Death penalty for minors: Cruel and unusual

As the Supreme Court hears arguments on using the death penalty against minors, the AMA joins the voices of science and international leaders against it.

Editorial. Sept. 27, 2004.

No one seriously questions the rules that prevent a 16- or 17-year-old from buying alcohol or tobacco. Similar strictures prevent these young people from volunteering for active duty in the armed forces or even voting.

The reason for these limits is clear. It's a recognition that adolescents, even older adolescents, do not possess a level of maturity and understanding of consequences that come with adulthood.

That's why it is startling that, in certain states, these same young people still can be punished with death if convicted of a capital crime.

In October's Supreme Court term, justices will consider this issue. In Roper v. Simmons, the court has the opportunity to uphold the Missouri Supreme Court's decision overturning Christopher Simmons' death sentence for a murder he committed 10 years ago when he was 17. Thus, the court will have another chance to outlaw a practice considered a human rights breach by most of the industrial world.

The bright light of science backs up this position, offering evidence that the adolescent brain is not wired like that of an adult. The AMA, along with a number of medical societies, has rightly filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the court to uphold the Missouri decision.

For starters, the House of Medicine argues that no data exist to support the assertion that the death penalty has any deterrent value for this age group.

The U.S. Supreme Court "has held that executing a mentally retarded offender is unlikely to 'affect the cold calculus that precedes the decision of other potential murders,' " reads the brief. "The same is true of older 'adolescents' whose calculus weighs inputs -- particularly, future consequences -- differently from adults, and far differently from the cold-blooded murderer for whom the death penalty is reserved."