Despite the controversy that capital punishment generates, the American public seems to accept the practice as being just. Since 1930, nearly 4,000 prisoners have been executed in the United States—in spite of a decade (1968 to 1977) without an execution. The Supreme Court's decision in the case of Furman v. Georgia, 1972, which held that the administration of the death penalty discriminated against minorities and the poor, made the death penalty in effect unconstitutional. In 1976, however, the Court essentially reinstated capital punishment with its decision on Gregg v. Georgia. In that case the Court ruled that the constitutionality of the death penalty was for the people of the States to decide through the legislatures, rather than for the Court.
Although 143 prisoners were put to death in the United States between 1977 and 1990, questions continued to be raised about the constitutionality of capital punishment. A principal question involved age. Should persons under 18 years of age—who, according to the Department of Justice, committed 10 percent of all murders in 1989—be subject to the death penalty? Where should the line be drawn between the adult and juvenile offender? In 1988, the Rehnquist Court took up that question in the case of Thompson v. Oklahoma.
On February 3, 1983, William Wayne Thompson, along with his half-brother and two other men, brutally murdered Thompson's former brother-in-law, who had repeatedly physically abused Thompson's sister. Thompson was 15 years old at the time.
The three other men were tried separately and convicted of murder in the first degree. Each was sentenced to death. Thompson, given his age, was treated as a juvenile offender. Then the Oklahoma Attorney General's office filed a petition asking that Thompson be tried as an adult. State prosecutors argued that he was "competent and had the mental capacity to know and appreciate the wrongfulness of his [conduct]." They also argued that because there were no reasonable prospects for his rehabilitation within the juvenile system, Thompson should be treated as an adult. The court agreed, and Thompson was tried and convicted in adult court. After the conviction, Thompson was sentenced to death.
Thompson's lawyers appealed. The State appeals court found the lower court in error only for having allowed excessive use in court of color pictures of the body. Even so, the appeals court upheld Thompson's conviction. Arguing that imposing the death sentence upon a person under age 16 violated the 8th Amendment protection against "cruel and unusual punishment," Thompson's lawyers then appealed to the Supreme Court.
Does the 8th Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibit the death penalty for anyone under age 16 at the time of the offense? Did the use of "inflammatory" photos at the sentencing hearing violate the 6th Amendment's guarantee of an impartial jury and the 14th Amendment's guarantee of due process?
For Thompson: Juveniles have repeatedly been found less culpable for crimes than adults because of "inexperience, less education, and less intelligence." Although Thompson was convicted in adult court, his punishment should not be an adult punishment. Moreover, because our society has evolved, the execution of someone under age 16 at the time of the crime would be abhorrent to society's current standards. Thompson's age was not given "great weight" as a mitigating factor at the sentencing hearing (as directed by Oklahoma law) since he was being treated as an adult. The use of the "gruesome" photos at the sentencing hearing inflamed and prejudiced the proceedings, violating the 14th Amendment guarantees of due process and the guarantee of an impartial jury.
For Oklahoma: Thompson was treated as an adult according to Oklahoma law. A death sentence for an adult convicted of a murder that was "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" is not "cruel and unusual punishment" when imposed on a minor. Age was not presented as a mitigating factor of "great weight" in sentencing Thompson because he was judged to be an adult in the eyes of the court. At the sentencing hearing, the use of the photos helped show the crime to be "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel," and thus qualified Thompson for consideration of the death penalty. The ruling of the appeals court should stand.
By a vote of 5–3, the Court decided to overturn Thompson's death sentence. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens declared that "civilized standards of decency" prohibited the death penalty for a person who was under age 16 at the time of his or her crime.
In regard to the decision-making process of the Court, Stevens noted: "The authors of the Eighth Amendment drafted a categorical prohibition against the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments, but they made no attempt to define the contours of that category." Thus, the Court reviewed the actions of juries, legislatures, and other countries for guidelines. The Court also reviewed international statistics on the number of murders committed, the ages of the defendants, and the number of death penalties given and carried out. He also reiterated the "less culpability" assumption for juveniles: "inexperience, less education, and less intelligence make the teenager less able to evaluate the consequences of his or her conduct while at the same time he or she is much more apt to be motivated by mere emotion or peer pressure than is an adult."
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented. He wrote, "There is no rational basis for discerning in that a societal judgment that no one so much as a day under 16 can ever be mature and morally responsible enough to deserve that penalty…."
In 1989, the Court permitted the execution of a man who had committed murder at age 16 (Wilkins v. Missouri) and of another who had committed murder at age 17 (Stanford v. Kentucky).