Execution of youths arises in court case

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The constitutionality of executing offenders who were juveniles when they committed their crimes was challenged before the Missouri Supreme Court Wednesday.

The case was brought by Christopher Simmons, who is on death row for murdering Shirley Crook in her Jefferson County home in September 1993. He was 17 at the time.

In June 1994, a Cape Girardeau County jury picked to hear the case in Jefferson County Circuit Court found Simmons guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death sentence.

After exhausting his regular avenues of appeal in both state and federal court, Simmons was scheduled for execution last June. That was delayed after he sought a writ of habeas corpus, which the state high court is currently considering.

In light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued last year, Simmons' attorney said the state court should find unconstitutional the Missouri law that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to be sentenced to death. The federal case struck down state laws allowing the execution of the mentally retarded.

Jennifer Brewer, a St. Louis lawyer who specializes in defending condemned prisoners, told the court the same criteria the court established regarding the mentally retarded is relevant to juveniles.

"Is there any chance children under 18 have sufficient brain development and moral culpability to make them eligible for the death penalty? The answer is no," Brewer said.

Brewer said recent scientific research into juvenile behavior shows they do not have the same decision-making capacity as adults.

Instead of treating Simmons' age as a mitigating factor at trial, Brewer said prosecutors argued that if he would commit such a crime as juvenile he would be capable of worse as he grew older.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Hawke told the court last year's decision related to the mentally retarded was irrelevant to this case. The U.S. Supreme Court decided the issue in a closely divided 1989 case, he said, when it rejected claims that sentencing juvenile offenders to death constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

Judge Laura Denvir Stith, however, said societal standards may have changed.

"You seem to want to freeze things in 1989 and not look past that," Stith said.

Chief Justice Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. told Brewer that facts of the crime indicate Simmons knew what he was doing.

Simmons abducted Crook after she discovered him breaking into her home. He bound her hands and feet, covered her head and threw her off a railroad trestle spanning the Meramec River. Her body was later discovered down river.

"The kind of things you are talking about today don't play very well on the type of crime that was committed," Limbaugh said.

Brewer disagreed.

"What happened here was his brain was not developed enough to make a rational decision," Brewer said.

The court will issue a decision at a later date.

Simmons, now 26, is incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center.

mpowers@semissourian.com

(573) 635-4608