The Supreme Court decision in Missouri v. Simmons, which effectively banned capital punishment for offenders who were under the age of eighteen, represents a typical, but erroneous view of child development and accountability. (Missouri v Simmons) In the Simmons case itself demonstrates the elements of intent, planning, malice and disregard for the norms of society that are typically prerequisites for the death penalty.
Simmons planned his crime with two others, his motive was articulated as “to see if they can get away with it,” and, in considering possible punishment, Simmons dismissed severe penalties with the observation that due to his juvenile status, he would not face serious consequences. (Missouri v Simmons) The Missouri Supreme Court, and then the U. S. Supreme Court, discounted individual circumstances in determining that no person under the age of 18, regardless of the nature and circumstances of their offence, shall be subject to the penalty of death. (Missouri v Simmons) This is a poor decision on a number of levels.The notion that an individual is incapable of forming intent, planning and executing a capital crime simply because they have not turned 18 years old is unsupported by any findings in psychology and sociology.
Those who oppose the death penalty for minors and in general do so with mistaken assumptions about society. The notion of the death penalty itself is opposed on a number of grounds. First, death penalty opponents offer the idea that everyone deserves a “second chance”. (Gheragty, 2003) This is a naive and simplistic attitude that advocates seem to apply to perpetrators of heinous crimes, but not to their victims.There is no such thing as an “accidental” capital crime. If intent is proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court, and appeals have been exhausted, there is no need for a “second chance”.
A second argument against capital punishment in general is the notion that very few democratized nations use the penalty. (Gheragty, 2003) This point of view ignores certain factors that exist here, but not in most of these countries. The first of these is the fact that we, alone among nations that eschew the Death Penalty, have enforced a right to bear arms that has resulted in an extraordinarily high volume of violent crimes.These criminals, in a just society, must be punished, and our penal system is already overcrowded. The final argument against the death penalty is that it is irreversible in the case of error. New DNA evidence has exonerated a number of death-row inmates, and on more than one occasion, exonerated convicts who have already been executed.
(Gheragty, 2003) Obviously, and pro-death penalty argument should be predicated on the accuracy of the verdict, and DNA evidence makes current mistakes much less likely. These arguments against the death penalty are thin.The use of capital Punishment has several indisputable uses. First, it eliminates recidivism. That is, those that are actually executed rarely commit crimes after their execution.
(Gheragty, 2003) Second, the use of the death penalty has been determined to be a choice of the states, and illustrates a valuable component of the limitation of federal power(Gheragty, 2003). Finally, the penalty engenders both a sense of justice for the victims, and a consideration for their own sense of closure. (Gheragty, 2003) The arguments against a death sentence for minors are even more porous.The notion that a person is unable to form the proper intent because they lack the age of 18 is unsupported by psychology and physiology. (Fagan & West, 2005) Furthermore, if a jury decides that the facts of the case meet the legal burden of a capital crime, the age of the perpetrator would necessarily be immaterial.
Mens rea must be proven, and if it is, the age of the actor is necessarily considered by the finders of fact in the case. (Fagan & West, 2005) Opponents of this line of thought will argue that if there is no age limit, executions of children of any age may be allowed.This argument is backwards. Applying a particular arbitrary age limit upon a characteristic (intent) that does not develop consistently in all cases is inherently unjust.
(Fagan & West, 2005) It would be nice if our society had sufficient money and infrastructure to “rehabilitate” all criminals, but the fact of the matter is that neither we, nor ant other nation does. The first alternative to this is incarceration, which is both expensive and largely unsuccessful in rehabilitating offenders.If the appeals process is streamlined, the death penalty for “lifers” would be a much less expensive way to keep sociopaths fro m harming society’s innocents. The fact that a person is under 18 does not absolve them from being a sociopath, nor is there any evidence to support the notion that any arbitrary age cutoff is appropriate to delimit the use of the death penalty. If a child is too young to form intent, that determination should be made at trial by qualified psychologists who have actually met and evaluated the person in question. To apply a blanket standard that limits the use of discretion is inherently contributing to injustice.
