Roper v. Simmons Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

Roper v. Simmons | 543 U.S. 551 (2005)

The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments. The United States Supreme Court has interpreted that text as categorically prohibiting certain punishments based on a maturing society’s evolving standards of decency. In Roper versus Simmons, the Court considered if it was cruel and unusual punishment to sentence to death an individual who committed capital murder at age seventeen.

When he was seventeen, Christopher Simmons discussed his plan to commit murder with Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer, ages fifteen and sixteen, respectively. As part of his plan, Simmons intended to burglarize, tie up, and throw his victim off a bridge. Simmons assured Benjamin and Tessmer that they would get away with it because they were all minors.

In September 1993, Simmons picked the home of forty-six-year-old Shirley Crook to carry out his plan. Finding a window cracked, Simmons and Benjamin entered Crook’s home. While Benjamin stood guard, Simmons duct-taped Crook’s hands and covered her eyes and mouth. The two then put Crook in a minivan, drove her to a railroad trestle forty feet above a river, kicked her off the side of a bridge, and watched her drown. Simmons and Benjamin also obtained six dollars from Crook’s purse as a result of the burglary.

Subsequently, Simmons was arrested and charged in Missouri with burglary, kidnapping, stealing, and murder. He was tried and convicted as an adult and sentenced to death. After the proceedings ended, the United States Supreme Court held in Atkins versus Virginia that the Eighth Amendment prohibits executing a mentally handicapped person.

Simmons then filed a petition for state post-conviction relief, naming Donald Roper, the superintendent of the prison in Missouri where Simmons was being detained, as defendant. In his petition, Simmons argued that Atkins established that the Constitution also prohibits the execution of a juvenile who was under eighteen when the crime was committed.

The Missouri Supreme Court agreed, setting aside Simmons’s death sentence and resentencing him to life in prison without eligibility for parole. The United States Supreme Court granted cert.

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[ShiningGalaxy]

Your not a Juvenile at 17, than magically an adult at 18. The behavior, and physical appearance of a 17 year old, and an 18 year old isn't different from each other.

[ms.pickledpenaut]

why does this guy sound like the fnaf announcer

[lisalasoya]

Are you ready for this one? A juvenile at the age of 17 -He was tried and sentenced to death. He filed a petition for state post conviction relief, arguing that the reasoning forbidding the execution of mentally retarded persons established that U.S. Const. amend. VIII also prohibited the execution of a juvenile who was under 18 when the crime was committed. The Missouri Supreme Court
agreed. Certiorari was granted. We do accommodate certain criteria. Roper v. Simmons_ 543 U.S. 551