Roper v. Simmons
| Roper v. Simmons | ||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States | ||||||||
| Argued October 13, 2004 Decided March 1, 2005 | ||||||||
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| Holding | ||||||||
| The Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed. Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed. | ||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||||
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| Laws applied | ||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. VIII, XIV |
Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled on March 1, 2005, that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18, in a 5-4 decision.
The case
This case, which originated in Missouri, involves Christopher Simmons, who in 1993 at the age of 17, concocted the plan to murder Shirley Crook, bringing two younger friends, Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer, into the plot. The plan was to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up a victim, and tossing the victim off a bridge. The three met in the middle of the night; however, Tessmer then dropped out of the plot. The two— Simmons and Benjamin—broke into Mrs. Crook's home, bound her hands and covered her eyes. They drove her to a state park and threw her off a bridge.
Once this case was brought to trial, the evidence against Simmons was overwhelming, pointing to his guilt. He had confessed to the murder, performed a videotaped reenactment at the crime scene, and there was testimony from Tessmer against Simmons that showed premeditation (he discussed the plot in advance and later bragged about the crime). The jury returned a guilty verdict. Even considering mitigating factors (no prior criminal history, sympathy from Simmons' family, and most importantly his age), the jury nonetheless imposed a death sentence. Simmons' case was appealed, citing ineffective trial support. His age, and thus impulsiveness, along with a troubled background were brought up as issues. The trial court upheld the jury's death sentence.
The case worked its way up the court system, with the courts continuing to uphold the death sentence. However, in light of a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), that overturned the death penalty for the mentally retarded, the Missouri Supreme Court reconsidered Simmons' case and concluded that "a national consensus has developed against the execution of juvenile offenders" and sentenced Simmons to life imprisonment without parole.
The State of Missouri appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. (The name of the action, Roper v. Simmons, comes from the names of Donald P. Roper, a Missouri Dept of Corrections official, who was a party to the action in official name only, and Christopher Simmons, who was the defendant in the original action).
The ruling
The case was argued on October 13, 2004. The constitutionality of capital punishment for persons who were juveniles when their crimes were committed was put into question, citing the Eighth Amendment that protects individuals from cruel and unusual punishment.
Previously, a 1988 Supreme Court decision Thompson v. Oklahoma barred execution of offenders under the age of 16. In 1989, another case, Stanford v. Kentucky upheld the possibility of capital punishment for offenders who are 16 or 17 years old when they committed the capital offense. The same day in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in the case, Penry v. Lynaugh, that it was permissible to execute the mentally retarded. However, in 2003, that decision was reconsidered in Atkins v. Virginia, citing that decency standards had evolved and execution of the mentally retarded was now considered to be cruel and unusual punishment and thus unconstitutional.
This case, Roper v. Simmons, brought the issue to the table again. In question is whether it is Constitutionally permissible to execute an offender who committed a capital crime while under the age of 18. As in the issue of executing the mentally retarded, the Supreme Court has now decided that society’s standards have evolved since the 1989 case of Thompson v. Oklahoma and that it is indeed cruel and unusual punishment to execute a juvenile, under age 18.
Supporting this "evolving standard", is the body of scientific and sociological research [1] that finds juveniles have a lack of maturity and sense of responsibility, compared to adults. Adolescents are overrepresented statistically in virtually every category of reckless behavior. In recognition of the comparative immaturity and irresponsibility of juveniles, almost every State prohibits those under age 18 from voting, serving on juries, or marrying without parental consent. Juveniles are also more vulnerable to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure. They have less control, or experience with control, over their own environment. They also lack the freedom that adults have, in escaping a criminogenic setting.
Another key basis of support for the “national consensus” on the death penalty for juveniles is the increasing infrequency that it is applied at the state level. While 20 states have the juvenile death penalty on the books, only six states have executed prisoners for crimes committed as juveniles, since 1989. And, just three states have done so in the past 10 years: Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. Furthermore, five of the states that allowed the juvenile death penalty at the time of the 1989 case have since abolished it. Thus, the execution of juveniles is indeed becoming increasingly unusual in the United States and a “national consensus” has developed.
In evaluating whether penalties violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court has taken guidance from the law of foreign countries and international bodies. Since 1990, only seven other countries – Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China – have executed juveniles. Since then, however, each of those seven countries has either abolished the death penalty for juveniles or made public disavowal of the practice. Now, one finds the stark reality that the United States stand alone, as the only country in the world that continues to allow execution of juveniles. Furthermore, only the United States and Somalia have yet to ratify Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (September 2, 1990), which expressly prohibits capital punishment for crimes committed by juveniles.
In drawing the line at 18 years of age for actions with death eligibility, the Supreme Court considered that is also where the law draws the line between minority and adulthood for a multitude of other purposes, overturning its holding in Stanford v. Kentucky that such a consideration was irrelevant.
The dissent
Both the Scalia dissent, joined by Rehnquist and Thomas, and Justice O’Connor’s separate dissent put into question whether a “national consensus” had indeed formed among the state laws. At the time of the ruling 18 of 38 death penalty states (47%) prohibited the execution of juveniles.
However, the primary objection of the Court's two originalists, Scalia and Thomas, is not whether such a consensus has developed or not, but why that should be relevant. From an originalist perspective, the question presented by Roper v. Simmons is very different than the question the Court answers in its verdict; from an originalist perspective, the question is not "does society now frown on the execution of minors, and if it does, how can we accommodate that view?", but rather, "was the execution of a minor considered cruel and unusual at the point at which the Bill of Rights was ratified?".
In addition, and for much the same reason, Scalia also objects in general to the Court's willingness to take guidance from foreign law in interpreting the Constitution; his dissent questions not only the relevance of foreign law, but also accuses the court of "invok[ing] alien law when it agrees with one's own thinking, and ignor[ing] it otherwise", noting that in the case of abortion U.S. laws are less restrictive than the international norm. In a roundtable discussion with Justice Breyer, at American University Law School, Scalia posed the question: "what is the criterion for whether or not to adopt foreign precedent? That it agrees with you?".
Scalia also attacked the majority opinion as being fundamentally anti-democratic. His dissent cites a passage from the Federalist Papers in arguing that the role of the judiciary in the constitutional scheme is to interpret the law as formulated in democratically selected legislatures. In other words, Scalia argues that the job of the court is to rule what the law says, not what the law should say, even if what the law says might be considered "wrong" when viewed in terms of an "evolving standard of decency"; it is for the legislature, acting in the manner prescribed in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, to offer amendments to the Constitution in light of the evolving standard of decency, not for the Court to arbitrarily make de facto amendments. He challenges in very strong terms the right of unelected "lawyers" to discern moral values and to impose them on the people in the name of flexible readings of the constitutional text. In general, Scalia favors the right of states to make decisions on issues such as capital punishment. This Supreme Court decision overrides those decisions made by the states.
Implications
Constitutional Jurisprudence
The majority ruling highlights several controversies in the field of constitutional jurisprudence. The first is the use of the concept of an evolving "national consensus" to allow for the re-interpretation of previous rulings. What constitutes evidence for such a consensus - and from where the judicial branch derives its authority to determine it and implement it into law, a function constitutionally vested in the legislative branch - especially in the case o