Opinion ID: 2278146
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Jury Must be Able to Consider Culpability in Choosing Punishment.

Text: First, I wish to emphasize that to preclude the jury from considering mitigating facts, including defendant's age, is to prevent the jury from making the kind of individualized assessment of a juvenile's culpability that the United States Supreme Court recognized in Graham v. Florida as essential to the constitutionality of sentencing a juvenile to life imprisonment. ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010). Indeed, permitting the jury (or judge) to hear mitigating evidence and to consider that evidence in deciding the severity of punishment that should be imposed is the practice in nearly every other circumstance, whether the defendant is a juvenile or an adult. In regard to all such crimes, the fact-finder is permitted to choose among sentences of different severity. Only juveniles tried as adults for first-degree murder are deprived of the fact-finder's consideration as to whether mitigating factors affect the defendant's culpability. This is a violation of the Eighth Amendment for, as the United States Supreme Court stated in Graham, [a]n offender's age is relevant to the Eighth Amendment, and criminal procedure laws that fail to take defendants' youthfulness into account at all would be flawed. 130 S.Ct. at 2031. It is also inconsistent with the principles underlying Missouri's legislative admonition that the jury must be instructed to consider a defendant's age at the time of the crime as a statutory mitigating factor in determining whether to recommend a death sentence or, instead, a sentence of life imprisonment. § 562.032.3(7). While this provision no longer is constitutional as applied to homicides committed by a juvenile, in that a sentence of death is not permitted under Roper, 543 U.S. 551, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005), the principle it reflects  that a defendant's age may affect the defendant's culpability and mitigate the punishment for his or her crime  has continued life and should require consideration of a defendant's age and culpability in sentencing for a crime committed as a juvenile.