By James ViciniWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide the constitutionality of executing people younger than 18 when they committed their crimes, revisiting an important death penalty issue it last addressed 15 years ago.
The justices agreed to return to the juvenile death penalty question after the Missouri Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to execute those who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crime.
The state's top court based its reasoning partly on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2002 that a national consensus had emerged to declare unconstitutional executions of criminals who are mentally retarded.
In 1988, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the executions of offenders age 15 or younger at the time of their crimes.
But the next year the high court ruled that state executions of those who commit their crimes at age 16 or 17 do not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said in the appeal a state court cannot simply disregard a Supreme Court ruling based on its own analysis of evolving standards on what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Nixon said the minimum age to impose capital punishment represented an important issue warranting Supreme Court review.
The high court is expected to hear arguments in the case in its upcoming term that begins in October.
Currently, 38 states and the federal government have the death penalty. Sixteen states and the federal government have an age minimum of at least 18 for capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Five states have set age 17 as the minimum while the other 17 states use age 16 as the minimum age.
At the middle of last year, 75 persons were on death row for crimes committed at ages 16 or 17, accounting for about 2 percent of the total U.S. death row population of approximately 3,500, according to the center.
It said 22 inmates have been executed for crimes committed at ages 17 or 16 since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. These executions make up 2.6 percent of the total number of executions.
In its ruling, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the death sentence for Christopher Simmons, who was 17 in 1993 when he tied up a woman and threw her off a bridge, resulting in her death by drowning. The court then resentenced Simmons to life in prison without parole.
