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Analysis
When children kill
A closely divided Supreme Court is expected to rule
soon on whether those who committed murder before age 18 may be
executed. However, it is not known what effect, if any, such a ruling
might have on those children who commit heinous crimes, are tried as
adults and then sentenced to long prison terms. Juvenile-offender
advocates say thousands of teenagers are tried as adults in state courts
each year. In many cases the seriousness of the crime is the driving
force behind trying a juvenile as an adult.
A 15-year-old boy was convicted in South Carolina of
murdering his grandparents when he was 12 in a fit of anger over being
disciplined. His mother had left the family shortly after he was born,
and he was placed into his grandparents' care after experiencing
emotional problems. The boy's attorney claimed the child was unbalanced
after being treated with the antidepressant Zoloft. The child killed his
grandparents with two blasts to the head from a shotgun while they slept
in their bed. The boy then picked up the spent cartridges, set the house
on fire and drove away in his grandparents' car. Police caught up with
him 30 miles down the road, and at first the boy told them that some
intruder had killed his grandparents and abducted him. Then he told them
the truth. The jury convicted Christopher Pittman in spite of his age,
and a state judge sentenced him Tuesday to the least amount of prison
time allowed by state statute for his crime: 30 years on each murder, to
be served concurrently.
Depending on your point of view, such punishments are
more than appropriate for teenagers and younger who think they can kill
and get away with it because of their age; or the prospect of a
15-year-old boy entering adult prison in a few years for decades of
incarceration with grown rapists and murderers is disturbing. All states
allow for some cases in which juveniles can be tried as adults, usually
for some heinous crime such as murder. Fourteen states set the age of
culpability — the age at which a child can be held responsible for a
crime — at between 7 and 14 years of age. The rest of the states,
including South Carolina, set no minimum age for culpability. Various
states leave it up to the juvenile courts or prosecutors to make the
decision on whether to try a juvenile as an adult, or simply set the
standard through state law. The Supreme Court made a series of rulings,
beginning in 1961, on the rights of juveniles being transferred to adult
courts. Such juveniles have the right to “due process,” or fair
proceedings, which usually means access to a lawyer, the right to
question witnesses, the right to examine evidence and the right to an
impartial decision-maker in the process that leads to the transfer. The
Supreme Court has also ruled that a juvenile cannot be charged both in
juvenile court and in adult court without violating double-jeopardy
guarantees and has acknowledged that the role of juvenile courts is to
“save” young defendants, not to “punish” them. Now, however, the high
court is on the verge of deciding whether the ultimate punishment, the
death penalty, is unconstitutional “cruel and unusual” punishment when
applied to someone who kills before age 18.
The underlying case is quite different from
Christopher Pittman's.
In 1993 Christopher Simmons was 17 when he and a
15-year-old friend broke into the home of Shirley Crook near Fenton, Mo.
Simmons believed the woman had recognized him, and the two tied Crook up
with duct tape and threw her, still alive, into the Meramec River. Some
reports quote Simmons as telling his young accomplice they could not be
executed because they were juveniles. However, Missouri, along with 19
of the 39 states that have the death penalty, does allow the execution
of those who killed before they were 18, and Simmons was sentenced to
death. His execution was stayed by the Missouri Supreme Court, which
eventually ruled that there was a “national consensus” against using the
death penalty on those who killed before they were 18. If the U.S.
Supreme Court agrees with the Missouri court, the justices will have to
reverse one of their own precedents, a 1989 ruling that executing
someone who committed murder at 16 or 17 is constitutional.
The justices have shown a willingness in recent years
to rein in the death penalty. In 2002 a 6-3 Supreme Court majority ruled
in Atkins vs. Virginia that the state cannot execute the mentally
retarded. A similar or even tighter majority could rule in Roper vs.
Simmons that executing those who committed murder before they were 18,
like the execution of the mentally retarded, violates the Eighth
Amendment's ban on “cruel or unusual punishments.” If they wanted, the
justices could extend that same scrutiny to lengthy adult prison terms
for juvenile offenders in their Simmons ruling. However, by its own
account the Supreme Court tries not to take too big a bite when it chews
on a dispute.
Supreme Court guidance for cases such as Christopher
Pittman's may be some time in coming.
Michael Kirkland
16 February 2005
http://www.wpherald.com/North_America/storyview.php?StoryID=20050216-022127-1803r
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