Opinion of The Supreme Court
In both Stanford v. Kentucky, and the parallel case Wilkins v. Missouri, the Supreme Court affirmed the capital punishments handed down in lower courts. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that neither Stanford or Wilkins asserted that the punishment was cruel or unusual at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted (common law at the time set the incapacity to commit a felony at age 14), and so both petitioners were left to argue that capital punishment for minors older than 14, was contrary to "the evolving standards of decency". This expanse in the review of the Eighth Amendment was not granted in this decision, and Scalia went on to cite precedent limits set in Gregg v. Georgia (1976).
"We discern neither a historical nor a modern societal consensus forbidding the imposition of capital punishment on any person who murders at 16 or 17 years of age. Accordingly, we conclude that such punishment does not offend the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. and to mean that as the dissent means it, i.e., that it is for us to judge, not on the basis of what we perceive the Eighth Amendment originally prohibited, or on the basis of what we perceive the society through its democratic processes now overwhelmingly disapproves, but on the basis of what we think "proportionate" and "measurably contributory to acceptable goals of punishment" -- to say and mean that, is to replace judges of the law with a committee of philosopher-kings."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, although agreeing that no national consensus forbade the imposition of capital punishment on 16- or 17-year-old murderers, concluded that the court has a constitutional obligation to conduct proportionality analysis, (citing Penry v. Lynaugh) and should consider age-based statutory classifications that are relevant to that analysis.
Justice Brennan filed a dissenting opinion, in which he was joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens.
Read more about this topic: Stanford V. Kentucky
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