Court - Death sentence wrong for juveniles

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Citing changing societal standards, a closely divided Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday declared unconstitutional the execution of offenders who were juveniles at the time they committed their crimes.

The 4-3 decision came in the case of Christopher Simmons, who was 17 years old when he murdered a Jefferson County woman in 1993. A Cape Girardeau County jury found Simmons guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death sentence in 1994.

The court's majority commuted Simmons' death penalty to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Attorney General Jay Nixon said he will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This case flies in the face of U.S. Supreme Court precedent," Nixon said.

Simmons' attorney, Jennifer Herndon of St. Louis, said the federal high court has long recognized that what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment changes with the attitudes of society.

"What this precedent says is we have to be governed by evolving standards of decency," Simmons said.

In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing those who committed crimes at age 15 or younger violates the Eighth Amendment. A year later, however, the court upheld capital punishment for juvenile offenders ages 16 and 17.

The same day the latter decision was issued, the court also upheld executions for the mentally retarded. However, the court reversed itself last year, holding that a national consensus against applying capital punishment to the mentally retarded had since developed.

Judge Laura Denvir Stith, who wrote the principal opinion in Simmons' case, found that a similar change has taken place in regard to juveniles.

Since death sentences for juveniles were upheld in 1989, the majority noted that several states have barred such executions and that even where still allowed, few such sentences have been carried out.

Voicing the state court's opinion, Stith wrote, "the execution of persons for crimes committed when they were under 18 years of age violates the 'evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society' and is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment."

Stith's opinion was joined by Chief Justice Ronnie L. White and judges Richard B. Teitelman and Michael A. Wolff.

In dissent, Judge William Ray Price Jr. said only the U.S. Supreme Court can reverse itself.

Price noted that the federal high court has had ample opportunities in recent years to overturn its earlier ruling but chose not to do so. Judges Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. and Duane Benton joined the dissenting opinion.

Of the 38 states that allow the death penalty, Missouri is one of 17 states that set age 16 as the minimum to be eligible for capital punishment. Another five states allow such sentences for 17-year-olds.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office said it appears Tuesday's ruling, if upheld, would affect only one other Missouri death row inmate.

Tuesday's decision also could affect the case of Antonio Richardson, whose execution was stayed in 2002 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Richardson, was convicted of murdering two girls in St. Louis in 1991. He was 16 at the time.

In 1993, Frederick Lashley became the only person since the state took over executions from the counties in 1937 to be put to death for a crime committed as a juvenile.

Body thrown in river

On Sept. 10, 1993, Simmons abducted Shirley Crook after she discovered him breaking into her Jefferson County home. After binding her hands and feet and covering her head, Simmons threw her off a railroad trestle spanning the Meramec River. Her body was later discovered downriver.

After exhausting his regular avenues of appeal in state and federal courts, Simmons was scheduled for execution in June 2002. The imposition of sentence was delayed after Simmons sought a writ of habeas corpus, which the court granted Tuesday.

Simmons, now 27, is incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center.

mpowers@semissourian.com

(573) 635-4608

The Associated Press contributed to this report.