Roper v. Simmons

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. == 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. 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 drove Crook's van to Castlewood State Park and parked near a railroad trestle bridge, where Simmons and Benjamin unloaded Crook from the van. 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. Crook's body was discovered that afternoon by a group of fishermen. Simmons was heard "bragging about the murder" later that day and told his friends that he had killed a woman. 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. Simmons initially denied involvement but later confessed to the murder and agreed to perform a videotaped reenactment at the crime scene. 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. He was tried as an adult. 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. 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. The case worked its way up the court system, with the courts continuing to uphold the death sentence. 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. == Supreme Court ==

The Supreme Court reversed Stanford and held that the Eighth Amendment does not allow death sentences for juvenile offenders younger than 18. 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: • 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: Serving no legitimate penological purpose, the juvenile death penalty is held to be unconstitutionally excessive. The majority rejects the view taken by the dissent that youth could be taken into consideration as a mitigating factor during the sentencing phase. 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. Justice Scalia's primary objection was that "the real driving force" of the majority's analysis was "the Court's own judgment" about deterrence and retribution. Scalia said sentencing decisions made by juries were based on the circumstances of each case. He criticized the majority's finding of a "national consensus" when more than half the states that allowed capital punishments also allowed the sentence to be imposed on juveniles. In addition, Justice Scalia also objected in general to the Court's willingness to take guidance from foreign law in interpreting the Constitution: Though the views of our own citizens are essentially irrelevant to the Court's decision today, the views of other countries and the so-called international community take center stage He accused the majority of invoking foreign law selectively. He said the majority had taken it upon themselves to "ratify treaties on behalf of the United States" that were expressly rejected by the political branches. Scalia also attacked the majority opinion as being fundamentally antidemocratic. His dissent cited 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. He argued that it is for the legislature, acting in the manner prescribed in Article V of the Constitution to offer amendments to the Constitution in light of the evolving standard of decency, not for the Court to make what he considered de facto amendments. O'Connor dissent Justice O'Connor agreed with the Court's general methodology but disputed the majority's conclusions. She said the objective evidence for a national consensus was "weaker than in most prior cases in which the Court has struck down a particular punishment". Furthermore, she was skeptical of the Court's conclusion about diminished culpability for those who committed crimes before they turned 18 because the "mitigating characteristics associated with youth [did] not justify an absolute age limit". == Debate ==

Scientific evidence Empirical developmental studies about adolescent behavior featured prominently during oral arguments and in the Court's reasoning. The majority's conclusion about the diminished culpability of 16 and 17 year olds was mostly based on psychological and sociological studies cited by the American Psychological Association in an amicus brief. Laurence Steinberg, the chief scientific consultant for the APA's amicus brief says neuroscience evidence is "helpful and appropriate in providing concurrent validation of the behavioral science" asserting that "there are structural and functional changes in the brain during this time period [that] map onto what we know about behavioral changes". The practice of amici submitting scientific evidence has been debated for many years. Justices have themselves acknowledged their limited qualifications to evaluate scientific evidence. Foreign law Roper reignited an ongoing academic debate about how American courts should decide whether a punishment is cruel and unusual. Justices have mixed views about the relevance of international norms to "evolving standards of decency" analysis. Writing for the majority in Stanford Justice Scalia did not take the sentencing practices of foreign countries into consideration: "it is American conceptions of decency that are dispositive." Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg considered them relevant. == Impact==

The Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons overturned the death sentences of 72 others who had already been convicted for crimes they committed while younger than age 18. The greatest effects were in Texas, where 29 juvenile offenders were awaiting execution, and in Alabama, where 13 on death row had been sentenced as juveniles. A 73rd juvenile offender, Laquan T. Robinson in Delaware, had been condemned by a jury, but had his sentence hearing delayed to await the outcome of the ruling. The decision also resulted in a judge reducing the sentence of Robinson's adult accomplice, Darrell Page, to life imprisonment on the grounds that his sentence should not be harsher than Robin's sentence. A 74th juvenile offender, serial killer Harvey Miguel Robinson, remains on death row for another murder he committed after turning 18. Four other juvenile offenders had been awaiting new trials or resentencing hearings that were delayed to await the ruling: William Arthur Kelly and Robert Lewis Conyers in South Carolina, James Davolt and Christopher Huerstel in Arizona. The decision overturned the laws of 19 states that permitted 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to be sentenced to death. Subsequent developments After the Roper decision the APA filed briefs in Graham v Florida and Miller v. Alabama arguing that life without parole sentences for minors were unconstitutional based on developmental science about adolescent risk-taking behavior. The State of Alabama sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court, raising a single issue, "Whether this Court should reconsider its decision in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005)". The Supreme Court denied certiorari (i.e., declined to take the case for review) on June 19, 2006, without a published dissent. On September 3, 2025, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced that her office would request the court overturn Roper and reinstate the death sentence of a juvenile offender whose death sentence was previously vacated in the aftermath of Roper. A previous attempt by the state of Alabama to overturn Roper in 2006 was unsuccessful. == See also ==