Contact: Sue McGraugh
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April 23, 2002

Missouri Mental Health and Juvenile Justice Experts to Rally April 23 at Statehouse to Ask Governor to Spare Life of Christopher Simmons

Impending Execution of Juvenile Offender Runs Counter to Midwest and National Trends to Abolish Juvenile Death Penalty

Jefferson City: Christopher Simmons, who suffers from schizotypal personality disorder and was 17 at the time of his first and only criminal conviction, is scheduled to be executed on May 1 in Potosi. Simmons' fate now lies in the hands of Missouri Governor Bob Holden, who has exclusive power to commute a death sentence to life in prison. Missouri legislators are currently considering a bill to repeal the juvenile death penalty. Earlier this month, Indiana became the latest state to abolish the juvenile death penalty, bringing the total number of states that bar the execution of juvenile offenders to 28.

"Children and adolescents are qualitatively different than adults and simply should not be subject to the death penalty," said Roseann Bentley (R-Springfield), sponsor of legislation to raise the age limit for the death penalty from 16 to 18 in Missouri. "While they need to be held accountable for criminal acts, youth are less mature and more malleable than adults. Chris Simmons should not be subject to the ultimate sanction -- death."

Christopher Simmons, now 26, was seventeen years old and in high school at the time he was charged with the murder of Shirley Crook. He lived with his mother, Cheryl Hayes, and stepfather, Bob Hayes in Fenton, Missouri. Throughout his life, Christopher Simmons' stepfather was abusive, both physically and mentally. Bob Hayes, a chronic alcoholic, would threaten, intimidate, scream at, and hit Christopher. His means of disciplining Chris was by "whooping" him with a belt. A friend of Christopher reports that she once saw Christopher's ear bleeding after a beating by Hayes and later learned that Christopher's eardrum had been seriously damaged. Christopher's mother was intimidated by, and afraid of, her husband and never intervened to rescue her son from the abuse. Not surprisingly, Christopher turned to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of an abusive childhood.

The psychological effects on Christopher of growing up in this alcoholic and abusive environment provide compelling mitigating factors which a jury should have had available when asked to consider why a seventeen year old, with no prior history of violence and no criminal record, would commit this murder. None of this clinical evidence was ever heard or considered by the sentencing jury.

"To execute Chris Simmons, who has grown up on death row because of incompetent counsel, is the ultimate abdication of adults' responsibility to care for and nurture our children," says Elizabeth Gaines, Youth Policy Analyst, Citizens for Missouri's Children.

Christopher Simmons' case is a particularly poignant example of the necessity to eliminate the juvenile death penalty. Questioned by police without the advice of counsel or a parent, Christopher confessed to the crime. He did so, in part, because he was told by the arresting officers that he was facing life in prison or the death penalty and that things would be in his best interest if he did confess (falsely suggesting to the teenager that he would not face the death penalty if he did confess). Without Christopher's confession, the evidence against him would have been extremely weak, if not legally inadequate. It was his own remorseful and pressured confession that resulted in the necessary proof and ultimately led to his sentence of death.

"I want to save my child," said Cheryl Hayes, mother of Chris Simmons. "Chris had lots of problems growing up and once he got into alcohol and drugs, in spite of my attempts to reach him, I couldn't help him. And, yet now, I see a young man who cares about others, worries about his brothers, and will spend the rest of his life reaching out to troubled kids, in the hope that he can help them."

Missouri mental health experts and children's advocates have been joined by human rights organizations across the nation and the world, including the American Bar Association, National Mental Health Association, the European Union and the Council of Europe in asking Governor Holden to spare Simmons' life.

"I have known Chris for almost three years and can attest to his deep remorse for his crime, the turnaround in his character and the many ways he tries to repay his debt to society, including his work with at-risk youth through the prison's Youth Enlightenment Program," says Sister Elaine AuBuchon. "Life in prison without parole is a clear alternative here. Commuting his sentence to life in prison would be a greater assurance for other youngsters hearing his message and not repeating his mistakes."

Ironically, Simmons' case is nearing execution at a time when Missouri and five other states -- Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Florida -- have passed or recently considered legislation to abolish the juvenile death penalty. In Florida, legislation to repeal the juvenile death penalty had support from conservatives like Republican Senator Victor Christ who is a vocal supporter of the death penalty for adults. In Kentucky, Governor Paul Patton publicly indicated that he would sign a bill to eliminate the juvenile death penalty if one was presented to him. Texas, which leads the nation in executions, passed a bill out of their lower house last year to repeal the juvenile death penalty; the legislative session ended before the Texas Senate could take up that bill, and Texas' legislature only considers bills biennially.

These bills come at a time when new research on adolescent brain development is increasingly finding that the intellectual and reasoning capacity of young people is less well developed than that of adults. "New research shows that adolescents are far less developed than we ever knew," said Marsha Levick, Legal Director, Juvenile Law Center. "Offenders under age 18, especially those who like Chris were psychologically and physically abused, are far less mature than their adult counterparts."

Christopher Simmons is one of four juvenile offenders on death row who have, or are expected to have, execution dates set in the coming months. Napoleon Beazley (TX), Toronto Patterson (TX) and Kevin Stanford (KY) are all likely to see execution dates in the near future.

As of January 2002, 81 juvenile offenders sit on death rows throughout the United States. The last execution of a child offender in Missouri was July 28, 1993. Since Simmons was arrested the following month, there have been 17 executions of child offenders documented world wide, 10 of them in the U.S. The others were in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1), Iran (3), Nigeria (1), and Pakistan (2). Last year, Pakistan's President announced that he would commute the death sentences of all young offenders on death row there.

In the Midwest, a region that is not as supportive of capital punishment as other regions of the country, evolving standards of decency decry the use of the death penalty against juvenile offenders. A recent survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center found that only 31.5 % of Midwesterners support using the death penalty against juvenile offenders. Now that Indiana has repealed its juvenile death penalty, Missouri is the lone Midwestern state with the juvenile death penalty on its books.

A web site has been established by the American Bar Association's Juvenile Justice Center containing information about Simmons' case and the juvenile death penalty in general at http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/simmons.html

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