Prohibit Prosecutors From Seeking The Death Penalty Against Other Teen Killers, Among Them Lee Boyd Malvo, 20, Convicted In The Washington Sniper Case And Related Murders

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the death penalty for juveniles was unconstitutional, ending a capital-punishment practice in 19 states that had sparked protests in this country and abroad.

The landmark ruling came in the case of Christopher Simmons, a Missourian who was 17 when he tied up Shirley Crook of Fenton after a robbery and threw her from a railroad bridge into the Meramec River in 1993.

A decade later, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the sentence in a 4-3 ruling that said the execution of killers who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court agreed, reversing its own precedent of just 15 years earlier. It upheld the Missouri decision by a 5-4 vote in an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the four more liberal justices (John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter) who had called for abolishing the death penalty for juvenile offenders in earlier rulings.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia voted to uphold juvenile executions, with Scalia ripping the Missouri court for "flagrant disregard" of prior Supreme Court rulings.

The majority reversed its 1989 ruling that executions were barred under the Constitution for those 15 and younger but permissible for 16- and 17-year olds. It continued a trend toward more restrictive capital punishment practices, including its ruling in 2002 that banned execution of the mentally retarded.

Death penalty opponents in the United States and abroad cheered the decision, although several cautioned that Tuesday's ruling was more about differentiating the treatment of juveniles from adults than a broad-gauged assault on the death penalty itself.

"This was a children's issue, not a death penalty issue," said Stephen Harper, an adjunct professor of law at the University of Miami who has represented Death Row inmates. "A majority of Americans believe in the death penalty but more than two thirds in polls say they don't support the juvenile death penalty under any circumstances."

Cathleen Burnett of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty said in a statement that the Court's decision reflected the consensus view of child advocacy groups, medical and psychological studies and legal organizations - "that a juvenile's brain has not developed to full maturity, and does not have the same level of cognitive functioning as an adult."

Prosecutors and victims-rights groups assailed the ruling.

"This decision is wrong," said Diane Clements of Houston, whose son was murdered by a 13-year-old in 1991. She is a leader of Justice for All, an alliance of victims' advocates that filed an amicus brief with the Court.

"This takes our state statutes and our jury decisions and our moral response to murder and throws all of it out the window," she said, "and instead relies on bogus science, European polling numbers and a bias that these five justices have against the death penalty."

In the majority opinion, Kennedy acknowledged that "there is little doubt" that Simmons had instigated the murder and that he had discussed it with friends in advance in "chilling, callous terms." But he said that in determining what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" the court must also consider "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

Kennedy noted that 30 states now prohibit the death penalty for juveniles - including 12 that have no death penalty at all - and that execution of juvenile offenders has sharply declined even in those states that permit it. In the past 10 years Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia are the only states that have executed prisoners for crimes committed as juveniles.

Citing the court's 2002 decision outlawing execution of the mentally retarded, Kennedy said society similarly now views juveniles "as `categorically less culpable than the average criminal.'"

The majority opinion also took note of the "stark reality" of U.S. isolation on this issue, "as the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty."

In her dissent Justice O'Connor decried the establishment of a "categorical rule" barring such executions, "no matter how deliberate, wanton, or cruel the offense."

O'Connor said she discerned no evidence of "a genuine national consensus" on the issue and that in the absence of such consensus the court's ruling amounted to the imposition of "its independent moral judgment" on an issue that constitutionally should be left with individual state legislatures.

A biting dissent by Justice Scalia said Tuesday's ruling made a "mockery" of the Founders' expectation that court rulings would be bound by strict rules and precedents.

Scalia also faulted the majority for failing to admonish the Missouri Supreme Court for taking upon itself a decision to go against the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the execution of juveniles.

Missouri Supreme Court Judge Laura Denvir Stith wrote the 2003 ruling that was upheld on Tuesday. "The court did its best to anticipate what it thought the U.S. Supreme Court would hold," she said Tuesday. "I'm grateful that we got our ruling correct."

Her opinion had been criticized by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, who said the high court should "not use legal Ouija boards," and by Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who said it "reads like something pulled out of the air."

Nixon said in a statement Tuesday that "the judicial process has run its course. We respect the decision of the Court."

Seth Waxman, U.S. Solicitor General under former President Bill Clinton, represented Simmons in arguments before the Court last October. In a statement Tuesday he said the decision means "the United States has joined the rest of the world..."

Former senior U.S. diplomats, the European Community and a group of Nobel Peace laureates headed by former President Jimmy Carter were among those who had filed briefs calling for an end to executing killers younger than 18.

The Justice Department did not contribute a brief for either side in the Court's consideration of the case, Roper vs. Simmons, and declined comment after announcement of the ruling Tuesday.

The ruling won't affect anyone other than Simmons in Missouri, but it will mean reprieves for 72 death-row inmates elsewhere in the country. It will also prohibit prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against other teen killers, among them Lee Boyd Malvo, 20, convicted in the Washington sniper case and related murders in 2002.