Death Penalty: The Roper V. Simmons Case

This paper discusses three critical issues in the criminal justice system. It touches on the general issues of punishment philosophies, sentence decision making, and prison overcrowding and focused more specifically on the negative effects of each. Highlighted in this informational paper is the interrelated nature of the issues; each issue affects and is affected by the others. Data and information has been gathered from the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Amnesty International, the NAACP Legal Defense

Christopher Simmons was charged with burglary and the murder of Shirley Crook. He and his two friends plotted to break into her home rob and murder her. One of his friends decided not to go through with the plot, but his other friend helped. They went in the middle of the night into her home bound her and threw her over the bridge. At trial with the evidence, videotaped confession from Simmons, and the testimony against him from his friend proving that it was a premeditated plan the jury recommended a death sentence. He appealed his case with counsel and felt his past history of a clean record and his troubled background should have been a factor in the sentencing. Simmons’s case worked its way to the courts and it was eventually overturned. According to Birckhead (2008), “With its decision in Roper v. Simmons,11 invalidating the imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were younger than eighteen when their crimes were committed,12 the Court has, perhaps, heralded yet another shift in the perspective of the legal system-and the culture at large-towards adolescents who commit crimes”(p.389). The Supreme Court ruled that the punishment now violates the Eighth Amendment 's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Thus, they sentenced Simmons to life imprisonment without parole.

Each year, approximately about 10,000 innocent people in the United States get convicted of serious crimes that they did not commit. And at least four percent of them receive the death penalty being completely innocent. Scenarios like this happen all the time because there are more and more false persecutions each day which can be easily avoided. Many people are occupying prisons all over the world, for felonies they did not execute. More than 200 people have been exonerated through DNA testing nationwide. But why do these wrongful convictions keep happening?

Emmaleigh Elizabeth Barringer was a 10-month-old infant who was nearly dismantled and pronounced brain dead from a 32-year-old Benjamin Taylor in West Virginia who had viciously raped the infant. The 10 month old infant later died from her injuries. Which means that he must have assaulted the infant not only vaginally but anally causing the child’s organs to shut down and causing massive blood loss and trauma to the brain stem, she was pronounced brain dead after the crime, and later pronounced dead. West Virginia is one of 18 states in the union which do not have capital punishment. The Mountain State abolished the death penalty in 1965. That must be nice for the malicious infant rapist and murderer. Pleading temporary insanity nor life in

Each year approximately about 10,000 innocent people in the United States get convicted of serious crimes that they did not commit. And at least four percent of them receive the death penalty being completely innocent. Scenarios like this happen all the time because there are more and more false persecutions each day which can be easily avoided. Many people are occupying prisons all over the world, for felonies they did not execute. More than 200 people have been exonerated through DNA testing nationwide. But why do these wrongful convictions keep happening?

The death penalty has existed for several decades in the United States executing over 1,431 people since 1976, when the death penalty no longer violated the eighth amendment. Charles Brooks, a black male, aged 40, was executed in Texas in 1982, for the Murder of white male, David Gregory. Brooks was the first person to be executed by the use of lethal injection, since it had been reinstated in the United States. Since this first execution occurred, Americans have been debating on whether or not race plays a role in who lives, and who dies on death row. Despite all the anti-discrimination laws, the United States is faced with the challenge of racial tension and discrimination, which has a direct effect

His representation motioned to set aside Simmons previous charges and conviction (Roper v. Simmons, 2005,p.4). The federal courts denied Simmons petition for a write of habeas corpus, due to finding no Constitutional violation, on grounds from ineffective assistance of counsel; thus denying his motion for post conviction relief (Roper v. Simmons, 2005,p.4). The Simmons case came to a halt later in 2002, when the Missouri Supreme Court “stayed Simmons’s execution”(Oyez, p.1); during which The U.S. Supreme Court decided upon Atkins v. Virginia. The Atkins V. Virginia case dealt with the execution of mentally ill persons (Oyez, p.1); The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing the mentally ill violated the Eighth and 14th Amendment’s prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment, mainly in addition to the fact that several Americans deemed it cruel and

Death Penalty should be allowed under circumstances also known as capital punishment, where congress or any state legislature recommend the death penalty for murder and other capital crimes. Majority of the states are favor in death penalty, roughly around 32 states are favor and 18 states are against death penalty. In most cases, many argue that death penalty has violated the 8th amendment, where it bans cruel and unusual punishment. Therefore, they would go against death penalty. However, without the sentence to death, the chances of prisoner escaping prison are really high. If they are able to escape prison and get away with it, then they can continue committing crimes. Although some may argue that death penalty is harsh because if you kill someone; and then you take another person’s life, then why should yours be freed? I personally do not agree with death penalty because taking away another person’s life is not going to regain the victim’s life back. However, the victim’s family would want the person to be sentence to death, so the victim can rest in peace. I think that death penalty should be only allowed under circumstances, but then how can you really determined if the case should be ruled with death penalty? And how would the justice system know that they have made the correct decision? Did the decision of sentence to death turn out to be wrong, where the person is later found innocent? There are multiple of questions that people will be more concern about. The

Roper v. Simmons was a supreme court case that was decided in 2004 which dealt with whether it is against the constitution, and falls under cruel and unusual punishment, the execute someone who is under the age of 18. This case was particularly important as it dealt with something that many people were against entirely: the death penalty. A variation of this issue was decided nearly twenty years earlier in Thompson v. Oklahoma when it was decided in a five-to-three ruling that it was not constitutional to execute anyone under the age of 16. There have also been many other landmark cases that have challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty for certain parties such as in Atkins v. Virginia which was decided just three

Doesn’t that scare you? Mitigating? Quite the contrary I submit. Quite the contrary.” After the closing arguments, the jury recommended the death penalty. Accepting the jury’s recommendation, the trial judge imposed the death penalty. Upon receiving his death penalty, Simmons soon obtained new counsel, who moved in the trial court to set aside the conviction and sentence. It was argued that Simmons received ineffective assistance at trial. Several witnesses including friends, neighbors, and a clinical psychologist who had evaluated Simmons spoke on his behalf, many exclaimed that Simmons was “very immature, very impulsive, and very susceptible.” Moreover, the trial court found no constitutional violation by reason of ineffective assistance of counsel and denied the motion for postconviction relief. Thereafter, Simmons filed a new petition for state postconviction relief arguing that the reasoning of Atkins established that the Constitution prohibits the execution of a juvenile who was under 18 when the crime was committed. The Missouri Supreme Court agreed. Instead of the death penalty, Simmons was sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for probation, parole, or release except by act of the

Simmons case there have been two other cases involving the death penalty. Though they are different they Roper vs. Simmons case could have sparked a national urge in court to make everything about the death penalty unconstitutional, which Base vs. Rees case they tried arguing that even lethal injection and any form of the death penalty should be banned since it was violating their eighth amendment. This did not follow the previous track record with winning the appeal. The Supreme court decided that lethal injection is constitutional and does not inflict any unnecessary or lingering pain to that receiving

In 2003, the Missouri Supreme Court reviewed his case and lowered his sentence to life imprisonment since they believed that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a juvenile to death under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment. When the state of Missouri appealed this ruling, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear this case. This hearing overturned a 1989 decision (Stanford v. Kentucky) in which it was suitable for sentence sixteen and seventeen years old to capital punishment (Roper v. Simmons, 2005).

In the US Supreme Court case Roper V. Simmons, the decision that was to be made is whether or not the execution of a minor convicted of a crime representing cruel or unusual punishment as well as unconstitutional. Christopher Simmons was a junior in highschool, he talked among his friends discussing how it would be easy to get away with murder to the fact of their age. Mr. Simmons explained to his friends that he wanted to “kill someone by breaking into and entering the person’s home, robbing the person, tying the person up, and then throwing the person off a bridge”(Scott). In the early morning of September 9, 1993 Simmons and his friend went to Ms. Cook’s home and did exactly as planned by Christopher, the suspect knew the victim from a car

Four years later, however, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court paved the way for states to reintroduce capital punishment when it declared that the death penalty does not necessarily violate the Constitution if administered in a manner designed to guard against arbitrariness and discrimination. Most serious legal challenges to the death penalty since then have concentrated on demonstrating that states are not living up to the standards set in that case.

Bright, Stephen B.: "The death penalty as the answer to crime: costly, counterproductive and corrupting"; 35 Santa Clara Law Review 1211 (1995)