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ROPER v. SIMMONS Supreme Court Case - Juvenile Execution / Death Penalty

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In my opinion, this case is seen as Judicial activism because it is "setting aside government acts." It is ignoring or disregarding previous decisions to make this one final decision.

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This court case was very significant because it overruled older cases and decisions and impacts many lives to this day. There are many minors that commit offenses that could be given a death penalty as their punishment. This court case final decision affects many people daily.

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The lower case court came from Supreme Court of Missouri. Using the reasoning from the Atkins case, the Missouri court decided, 6-to-3, that the U.S. Supreme Court's 1989 decision in Stanford v. Kentucky, which held that executing minors was not unconstitutional, was no longer valid. The opinion in Stanford v. Kentucky had relied on a finding that a majority of Americans did not consider the execution of minors to be cruel and unusual.

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"Everyone agrees that there is some age below which juveniles can't be subjected to the death penalty."
"Every country in the world, including China and Nigeria and Saudi Arabia and the... and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, every one has agreed formally and legislatively to renounce this punishment, and the only country besides the United States that has not is Somalia, which as this Court was reminded yesterday, has no organized government."
The respondent does not agree with this case and is going against it and mentions driving ages in states and why children should not be given the death penalty because it is simply not constitutional.

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"The Missouri court justified its departure from Stanford on Atkins v. Virginia, but the result it reached is quite different from the result in Stanford."
"There are 17-year-olds who are equally culpable with those who are 18, 20, 25, or some other age."
Overall the petitioner is talking about how people underage, to a certain extent, can be held responsible to their actions just as much as if they were adults. They talk a lot about the Adkins V Virginia case and how it has to do with this case.

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Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death in 1993, when he was still a minor. A series of appeals to state and federal courts lasted until 2002, but each appeal was rejected. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing the mentally disabled (or "mentally retarded" in the vernacular of the day) violated the Eighth and 14th Amendment prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment because a majority of Americans found it cruel and unusual, the Missouri Supreme Court decided to reconsider Simmons' case.

"Using the reasoning from the Atkins case held that executing minors was not unconstitutional, was no longer valid..." "Finding that a majority of Americans were now opposed to the execution of minors, the court held that such executions were now unconstitutional."

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Justice Scalia, with The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
" What a mockery today’s opinion makes of Hamilton’s expectation, announcing the Court’s conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years—not, mind you, that this Court’s decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. "
"To allow lower courts to behave as we do, “updating” the Eighth Amendment as needed, destroys stability and makes our case law an unreliable basis for the designing of laws by citizens and their representatives, and for action by public officials. The result will be to crown arbitrariness with chaos."

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Justice Stevens, with Justice Ginsburg joins, concurring. "...reaffirmation of the basic principle that informs the Court’s interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. If the meaning of that Amendment had been frozen when it was originally drafted, it would impose no impediment to the execution of 7-year-old children today. See Stanford v. Kentucky,..."
"...our understanding of the Constitution does change from time to time has been settled since John Marshall breathed life into its text. If great lawyers of his day—Alexander Hamilton, for example—were sitting with us today, I would expect them to join Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court. In all events, I do so without hesitation."

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In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court ruled that standards of decency have evolved so that executing minors is "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The majority cited a consensus against the juvenile death penalty among state legislatures, and its own determination that the death penalty is a disproportionate punishment for minors. Finally the Court pointed to "overwhelming" international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

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Does the execution of minors violate the prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" found in the Eighth Amendment and applied to the states through the incorporation doctrine of the 14th Amendment?
THE ANSWER
The majority cited a consensus against the juvenile death penalty among state legislatures, and its own determination that the death penalty is a disproportionate punishment for minors.

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Chief Justice William Rehinqust and associate justices Kennedy, Stevens, O’Connor, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer all took place in the reviewing of the case.

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Roper V Simmons court case took place in 2005.