Thompson v. Oklahoma 1988
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 275-280 |
Page 275
Appellant: William Wayne Thompson
Appellee: State of Oklahoma
Appellant's Claim: That executing him for committing murder when he was fifteen years old would be cruel and unusual punishment.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant: Harry F. Tepker, Jr.
Chief Lawyer for Appellee: David W. Lee
Justices for the Court: Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens
Justices Dissenting: William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Byron R. White (Anthony M. Kennedy did not participate)
Date of Decision: June 29, 1988
Decision: The Supreme Court reversed Thompson's death sentence.
Significance: Thompson said the Eighth Amendment forbids executing people for crimes they commit when they are less than sixteen years old.
Page 276
In 1983, when he was fifteen years old, William Wayne Thompson had a brother-in-law named Charles Keene. Keene was married to Thompson's sister, Vicki, whom Keene beat and abused. Thompson decided to end his sister's suffering.
On the night of January 22, 1983, Thompson left his mother's house with his half-brother and two friends to kill Charles Keene. In the early morning hours of January 23, a neighbor named Malcom "Possum" Brown was awakened by the sound of a gunshot on his porch. Someone pounded on Brown's door shouting, "Possum, open the door, let me in. They're going to kill me." Brown called the police and then opened the door to see Keene being beaten by four men. Before the police arrived, the four men took Keene away in a car.
Thompson and his friends shot Keene twice, cut his throat, chest, and stomach, broke one of his legs, chained him to a concrete block, and threw him into the Washita River. One of Thompson's friends said Thompson cut Keene "so the fish could eat his body." Authorities did not find Keene's body until almost four weeks after the murder.
Lawyer David W. Lee argued the state's case against William Thompson.
Page 277
As most states do, Oklahoma had a juvenile justice system. The system's goal was to reform childhood criminals in juvenile justice centers rather than punish them in prisons. Oklahoma, however, allowed childhood murderers to be tried and punished as adults if they understood what they were doing and had no hope for...
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