MENS REA & JUVENILE CULPABILITY

Applications of Mens Rea and Juvenile Culpability: Roper v. Simmons (2005) &Atkins v. Virginia (2002)



Applications of Mens Rea and Juvenile Culpability: Roper v. Simmons (2005)&Atkins v. Virginia (2002) (Allen, 2001).

Roper v. Simmons (2005)

In 1993, when he was 17 years old, Christopher Simmons prepared and committed murder. After his eighteenth birthday, he was tried for the crime by a court of the State of Missouri, found guilty and sentenced to death. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Missouri upheld the conviction and sentence. However, in 2003, following an application for review of Mr. Simmons, the Supreme Court of Missouri held that the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States banned the execution of a person for a crime committed while was under the age of eighteen years. The Eighth Amendment, which applies to states through the provision of "legal process" (due process) of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it shall not be required nor excessive bail excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and inflicted a kind of unusual. In that decision, the Supreme Court of Missouri held that a national consensus had developed against executing juvenile offenders. It therefore rejected the death penalty and sentenced Simmons to life imprisonment without possibility of probation, parole or release unless a decision of the Governor of Missouri (Snyder, 2006).

Issues

The Supreme Court of the United States has accepted the request of the State of Missouri for a review of the decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri. In a decision passed by five votes against four, the Court upheld the ruling of the Supreme Court of Missouri. In so doing, it reversed the position it had adopted in its 1989 decision in the case of Stanford v. Kentucky. In this case, the Court held that there was no national consensus against the execution of those aged 16 or 17 at the time, and therefore, the Eighth Amendment did not require a ban of these executions. In 1988, in Thompson v. Oklahoma, the Court held that the execution of persons aged 15 years or less at the relevant time constituted cruel and unusual of a kind(Snyder, 2006).

By removing the stop vs. Stanford Kentucky, the Court held that a categorical prohibition of the execution of offenders aged 16 or 17 at the time of the facts necessary under "evolving standards of decency marking the progress of a society that becomes adult "- which is the criterion of the Court to determine whether a penalty is disproportionate as to be" cruel and unusual kind of ". The Court cited objective indicators of national consensus, reflected in the fact that since 1989, legislatures in five states of the United States voted against the death penalty for minors, joining 25 other states that had abolished the death penalty for juveniles or all offenders.

The Court concluded that they could be included with certainty juvenile offenders in the category of worst ...