Roper v. Simmons
Simmons was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death by a state court. He appealed his sentence on the grounds that he was seventeen at the time he committed the murder, and that a death sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court of Missouri overturned the sentence. In Stanford v. Kentucky, the United States Supreme Court upheld statutes setting the minimum age for capital punishment at sixteen. At the time, the Court had held that there was no national consensus on whether the death penalty for crimes committed at the ages of sixteen and seventeen constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court of Missouri held that a national consensus has developed since Stanford was decided, and that society’s standards of decency would no longer tolerate executions for crimes committed by defendants under the age of eighteen.
Questions Presented:
The Supreme Court of Missouri departed from this Court’s holding in Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989), in which the Court upheld
statutes under which the minimum age for capital punishment is sixteen. The Missouri court’s decision raises two questions:
1. Once this Court holds that a particular punishment is not "cruel and unusual" and thus barred by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, can a lower court reach a contrary decision based on its
own analysis of evolving standards?
2. Is the imposition of the death penalty on a person who commits a murder at age seventeen "cruel and unusual," and thus barred by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments?
