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The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition

Roper v. Simmons

by Thomas Tandy Lewis

Citation: 543 U.S. 551

Announced: March 1, 2005

Issues: Capital punishment; Juvenile justice

Relevant Amendments: Eighth and Fourteenth

Significance: In this controversial decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment forbade the execution of an offender who was younger than the age of eighteen when he committed the capital crime.

Precedents

When ruling in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) that capital punishment per se does not violate the Eighth Amendment, the majority of justices on the Supreme Court accepted the premise that the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” should be assessed according to society’s “evolving sense of decency.” Such a standard, of course, is rather subjective. In Ford v. Wainwright (1986), the justices voted 5-4 to disallow the execution of insane persons. In Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), the Court disallowed the execution of someone younger than sixteen, in Stanford v. Kentucky (1988) it upheld the execution of persons of age seventeen and older. In 1989, the Court allowed the execution of mentally retarded murders, but it overturned this decision in Atkins v. Virginia (2002). The Court’s reasoning in the Atkins case led many informed observers to expect the Court to disallow the execution anyone classified as a minor in the near future.

The Crime and Sentence

In 1993, Christopher Simmons was seventeen years old when he formulated a plan to murder Shirley Crook, and he convinced a younger friend to participate in the crime. The two adolescents broke into the victim’s house, murdered her, and then drove to a state park, where they threw the body off a bridge. Simmons boasted about the act to others, and he confessed shortly after his arrest. At trial, based on the overwhelming evidence and the shocking nature of the murder, Simmons was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. In 2003, Missouri’s Supreme Court, referring to the recent Atkins precedent, declared that “a national consensus has developed against the execution of juvenile offenders” and reduced the sentence to life imprisonment without parole. The state of Missouri appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case and then upheld the ruling by a 5-4 margin.

Supporting Simmons, the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ) filed amicus briefs. The APA questioned the sufficient development of adolescents, citing that brain development in the area of decision making continued into young adulthood. The APA contended that as minors were not fully developed, their threat to society was undeterminable. Joining them, the CJJ referenced development issues and emphasized the trend of wrongful imprisonment and sentencing for minors, which was often based on coercion and faulty confessions. Both groups claimed that imposing capital punishment on minors robbed them of basic rights.

The Supreme Court’s Decision

Speaking for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared that under the “evolving standards of decency test” it is unconstitutional to execute a person under the age of eighteen at the time of the crime. Kennedy wrote that the ultimate punishment should be reserved to only the “worst offenders,” and he observed that only three states had carried out executions of juvenile offenders during the previous decade. He further pointed to both common observations and “scientific and sociological studies” that tend to confirm that young persons often manifest “a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility,” when meant that young murderers were “not as reprehensible” as adults who committed murder. Defending such a double standard, he noted that almost every state prohibited those under eighteen from voting, serving on juries, or marring without parental consent. Drawing the line at eighteen, moreover, was not arbitrary in view of the fact that many laws referred to this age as the demarcation line between minority and adulthood. The most controversial portion of the opinion was its reference to world opinion and laws of foreign nations. Referring to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by all countries except the United States and Somalia, Kennedy wrote that “the United States now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty.”

Two justices, Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O’Connor, wrote dissenting opinions. Challenging the majority’s view on the existence of a “national consensus,” both justices pointed out that only eighteen states, fewer than half of those having the death penalty, prohibited the imposition of the penalty on minors. Scalia registered other strong disagreements with Kennedy’s opinion. Objecting to his method of constitutional interpretation, Scalia argued that instead of inquiring about society’s current standards of decency, the Court should investigate dominant ideas about those eligible for the death penalty when the Eighth Amendment was ratified. Elected legislatures should be allowed to decide which public policies violate current standards, for it is undemocratic for unelected courts to substitute their judgments for those of the legislatures. In addition, Scalia strongly objected to the majority’s reference to foreign laws in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, and he accused the liberal members of the Court inconsistency because they ignored the laws of other countries when they disagreed with them.

Reaction

Because it is not particularly unusual for juveniles to commit horrendous crimes, numerous people throughout the country believed that the Court’s judgment in Simmons was an unwise decision. The impact of the decision was immediately felt in the state of Virginia, where Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the two participants in the notorious Beltway sniper attacks, was no longer eligible to receive a death sentence.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Roper V. Simmons." The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition, edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=BOR2e_0457.
APA 7th
Lewis, T. T. (2017). Roper v. Simmons. In T. T. Lewis (Ed.), The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Roper V. Simmons." Edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis. The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.