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Advocates Celebrate Supreme Court Decision To
Ban Juvenile Death Penalty
Seventy-Three to Come Off Death Row
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Advocates for young people across the nation won a huge victory with the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 1 ruling that declared the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional. "The Supreme Court's decision confirms what we've known for some time: executing juveniles is unjust and inhumane," said Michael Faenza, president and CEO of NMHA." Youth are different from adults. . . . Most juvenile offenders on death row have suffered extreme abuse and neglect. They cannot—and now will not—be held to the same standards of culpability." The Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Christopher Simmons, which upheld the Missouri Supreme Court ruling that imposing the death penalty on Simmons, a 17-year-old at the time of his crime, violated the Eighth Constitutional Amendment prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishment."
In 12 states across the nation, 73 people will be taken off death row as a result of the court's decision. NMHA has worked tirelessly for years with the American Bar Association’s Juvenile Law Center and a long list of other advocates to fight against the juvenile death penalty, a practice that NMHA believes has only served to demean our justice system. Over the past five years, NMHA has fought vigourously alongside state advocates to help win stays of executions for juvenile offenders. NMHA also joined the nation’s leading medical institutions last year, including the American Medical Association, in a friend-of the- court brief submitted to the Supreme Court calling to ban the execution of juvenile offenders who commit capital crimes. In the past decade, the United States has executed more offenders of juvenile crime than the rest of the world’s nations combined. NMHA lauds the Supreme Court decision to ban this archaic practice. For more information or perspective on the juvenile death penalty, please visit http://www.nmha.org/position/deathpenalty. |
