Page:Glossip v. Gross.pdf/49

 Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)

9

THOMAS, J., concurring

at 413. The Court’s recent decision finding that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of those who committed their crimes as juveniles is no different. See Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551 (2005). Although the Court had rejected the claim less than two decades earlier, Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U. S. 361 (1989), it decided to revisit the issue for a petitioner who had slain his victim because “he wanted to murder someone” and believed he could “get away with it” because he was a few months shy of his 18th birthday. 543 U. S., at 556. His randomly chosen victim was Shirley Crook, whom he and his friends kidnaped in the middle of the night, bound with duct tape and electrical wire, and threw off a bridge to drown in the river below. Id., at 556–557. The State of Alabama’s brief in that case warned the Court that its decision would free from death row a number of killers who had been sentenced for crimes committed as juveniles. Brief for State of Alabama et al. as Amici Curiae in Roper v. Simmons, O. T. 2014, No. 03–633. Mark Duke, for example, murdered his father for refusing to loan him a truck, and his father’s girlfriend and her two young daughters because he wanted no witnesses to the crime. Id., at 4. He shot his father and his father’s girlfriend pointblank in the face as they pleaded for their lives. Id., at 5–6. He then tracked the girls down in their hiding places and slit their throats, leaving them alive for several minutes as they drowned in their own blood. Id., at 6–7. Whatever one’s views on the permissibility or wisdom of the death penalty, I doubt anyone would disagree that each of these crimes was egregious enough to merit the severest condemnation that society has to offer. The only constitutional problem with the fact that these criminals were spared that condemnation, while others were not, is