Death Penalty For Juvenile Offenders example essay topic

A. Should the death penalty be given to minors? The two groups against this issue, are the religious and medical groups. They believe they are too young to know what they have done. The medical groups believe adolescents are less developed than adults and should not be held to the same standards... The opposing side, held mostly by state officials, feel if they are old enough to commit the crime they, old enough to get the punishment, including death. B. The very first execution of a minor was in 1642 with Thomas Granger in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. In the three-hundred years since that time, a total of approximately 365 persons have been executed for juvenile crimes, constituting 1.8 percent of roughly twenty-thousand confirmed American executions since 1608.

Twenty-two of these executions for juvenile crimes have been imposed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. These twenty-two recent executions of juvenile offenders make up about 2 percent of the total executions since 1976. The death penalty for juvenile offenders has uniquely become an American practice, in that, it appears to have been abandoned by nations everywhere else in large part due to the express provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and of several other international treaties and agreements C. The reason this is a moral issue because the death of a human being is a moral issue, and if that human being is not even an adult, than it makes it an atrocity that he / she was put to death by are legal system that in all aspects is placed there for our protection. The punishment is for the criminal, but in reality the only people being punished is the family of the juvenile in question. D. Capital punishment is more expensive than a life imprisonment sentence without the opportunity of parole. Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve eighteen executions, that is an average of $3.2 million per execution. It costs six times more to execute a person in Florida than to incarcerate a prisoner for life with no parole.

The average cost of a capital trial in Florida is $3.2 million. A study found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life. On a national basis, these figures translate to an extra cost of over seven hundred million dollars spent since 1976 on the death penalty. E. A court case that dealt with the overturning of a death sentence to life imprisonment. The case was that of Kevin Stanford, the only juvenile offender on Kentucky's death row. Kevin's commutation is particularly significant, as it was his case in which a plurality of U.S. Supreme Court Justices held that it was not unconstitutional to execute sixteen and seventeen year-old offenders in Stanford vs. Kentucky in 1989. F. web This site gave information on why juveniles should not be put to death for a crime they committed.

It also discussed Roper vs. Simmons trial which is going back in to discussions in October whether to overturn the decision of putting him to death. web This website is from the same host from above, but in this article it discusses a medical group that tries to abolish the death penalty, because adolescents are less developed than adults and should not be held to the same standards. web This website showed a study that found jurors very reluctant to give the death penalty to juvenile defendants because of their immaturity and dysfunctional family backgrounds. web 11986. shtml This website convinces the reader why they should support the changing a death to a minor because it is cruel and unusual. Their argument is adolescents, even older adolescents, do not possess a level of maturity and understanding of consequences that come with adulthood. web The website actually showed the case of Stanford vs. Kentucky which was for the execution of a minor. The majority in case acknowledged age as a mitigating factor in death sentencing, but, in an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the national climate didn't rule out the death penalty simply because of the age of the offender. G. The Kantian view of death penalty is a retributive view that sees the criminal as a parasite who has accepted the benefits of a legal system while refusing to pay the price of self-restraint. Such a person owes the law abiding a debt for he has gained an unfair advantage over them. Punishment is the means of exacting the debt (in kind) and is a demand for justice -- the restoration of a condition of equality between the law breaker and society. Just punishment is binding and not to be mitigated by any utilitarian consideration.

Kant also believes in "blood guilt" and the necessity for cleansing criminal actions. H. This issue is pretty touchy to me, because i could support both side of minor being put to death. I agree with if they do the crime, they can do the time, but at the same time they are just little kids and they do not know better. The way I see how this situation can change is that instead of holding the child responsible for the crime hold the parents in contempt. The reason I say this is because a study shown shows that most juvenile convicts come from a broken home. The old saying goes "monkey see, monkey do". I believe if these children would have had the chance of growing up in a stable family upbringing, there is a good chance that they would have been upstanding citizens.

So my belief may be torn apart on the subject, I'm am going to have to say that I am against the death penalty for minors, because i believe they don not know what they do, because of a lack of immaturity and lack of experience in life.