Court Puts Age, Crime on Scales

Christopher Simmons recalls, above all, the desperation.

It was Sept. 9, 1993. He was 17. He and a friend had broken into a mobile home in search of cash to buy drugs. The woman who lived there woke up.

Simmons remembers a blinding fear, a boiling inside him, a panic.

He grabbed 46-year-old Shirley Crook and strapped duct tape around her eyes and mouth. He bound her hands behind her. He knew what he was doing, but it didn’t seem real.

He grabbed the keys to Crook’s van and pushed her in. His buddy got in too. They drove for nearly an hour before stopping in the dark of a deserted park. Simmons then dragged Crook to a trestle over the Meramac River.

“It seemed,” he says now, looking back, “like I was in some kind of desperation daze.” He shoved Crook into the water.

His friend, a few days short of his 16th birthday, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder. Simmons was sentenced to death and has twice been scheduled for execution. The Missouri Supreme Court has twice ordered a stay--most recently, May 28.

As his case gained visibility, Simmons became a catalyst for an emerging national debate about the use of capital punishment. At issue: Whether it is just to execute criminals who were juveniles at the time of their crimes.

“It’s being debated, and debated furiously,” said Steven Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern University in Illinois.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared it acceptable to put to death offenders as young as 16. But 40% of the states that use capital punishment have laws setting 18 as the minimum age for execution.

Indiana was the most recent to ban the death penalty for minors. Similar bills drew surprisingly strong support this year in Texas and Florida.

But rather than rely on state-by-state legislation, opponents of executing minors put their strongest hopes into an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision.

By the end of this month, the justices are expected to decide whether it’s constitutional to execute mentally retarded criminals. If the court rules such punishment is “cruel and unusual,” activists hope to stretch the decision to cover juveniles as well.

Their theory is that, like the mentally retarded, 16- and 17-year-olds cannot be held fully culpable for their actions because their brains are only partly developed and may lack key skills, such as impulse control.

“Not that their conduct should be excused, not that they don’t know right from wrong, but they don’t have the same equipment that adults do to make sound decisions,” said Drizin, an anti-death penalty activist.

That argument, endorsed by the American Psychiatric Assn., failed to win a commutation for Napoleon Beazley, 25, who was executed May 28 in Texas for a murder he committed at age 17. But it has apparently gained some traction in Missouri. Though the state Supreme Court issued no explanation in twice postponing Simmons’ execution, observers suspect his age is key.

Simmons, speaking by phone from prison in Mineral Point, Mo., said that’s how it should be.

“I was so young,” said Simmons, now 26.

He says he does not excuse himself. He says that a life behind bars is fair punishment for his crime and that he does not deserve to die.

Simmons describes himself at 17 as unhinged from reality. He was running from an abusive stepfather, desperate for approval from his gang, hooked on drugs, scared, alone, unable to think beyond the moment, unable to take control of himself even as he was binding Crook’s hands behind her back.

“I wish I could go back and shake myself,” he said, “and take away the fear and despair.”

Pertie Mitchell wishes she could go back too.

But the fear and despair she longs to take away are those she imagines her sister Shirley Crook felt as the tape was winding around her mouth. Nearly nine years after the murder, Mitchell cannot stop replaying the loop: Her sister, bound, plunging into the murk, wresting one hand free, struggling toward the surface, then sinking, lungs filling with river grit.

Crook left behind her husband, their two adult children, her two sisters and her mother.

She had been everyone’s rock, cheering her kids on as they clattered around in go-carts, concocting sugar-free treats for her diabetic husband, bringing a baked ham to neighbors she barely knew upon hearing they had a death in the family. About the only time she nagged was when she told her daughter to hurry up and give her grandbabies.

On Sept. 9, 1993, Crook’s daughter, Kimberly Hawkins, was several weeks’ pregnant. She hadn’t yet told her mother.

“The hurt is so bad,” Mitchell said.

She fumes at the suggestion that Simmons was only a kid when he killed.

“ ‘Boys will be boys’ is for when they break a vase or throw a ball through a window accidentally,” Mitchell said. “He tortured her

Opponents point out that executing juveniles is banned under several international treaties. In recent years, only Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo have joined the U.S. in putting minors to death.

But many prosecutors in this nation say they want to keep their options open.

“There’s no question you’re going to hold a 27-year-old to a higher degree of accountability than a 17-year-old. But that’s not to say there aren’t certain murders so heinous that a 17-year-old shouldn’t be held [to] the death penalty,” argued Richard Callahan, executive director of the Missouri Prosecuting Attorneys Assn.

In the last 30 years, more than 200 juvenile criminals have been sentenced to death. Three states--Texas, Florida and Alabama--account for more than half the cases, said Victor Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern University.

Streib calculates that 86% of these death sentences have been reversed or commuted. Nineteen juvenile offenders have been executed--11 of them in Texas. About 82 remain on death row.

Among them is Missouri inmate Antonio Richardson, who raped and killed two sisters when he was 16. His lawyer says he is mentally impaired; the U.S. Supreme Court has granted him a stay pending its ruling.