Juvenile and the Death Penalty

Shayla S. Burris

ENG101

Dr. Ankerberg

March 6, 2007

Essay #2

Juveniles and the Death Penalty

Today, minors are using their age as a shield against capital punishment. Adolescents believe that since they are not eighteen they will not be punished for the crimes they commit. The death penalty is appropriate for juveniles in certain circumstances, such as murder and brutal crimes that are considered capital offenses. The rate at which the death penalty is carried out, as well as inconstancies in sentencing does not make it a deterrent. There should not be an age limit in all capital offenses for those who could face the death penalty. Adolescents should know what he or she are doing is wrong, and is a crime. An age limits does not predict when one is able to handle responsibilities. What they do is assume is that one should be able to take on new responsibilities, laws, and issues. One is not suddenly capable of driving at sixteen, and not immediately given the knowledge of the voting system at eighteen. How does a specific age predict when a person knows right from wrong? Though many people have different view points on capital punishment, present the background, arguments, and information on juveniles and the death penalty need to be analyzed.

Capital punishment is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment. Since ancient times, it has been used for a wide variety of offenses. "The Bible prescribes death for murder and many other crimes including kidnapping and witchcraft. By 1500 in England, only major felonies carried the death penalty- treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson. By 1700, however, Parliament had enacted many new capital offences and hundreds of persons were being put to death each year" (Palmer, Louis J.). The reformation of the death penalty began in Europe in the 1750's. The jurists Ceseare Beccaria, Voltaire, Jeremy Bentham, and Samuel Romilly argued that the death penalty was cruel, overrated as a deterrent and occasionally imposed in fatal error; they defended life imprisonment as a more rational alternative. By the 1850's Venezuela (1853) and Portugal (1867) were the first nations to abolish the death penalty altogether. In the United States, Michigan was the first state to abolish it for murder in 1847. Today, all of Western Europe and most of Latin America have virtually abolished the death penalty. In America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (except Israel) they still retain the death penalty for certain crimes and impose it with the varying frequency. In 2004, lethal injection replaced hanging and shooting as the two most common methods of execution followed by beheading. Lethal injection, which is almost universal in America, is also used now in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Guatemala. Electrocution, and the gas chamber are used in America and seem to be disappearing slowly; the inmate has to elect to die by these methods. Stoning for sexual offences, including adultery, may still occur in some Islamic countries. China, with a quarter of the world's population, carries out the most executions for a wide variety of offences.

First, the definition of a juvenile is a young person, one below the legally established age of adulthood; a person under the age of eighteen when the crime was committed. What age is too young for the death penalty? A better question is at what age is it too young to die for the murder of another human being. In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles under the age of sixteen should not be sentenced to death because they are too young. This was upheld in the case of Stanford versus Kentucky. The Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty for a defendant who was 16 or 17 years old when he committed the crime. In the book Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment it was written, "One year before Stanford v. Kentucky was decided, the Supreme Court ruled in Thompson v. Oklahoma, that a defendant who was 15 years old at the time of the murder could not be executed. The vote was 5-3, Justice Kentucky not participating, and the fifth vote was cast by Justice O'Connor, who concurred only because Oklahoma capital punishment law specified no minimum age. In Stanford, O'Connor and Kennedy supported the death penalty for defendants who were 16 or 17 years old at the time of the crime, and the four justices who had written the lead opinion in Thompson dissented" (Latzer, Barry).

Since juveniles are beginning to get more violent in their acts, should the age be lowered? If a look is taken at the juvenile criminal statistics today and compare to twenty years ago, a dramatic decrease would be seen in violent crime and an increased use of death penalty sentences. For example, Professor Victor Strieb stated juveniles are one to two percent of all people on death row in the United States. Throughout the history of juveniles sentenced to death, the rate has been steady because it has fluctuated more than five percent. The history of the death penalty for juveniles began around 1642 with the execution of Thomas Graunger. "Thomas Graunger was executed in Plymouth Colony Massachusetts for a crime he committed when he was sixteen years old. He was the first recorded juvenile in what for offenses committed under the age of eighteen" (Randa, Laura E.). There were 343 executions of juveniles before the Supreme Court repealed the death penalty. Therefore, what keeps the juvenile from assuming the responsibilities for his actions?

There are many reasons to have the death penalty for adults and juveniles. "Capital punishment permanently removes the worst criminals from society and should prove much cheaper and safer for the rest of us than long term or permanent incarceration" (Martinez, Michael J., Richardson, D. William, & Hornsby, Brandon D.). It is self evident that dead criminals cannot commit further crimes. The second reason why many people are in favor the death penalty is the cost. Palmer writes, "Money is not an inexhaustible commodity and the state may very well better spend our resources on the old, the young, and the sick rather than the long term imprisonment of murderers, rapists, etc. Anti-capital punishment campaigners in America cite the higher cost of executing someone over prison, but this has to do with the endless appeals and delays in carrying out death sentences that are allowed the average spent on death row of 11 years".

Another con for capital punishment is retribution. Execution is a real punishment; the criminal is made to suffer