognized Crook as someone he had been in a minor traffic accident with several months earlier and that he believed Crook recognized him as well.
Simmons was charged with first degree murder, burglary, kidnapping, and stealing.State v. Simmons, 944 S.W.2d 165 (Mo. 1997) (hereinafter cited as Simmons). He was tried as an adult.Roper, at 557. At trial, Tessmer testified that Simmons planned the murder in advance. The jury found Simmons guilty of Crook's murder and recommended the death penalty, which the trial court imposed. For his role, Benjamin was sentenced to life without parole.Paul Raeburn, Too Immature for the Death Penalty?, , October 17, 2004.
Lower court proceedings Simmons moved for the trial court to set aside the conviction and sentence, citing, in part, ineffective assistance of counsel. His age, and thus impulsiveness, along with a troubled background, were brought up as issues that Simmons claimed should have been raised at the sentencing phase. The trial court rejected the motion, and Simmons appealed.Simmons, at 170-171.
The case worked its way up the court system, with the courts continuing to uphold the death sentence.Simmons v. Bowersox, 235 F.3d 1124 (8th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, . Simmons had an execution date scheduled for May 1, 2002. However, in light of a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Atkins v. Virginia,. that overturned the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, Simmons filed a new petition for state post-conviction relief. The Supreme Court of Missouri concluded that "a national consensus has developed against the execution of juvenile offenders" and held that such punishment now violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. They reduced the death sentences of Simmons and Antonio Richardson, who was 16 when he participated in the murders of Julie and Robin Kerry, to life imprisonment without parole.
The State of Missouri appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.. (Donald P. Roper, the Superintendent of the correctional facility where Simmons was held, was a party to the action because it was brought as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.)
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court reversed Stanford and held that the Eighth Amendment does not allow death sentences for juvenile offenders younger than 18.Roper at 574
Opinion of the Court
Under the "evolving standards of decency" test, the Court held that it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute a person who was under the age of 18 when the crime was committed.
The Court found a "national consensus" based on state laws and jury sentencing behavior. At the time of the decision, 20 states had the juvenile death penalty on the books, but only six states had executed prisoners since 1989 for crimes committed as juveniles. Only three states had done so since 1994: Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. Furthermore, five of the states that allowed the juvenile death penalty when Stanford was decided in 1989 had since abolished it.
Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy says:
As in Atkins, the objective indicia of consensus in this case—the rejection of the juvenile death penalty in the majority of States; the infrequency of its use even where it remains on the books; and the consistency in the trend toward abolition of the practice—provide sufficient evidence that today our society views juveniles, in the words Atkins used respecting the mentally retarded, as "categorically less culpable than the average criminal".
The Court's "independent judgement" concluding that the death penalty was an unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment for juveniles as a class relied on psychological and sociological studies to establish the diminished culpability of juveniles. Justice Kennedy makes three points explaining why juveniles are less culpable than adults:
Juveniles' "lack of maturity and underdeveloped sense of responsibility" effects their decision making. Kennedy quotes from a study about adolescent behavior stating "adolescents are overrepresented statistically in virtually every category of reckless behavior". Juveniles are more vulnerable to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure. Kennedy says the circumstances of youth contribute to a juvenile's vulnerability. He cites Steinberg & Scott for the point that "legal minors lack the freedom that adults have to extricate them from a criminogenic setting".See . Juveniles have more capacity to reform because their identities are less fixed than adults.
The Court concludes that the diminished culpability of juveniles negates the value of retribution as a penological goal:
Retribution is not proportional if the law's most severe penalty is imposed on one whose culpability or blameworthiness is diminished, to a substantial degree, by reason of youth and immaturity.
The Court notes the "absence of evidence of deterrent effect". The majority reasons that adolescents are not likely to be deterred, quoting from the Thompson plurality opinion to explain that imposing the death penalty would not serve a deterrent purpose for a class of prisoners who were unlikely to engage in "the kind of cost benefit analysis that attaches any weight to the possibility of execution".Roper at 572
Serving no legitimate penological purpose, the juvenile death penalty is held to be unconstitutionally excessive.Roper, at 571-572. The majority rejects the view taken by the dissent that youth could be taken into consideration as a mitigating factor during the sentencing phase.
Finally, Justice Kennedy supports the Court's decision by looking to trends in other countries. He says the United States "stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty", but admits this fact is "not controlling":
The opinion of the world community, while not controlling outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions.
The Court takes note of the fact that only Somalia and the United States had not ratified Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Justice Kennedy says the United Kingdom's abolition of the juvenile death penalty (and subsequent abolition of the death penalty in general) "bears particular relevance here in light of the historic ties between our countries".
Dissents The dissents questioned the majority's finding that a "national consensus" had formed, its methodology and the propriety of basing constitutional interpretation on foreign laws.
Scalia dissent Justice Scalia wrote a dissent joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas.