Note

Fallacious Reasoning

Revisiting the Roper Trilogy in Light of the Sexual-Abuse-to-Prison Pipeline

Roper v. Simmons and its progeny fundamentally altered juvenile justice jurisprudence. In the aftermath of these cases, scholars devoted research to the force behind the Supreme Court’s requirement that children have “a meaningful opportunity for release,” state judicial and legislative responses to the cases, and possible extensions of these cases to abolish certain juvenile sentencing and confinement practices.

This Note takes a different tack. The Roper trilogy’s central principle declares juveniles to be distinct from adults in terms of cognitive and socioemotional development. The trilogy then makes these differences relevant to criminal liability and punishment. But these differences come into greater relief for adolescents, particularly girls, who have suffered trauma in the form of sexual abuse. This Note thus examines the Roper trilogy’s application to girls who have been sexually abused and subsequently swept into the criminal justice system, the so-called sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline.

In finding that these adolescents are meaningfully different from their peers in their socioemotional and cognitive development, not to mention different from adults, this Note argues that we should change juvenile justice law to conform to the Roper trilogy’s “children are different” principle. These girls’ unique circumstances require alterations to jury instructions and broader latitude for adolescent psychologists to contextualize their actions and behaviors. Moreover, to the extent that mens rea analysis is intended to determine actual criminal culpability, that analysis should similarly evolve to account for these girls’ histories of sexual abuse.

But the analysis cannot stop here. Broader research is urgently needed to extend this analysis to children of all genders who have survived childhood sexual abuse. And adolescents who have suffered other types of trauma similarly deserve to have their actions understood in light of their experiences.

* J.D. Candidate, Stanford Law School, 2020. First and foremost, this Note would not have been written without the unending dedication of Norman Spaulding. He not only encouraged me to write it in the first place but then enthusiastically assisted me through the research, writing, and editing stages. I also wish to thank Jenny Carroll for her support and guidance throughout the writing process. I would not have understood the connection between the Roper trilogy and the sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline if not for my work at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., with my supervisors Nancy Glass, Brittany Mobley, and Clare Kruger. Rebecca Turner and Jody Kent Lavy’s work at the Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth helped me contextualize so much of the aftermath of the Roper trilogy. Thank you to the entire Stanford Law Review team, particularly Thomas Veitch, Nicole Collins, Ethan Amaker, Greg Terryn, Aletha Smith, Lori Ding, Nathan Lange, Sam Gorsche, Thomas Schubert, and Jennifer Teitell. I could not have done this without each of you. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family through whom all is achievable.