Supreme
Court to Consider Death Penalty for Teens
by
PATRICK NOVECOSKY
Register
Correspondent
WASHINGTON
- Christopher
Simmons was eager to kill. As a 17-year-old Missouri
high school
student, Simmons told his friends just how he'd do it: He would find
someone to burglarize, tie him up and ultimately push him off a
bridge.
On
Sept. 8, 1993, Simmons and a friend broke into Shirley Crook's mobile
home in Fenton, Mo., bound her with duct tape, put her in the back of
her minivan and drove for more than an hour before stopping to throw
her, still alive and
bound,
into the Meramec River
.
A
jury convicted Simmons of capital murder in 1994. Last year, Missouri
's Supreme Court
ruled that executing Simmons would be unconstitutionally cruel and
unusual punishment because of his age at the time of the crime.
The
ruling followed the constitutional reasoning of the U.S. Supreme Court
in banning the execution of the mentally disabled in 2002. At the
time, 30 states had already abolished capital punishment for the
mentally handicapped.
Simmons'
fate now lies in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. This fall, it
will revisit the constitutionality of executing teen-aged murderers.
The
nation's highest court last addressed the issue in 1988 and 1989.
ruling the death penalty out for offenders who were under 16 when
their crimes were committed but allowing it for those 16 and 17.
continuing page one story
Since
then, five states have banned the execution of young offenders. Today,
only 22 of the 38 states with a death penalty allow it for minors.
Harris
County
, Texas
. which includes
Houston
, is the only
jurisdiction in the country with executions currently scheduled for
those who committed capital murder while under age 18. Last month, a
Houston
judge ruled that
in March the state will execute a killer who was 17 at the time of his
offense, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to examine the
constitutionality of executing young offenders.
In
2002, 71 people in 13 states were executed -- 33 of them in Texas
, according to the
U.S. Department of Justice.
"
Texas
has a horrible
reputation," said Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston,
one of the most outspoken American bishops against the death penalty.
"The fact that they would execute a child just compounds the
horror of this brutal assault upon human life that is a gift from God.
To inflict capital punishment on children seems barbaric and lacking
an understanding of children and their abilities at a tender age to
make decisions - even though they've done terrible things."
Death-Row
Chaplain
Father
Ron Cloutier, director of correctional ministries for the Diocese of
Houston-Galveston. has daily contact with prisoners - including those
on death row. He says once they reach their mid-20s, most young
killers are extremely remorseful for their crimes.
"For
the most part, those I work with on death row were under the influence
of drugs or alcohol when they killed," he explained. "They've
had years to sober up and mature. When you talk to someone who
committed a crime when they were 16, they were still fighting their
hormones and did a lot of foolish things. When they're older, they
learn that there are different ways to express that rebellion."
Former
Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Catholic, told the Register that
capital punishment is reserved for the most brutal killers and is
morally appropriate even for teens.
"In
the Catholic faith, the age of reason is age 7. So you can commit
venial or mortal sin at a very tender age," he explained. "With
someone who is well past puberty, who is certainly capable of making
informed decisions about his or her conduct, it' those individuals
commit premeditated killing with malice, with viciousness, the death
penalty in extreme cases is appropriate - and quite truthfully is
appropriate under Catholic moral teaching."
Keating
raised the example of Sean Sellers who, as a 16-year-old, murdered a
convenience-store clerk. Six months later, he mur-
dcred
his mother and stepfather. Of the 54 people executed while Keating was
governor of Oklahoma
from 1995-2003,
Sellers was the only young killer.
"Here's
an individual who had an opportunity with reflection and with
premeditation to repeat the killing that he did to an innocent
convenience-store clerk who was sipping a cup of coffee when he shot
him in the head," Keating said. "Sellers knew exactly what
he was doing, planned it and executed it with a mature mind and evil
heart. I think individuals like that should forfeit their lives."
While
the Church recognizes that legitimate state authorities have an
obligation to protect society from aggressors, the Catechism of the
Catholic Church says capital punishment may be used only "if this
is the only way of effectively defending human lives against the
unjust aggressor."
In
his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John
Paul I1 wrote that "today, ... as a result of steady improvements
in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if
not practically nonexistent."
`If
Clergy Speak'
Kevin
Mannix, a Catholic attorney who ran for governor of Oregon
two years ago,
says the death penalty should remain an option for U.S.
juries.
"In
an existential sense, the Holy Father has said that our prison system
and justice system is sophisticated enough to protect society with
life imprisonment," he said. "I differ with that
interpretation of our system. I think there is room for a moral
determination that a person is so dangerous to society that the system
isn't safe enough, other than the death penalty, to assure its
protection."
James
Megivern, a Catholic whose 1995 book, The Death Penalty: A Historical
and Theological Sunvey, chronicles the history of capital punishment,
says U.S. Catholics are evenly split on the issue.
"One
of the studies indicated that Catholics are overwhelmingly opposed to
[capital punishment] when it is opposed from the pulpit," he said.
"If clergy are informed and willing to speak out, people -
especially the younger generation - understand what was being said.
John Paul II has put the whole question back in terms of the Gospel.
Could you see Jesus operating a guillotine?"
Bishop
Fiorenza agrees.
"There
is a mind-set here that if you're guilty of a capital crime, you have
to pay with your life," he said. "Thank God, the attitude is
changing. We see great progress in that young people are now becoming
opposed to capital punishment. In time, I think a majority of people
will be in opposition to it. It's only then that the politicians will
come around."
But
legal experts are uncertain how the Supreme Court will rule when its
decision comes down this fall. Cloutier, who points out that the
United States
is one of the few
countries that executes young people, says despite the high court's
current 5-4 split in favour of the death penalty, it's hard to predict
how it will decide.
"There's
a lot of public sentiment that a lot of innocent people are being
executed," he said. "I think the mind of the court is
changing slightly. That might not have been the case a few years
ago."
Patrick
Novecoskv writes from Ann Arbor
,
Michigan
.
|