Justice Anthony Kenned Case Analysis

“From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult.”-Justice Anthony Kennedy. In 1993, Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death when he was only 17. A series of appeals to state and federal courts were submitted but each appeal was rejected. Then, in 2002, The Missouri Supreme Court stayed Simmon’s execution while the U.S Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, where the U.S. Supreme court ruled that executing the mentally ill violated Eight and 14th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because majority of Americans found it cruel and unusual, the Missouri Supreme Court started to reconsider Simmon’s case. Using the reasoning from this case, the Missouri court decided
In this case, Roper v. Simmons, Kennedy has once again shown himself to be one of the most powerful legal activists of our times, ready to impose his own sense of morality and law upon the rest of society. In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy cited “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” and the court find the death penalty for juveniles to be cruel and unusual punishment, and thus unconstitutional. Moreover, Justice Kennedy turned to psychology as the platform for his argument. He stated that adolescents under age of 18 lack maturity and have “a underdeveloped sense of responsibility. Secondly, he stated that juveniles are ““more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure.” Finally, he argued that “the character of a juvenile is not as well formed as that of an adult. The personality traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed.” With the backing of American Psychological Association’s reasoning and Supreme Court’s majority opinion, the Roper decision will go down as one more milestones in the U.S. Supreme Court’s project of judicial activism and taking moral values into