IMMATURE MINDS IN A MATURING SOCIETY:
ROPER V. SIMMONS AT 20
Project Summary: In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court held that the “Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of eighteen when their crimes were committed.” The decision, after the execution of twenty-two people who committed crimes under the age of 18 during the modern death penalty era, marked the end of the juvenile death penalty in the United States.
In Roper, Justice Anthony Kennedy drew on state trends in the treatment of young people, scientific and medical studies, and the penological justifications underpinning capital punishment to support the Court’s decision that “today our society views juveniles … as categorically less culpable” than other defendants. In doing so, Justice Kennedy acknowledged the inherent arbitrariness in selecting an age cutoff: “The qualities that distinguish juveniles from adults do not disappear when an individual turns 18,” he wrote, “[h]owever, a line must be drawn.”-DPIC
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Year: 2025
Client: Death Penalty Information Center
Medium: Report Layout/ Graphic Creation
Programs: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Datawrapper