Stanford v. Kentucky
| Stanford v. Kentucky | |
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| Argued March 27, 1989 Decided June 26, 1989 |
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| Full case name | Kevin Stanford v. State of Kentucky (No. 87-5765); together with Heath Wilkins v. State of Missouri (No. 87-6026) |
| Citations | 492 U.S. 361 (more) |
| Prior history | Stanford v. Kentucky: Judgment affirmed 734 S. W. 2d, at 792 (Kentucky Supreme Court), cert. granted, 488 U.S. 887 (1988) and Wilkins v. Missouri: 492 U.S. 361, 368, cert. granted, 487 U.S. 1233 (1988). |
| Holding | |
| The judgments are affirmed. The imposition of capital punishment on an individual for a crime committed at 16 or 17 years of age does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, White, Kennedy; O'Connor (except part IV-B and V) |
| Concurrence | O'Connor |
| Dissent | Brennan, joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. VIII | |
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Overruled by
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| Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) | |
Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court case that sanctioned the imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were at least 16 years of age at the time of the crime. This decision came one year after Thompson v. Oklahoma, in which the Court had held that a 15-year-old offender could not be executed because to do so would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In 2003, the Governor of Kentucky Paul E. Patton commuted the death sentence of Kevin Stanford, an action followed by the Supreme Court two years later in Roper v. Simmons overruling Stanford and holding that all juvenile offenders are exempt from the death penalty.
The case involved the shooting death of 20-year-old Barbel Poore in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Kevin Stanford committed the murder on January 7, 1981, when he was approximately 17 years and 4 months of age. Stanford and his accomplice repeatedly raped and sodomized Poore during and after their commission of a robbery at a gas station where she worked as an attendant. They then drove her to a secluded area near the station, where Stanford shot her pointblank in the face and then in the back of her head. The proceeds from the robbery were roughly 300 cartons of cigarettes, two gallons of fuel, and a small amount of cash.
After Stanford's arrest, a Kentucky juvenile court conducted hearings to determine whether he should be transferred for trial as an adult, and, stressing the seriousness of his offenses and his long history of past delinquency, found that certification for trial as an adult to be in the best interest of Stanford and the community.
Stanford was convicted of murder, first-degree sodomy, first-degree robbery, and receiving stolen property, and was sentenced to death and 45 years in prison. The Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence, rejecting Stanford's "deman[d] that he has a constitutional right to treatment." Finding that the record clearly demonstrated that "there was no program or treatment appropriate for the appellant in the juvenile justice system," the court held that the juvenile court did not err in certifying Stanford for trial as an adult. The court also stated that Stanford's "age and the possibility that he might be rehabilitated were mitigating factors appropriately left to the consideration of the jury that tried him."
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