A Missouri Capital Punishment case to be heard by the United States Supreme Court this fall is attracting a lot of interest. The European Union, the US Conference of Bishops, the American Medical Association, even Jimmy Carter and Mikhail Gorbachev have filed “friend of the court” briefs in the case of Christopher Simmons. The issue is whether a state can execute someone for a crime committed before they were 18. The person behind the issue is Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he murdered a woman. The Missouri Supreme Court says it’s wrong to execute people who were his age when they committed a murder. That ruling has been appealed by the state attorney general.
