The facts of the case were never in dispute. Christopher Simmons, age 17 and three months, bragged that he wanted to murder someone. He assured his young friend Charles Benjamin that they could "get away with it" because they were juveniles. About 2 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 9, 1993, he and Benjamin broke into the home of Shirley Crook in Jefferson County, Mo., a few miles southwest of St. Louis. Simmons had become acquainted with Mrs. Crook through an automobile accident in which both were involved.
Simmons used duct tape to cover her eyes and mouth and bind her hands. They put the terrified woman into her own minivan, drove to a state park by the Meramec River, and tied her hands and feet together with electrical wire. Prolonging her agony, they wrapped her whole face in duct tape. Finally they threw her body from a bridge into the water below. Fishermen recovered her body the next day.
Simmons and Benjamin were quickly arrested and brought to trial for murder. Benjamin turned state's evidence. A jury found Simmons guilty. The trial court imposed a death sentence, but Missouri's Supreme Court, after first affirming the sentence in 1997, reversed itself in 2003. Simmons was resentenced instead to life in prison. The state appealed, and last week Missouri lost again in the U.S. Supreme Court. Simmons will live. It is more than can be said of Shirley Crook.
Joining the high court's liberal bloc, Justice Kennedy relied primarily upon "our society's evolving standards of decency." It is a talismanic phrase the court employs when it is up to hocus-pocus. In concluding that murderers under the age of 18 should be treated as a class exempt from capital punishment, Kennedy advanced three reasons: (1) an underdeveloped sense of responsibility is understandable among the young; (2) juveniles are more vulnerable to negative influences and peer pressures than older defendants; and (3) the character of a juvenile is not as well-formed as that of an adult. Therefore, from a moral standpoint, "It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult."
Justice O'Connor leaped upon Kennedy's term paper. She agreed that many young people — indeed, perhaps most young people — have an underdeveloped sense of responsibility. But differences in the aggregate frequently do not hold true when comparing individuals. "Although it may be that many 17-year-old murderers lack sufficient maturity to deserve the death penalty, some juvenile murderers may be quite mature."
She added: "Chronological age is not an unfailing measure of psychological development, and common experience suggests that many 17-year-olds are more mature than the average young 'adult.' In short, the class of offenders exempted from capital punishment by today's decision is too broad and too diverse to warrant a categorical prohibition. Indeed, the age-based line drawn by the court is indefensibly arbitrary."
Justice O'Connor's approach is both wise and constitutional. The power to punish murder is a power reserved to the states respectively or to the people. If a line is to be drawn at a defendant's 18th birthday, it is the primary responsibility of state legislatures to draw it. From the objective evidence of an emerging consensus, courts may reasonably infer a defensible contemporary interpretation of change.
Would the execution of Christopher Simmons be both cruel and unusual? The Eighth Amendment, said O'Connor, "is not a static command." Every generation bears the responsibility for defining crime and fixing punishment. The people of Missouri, acting through their legislature, have sanctioned capital punishment for murder committed by killers as young as 17. That legislative judgment is entitled to respect — but a jury's recommendation of a death sentence is not necessarily final.
What is needed in these death sentence cases, she said, is a "more narrowly tailored remedy." Appropriate weight must be given to the mitigating characteristics related to youth, but as every parent and teacher knows, not all 17-year-olds are alike. Grand juries do not indict statistical phyla. They indict individuals, one by one, and juries convict one by one. Christopher Simmons murdered a defenseless woman in cold blood. The trial court in Missouri got it right the first time. She deserved to live. He deserved to die.
(Letters to Mr. Kilpatrick should be sent by e-mail to kilpatjj@aol.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2005 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
This feature may not be reproduced or distributed electronically, in print or otherwise without the written permission of uclick and Universal Press Syndicate.
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