Any day now, the Supreme Court is expected to decide whether executing minors ages 16 and 17 constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. There are good reasons why the justices might say that it is, but they should reject one of the central arguments put forth by opponents of juvenile death penalty-- that the brain of the average 17-year-old is too immature to render him fully morally accountable.
On the night of Sept. 9, 1993, in Jefferson County, Mo., Christopher Simmons, then 17, burglarized the house of 46-year-old Shirley Crook. When she awoke, he and a younger accomplice tied her up, drove her to a railroad bridge and pushed her into the Meramec River to her death, following a plan they had made before the break-in. Simmons would later boast about killing the "bitch," court records said. Before the murder, he had assured his accomplice that they would "get away with it" because they were juveniles.
When a crime is exceptionally cold-blooded, sympathy is hard to muster. Even so, such cases are rare, and national polls show that Americans are moving toward a consensus that executing offenders younger than 18, no matter how heinous their deeds, is uncivilized.
Bundling All Juveniles
The Supreme Court, which heard the case last fall, could take account of these evolving standards of decency to prohibit all executions of minors. But in Simmons' case, his lawyer, Seth Waxman, cited recent research to argue that juveniles have problems with moral logic and self-restraint.
In fact, the National Institutes of Health's Institute of Mental Health and UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging made headlines this month with the finding that intellectual maturity, the age of reason, does not arrive until age 25.
In Simmons, an amicus brief by the American Medical Association and seven others had a detailed description of normal adolescent brain development. It explained how the frontal lobes of the teen brain--the region that helps curb impulses, make plans and weigh risks--are "one of the last parts of the brain to reach maturity."
To be sure, adolescent brains neither look nor function the same as adult brains. Teens can be reckless: They often drive too fast, drink too much and skateboard down staircases. But premeditated murder? The brains of 6-year-olds are far less developed than teens', but even they fully understand that binding an innocent person and throwing her off of a bridge is wrong.
Examine Each Case
Courts should and do recognize the relevance of brain function in sentencing. Killers who are psychotic or who have a diminished capacity for moral calculus or self-restraint deserve, and generally receive, leniency. In such cases, experts conduct careful neurological, medical and psychiatric evaluations of those individuals. Similarly, when we suspect significant neurological deficits in a teen who has committed murder, we should consider the circumstances individually, not grant brain-based leniency to an entire class of defendants.
We are just emerging from an era of "abuse-excuses" that made a mockery of the notion of personal responsibility. If the court is seduced by dramatic brain images--advertised as showing why a murderer had no choice but to kill--it will be a regrettable example of presumptive science shaping law.
Lawyers of older homicidal defendants will say that their clients' immature brains caused them to function, biologically, like adolescents. All behaviors have physical markers. As neuroscientists identify more of them, will anyone be held accountable for anything?
Erik Menendez was only 17 in 1989 when he and his brother fatally shot their parents in their Beverly Hills home. If he were to get another trial, doubtless his lawyer would use teen brain deficiency in his defense. The Supreme Court exists to protect us from such travesties of the rule of law.
Sally Satel and Christina Sommers, both resident scholars at AEI, are co-authors of One Nation Under Therapy, to be published this spring.
