Missouri Juvenile Offender Spared Death, August 26, 2003

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Missouri Juvenile Offender Spared Death

Christopher Simmons, on Missouri’s death row since 1994 for a crime he committed at age seventeen, will not be put to death. Citing the Convention on the Rights of the Child in its landmark decision in Simmons’ case, the state’s highest court declared on August 26, 2003, that “a national consensus has developed against the execution of juvenile offenders” and found that such executions violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The Missouri Supreme Court’s decision means that a total of seventeen states, in addition to federal civilian and military courts, require a minimum age of eighteen for the imposition of the death penalty. Twelve additional states and the District of Columbia bar the death penalty entirely.

The ruling drew heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which held that the execution of offenders with mental retardation was unconstitutional because the practice violated “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of an emerging society.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the juvenile death penalty in 1989, but the Missouri court concluded that the nation’s high court would reverse itself if it ruled today.

At least four of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are already on record against the death penalty for juvenile offenders. Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, said in October 2002 that the execution of juvenile offenders is “a relic of the past.” The four concluded, “We should put an end to this shameful practice.”

Yesterday’s decision spares Simmons and Antonio Richardson, convicted in 1991 for a crime he committed at age sixteen, but it was only a partial victory for the observance of international law. The Missouri court resentenced Simmons to life imprisonment without possibility of release. Article 37(a) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the same article the court cites in its opinion, provides that “[n]either capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below eighteen years of age.”

The slip opinion in State ex rel. Simmons v. Roper is available here.

Last updated on August 27, 2003

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