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| Advocates: Ruling May Help Their Cause |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/01/2002 |
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Advocates for a Missouri death row inmate who killed as a teen-ager hope a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week barring executions of the mentally retarded might also apply to condemned juvenile offenders. Christopher Simmons was eight days from his scheduled execution when the Missouri Supreme Court issued a stay on May 28. The court was waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in the Virginia case of Daryl Atkins, convicted of slaying a man at the age of 18. Atkins' lawyers said his IQ is 59. Simmons' attorneys said neither the young nor the retarded should be executed because both have underdeveloped mental capacities. Soon after the high court's ruling on the Atkins case on June 20, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon asked the Missouri Supreme Court to again schedule the execution for Simmons, 26, who was 17 when he killed Shirley Crook of suburban St. Louis in 1993. Nixon said the ruling is about retardation not age and ''has no relevance on this particular case.'' The court ruled 6-3 on June 20 that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutionally cruel, but did not address the constitutionality of executing people who killed when they were young. Eighteen states and the federal government have adopted laws banning execution of the mentally retarded. In Missouri, Gov. Bob Holden signed the ban into law last July. But Missouri has in recent times sent four people to death row who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes. Only one has been put to death: Fredrick Lashley, who was executed in 1993 for a murder committed 11 years earlier, when he was 17. In February, the U.S. Supreme Court delayed the execution of Antonio Richardson, who was convicted of murdering two girls who were thrown off a Missouri bridge. He was 16 at the time of the 1991 murders, and his attorneys have said he had a low IQ. |
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