Views On The Juvenile Death Penalty example essay topic

Adult Punishment and Juvenile Justice Day after day in this country there is a debate going on about the death penalty and whether we as people have the right to decide the fate of another persons life. When we examine this issue we usually consider those we are arguing about to be older men and women who are more than likely hardened criminals with rap sheets longer than the height we stand (Farley & Willwerth, 1998). They have made a career of crime, committing it rather than studying it, and somewhere along the line a jury of their peers decided enough was enough. They were handed down the most severe and most final punishment of them all, death.

Behind all of the controversy that this issue raises lies a different group of people that are not so often brought into the lime light, juveniles. This proposes a problem entangled with another; if we do decide to carry out death sentences, what is the minimum age limit Can we electrocute, lethally inject, or gas any one who commits a crime that is considered capital In this paper the issue of capital punishment for juveniles will be discussed, basically laying out a comprehensive look at the matter. First we will briefly look at the history of both juvenile justice and the history of the death penalty in regards to juveniles. Secondly we will take a short look at the two major court cases that dealt with this issue in the United States. Next this paper will present the factual statistics of the death penalty for juveniles and also take a look at our country's stance on the issue in the international arena. We will then spend a short time looking at some views on the juvenile death penalty, reasons for the death penalty itself, and the arguments for and agains the death penalty for juveniles.

Lastly we will conclude with a few thoughts about the issue and the implications that we might have to consider. The history of the death penalty being imposed on juveniles spans all the way back to almost the beginning of our country. In 1642, Thomas Granger of Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, was the first juvenile, to be sentenced to death and executed in our country for a crime that he committed (Executions, 2000). Since the start of capital punishment (or the recording thereof) in 1608, there has been around 19,200 executions in the United States of all ages.

Of that total number, experts believe approximately 356 of them were juvenile executions, meaning that the crime that the individual was sentenced for took place before the offender was eighteen years of age (Gonnerman, 2000). This accounts for about 1.8% of all executions from the start of capital punishment to present (Executions, 2000). Since 1973 there has been 196 death sentences handed out to juveniles and seventeen of those have ended in actual execution (Streib, 2000). Table 1 lists those seventeen individuals that have been executed since 1973, their date and place of execution, their race, and their age both when they committed their crime and when they were executed. The juvenile justice system was born in 1899 at which time it was recognized as separate from the regular justice system that dealt with adult offenders (Ricotta, 1988).

At the start, the stated objectives of the juvenile justice system was. ".. to provide measures of guidance and rehabilitation for the child and protection for society, not to fix criminal responsibility, guilt, and punishment" (Ricotta, 1988). By the stated objectives it would seem as though rehabilitation would be one of the most important goals of the juvenile system. So how are we able to decide now that a teenager is past the point of rehabilitation and deserves the final punishment Or does the obligation to "protect society" become more overwhelming and leave us with no other option but to put someone to death These are just a few questions that one might ask about our present goals in comparison to the initial goals that were established from the start. Next we will discuss the two pivotal court cases that set the precedent for our current juvenile death penalty statutes. William Wayne Thompson, only fifteen years of age, and three older persons were all found guilty of first degree murder back in December of 1983. He was convicted of murdering his brother-in-law in a most "heinous, atrocious, and cruel" (Ricotta, 1988) way.

After the district court decided that their was "no reasonable prospects for rehabilitation" (Ricotta, 1988) it was decided that he would be tried as an adult. The Supreme Court of the United States had to decide whether he could then be subject to adult punishment which brought up the question of the eighth amendment's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. The Court justified the use of adult punishment by coining a phrase that was used often in the written opinions by the Justices. They stated that the discretion would be left up to judges to determine the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" (Ricotta, 1988) since they could not resolve what the writers of the Constitution explicitly meant by cruel and unusual. In this case, Thompson vs. Oklahoma (1988), the Justices concluded that fifteen year olds were not prepared to assume the responsibilities of an adult (Ricotta, 1988).

To this day no state allows the death penalty to be appointed to any person under the age of sixteen. The next year in Stanford vs. Kentucky (1989), the courts emphasized the notion that the eighth amendment does not prohibit juvenile execution for those age sixteen or seventeen (Beck, 1999). These cases are the key events in the development in this issue. There are also International laws that speak of this topic. Steven Hawkins, director of the National Coalition to abolish the Death Penalty, quotes in the article Dead Teen Walking that " [w] e should be embarrassed to find ourselves in [the] company" (Farley & Willwerth, 1998) of countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, and Yemen.

These were the only countries outside the U.S. that still used the death penalty for juveniles up until two years ago. Currently, the U.S. is the only country in the world that practices this punishment for juveniles (Streib, 2000). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Gonnerman, 2000) and the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (Amnesty, 1997) both outlaw the death penalty for persons under the age of eighteen. The U.S. ratified the former in 1992 and has yet to ratify the latter. The UN Convention goes one step farther than this discussion and also outlaws life imprisonment without parole or juveniles (Amnesty, 1997). The U.S. definitely does not look good when it comes to this subject when compared to other countries, countries that are known for human rights violations, and countries that decided to ratify the International law.

So who are the "kids" that are committing these crimes that force us to be in this debate in the first place Almost all the juveniles given the sentence of death are male, 98% of the total (Streib 2000). Two-thirds of the juveniles are minority offenders (Streib 2000), 20% being Latino and the other 43% are African American (Gonnerman, 2000). One statistic of particular interest is that 80% of the victims of these juveniles are adults (Streib 2000), not kids their own age. As of June 2000, their were seventy-four juveniles under death sentence, the majority of which are in Texas. Texas houses 26 of these young felons, one third of the national total (Whitman, 2000), and has executed nine of the seventeen that have been executed since 1973.

Besides the seventy-four sentenced to die currently and the 17 that have been executed since 1973, there have been another 105 adolescents that have their sentences reversed (Streib 2000). On an even more individual note, a study was conducted in 1988 of fourteen juvenile offenders. Conclusions showed that all the individuals had serious psychiatric problems, twelve had been abused as children, and only two of the young people had IQ's above ninety (Farley & Willwerth, 1998). These similarities may help to explain the reasons that some of the juveniles are awaiting death, however this paper does not explore that issue. The U.S. undoubtedly leads the world in juvenile executions. Ten out of the nineteen juveniles to be executed since 1990 have been in the U.S. (Gonnerman, 2000).

We average about ten death sentences per year according to Victor Streib, the topics leading researcher (2000). There are forty jurisdictions in the U.S. that allow capital punishment at all; thirty-eight states, and the federal government on the civilian and military side. Of these forty jurisdictions nineteen allow the death penalty for those sixteen and older (Promises, 1999), five for age seventeen year and older, and the remaining sixteen states only allow execution for adults, those eighteen and older (Streib 2000). Even though these statistics seem to be somewhat spread out among the states the truth is that the majority of the sentences are handed out by judges in three states; Texas, who has already been mentioned as the leader in the juvenile execution topic, Florida, and Alabama (Streib, 2000). And the numbers will more than likely only rise. Between 1983 and 1998 the death sentencing rate for juveniles went up 124% (Beck, 1999) and with the surge of young violence continuing and legislatures "getting tuff" on juvenile crime, that number will only rise.

We want to move on now and look closer at capital punishment itself and its effect on juveniles as a punishment or lack there of. In a letter to Mr. Gerald Garrett, chairman of the Texas board of pardons and paroles, Mr. Lois Whitman pleaded that. ".. children and adolescents are different from adults. They lack an adult's experience, perspective, judgment, maturity, and restraint" (2000). Mr. Whitman is the Executive Director of the Children's Rights Division and was writing this letter on behalf of Gary Graham who was sentenced to death at the age of seventeen. Many people share this view that juveniles are at an age where they should be held responsible for their actions, but punishment as severe as death is too extreme. That may be the viewpoint in Texas, however out in Los Angeles the tides turn a bit.

One citizen there believes that if a kid can commit an adult crime they should face adult consequences (Farley & Willwerth, 1998). Out in Los Angeles they have a problem that makes them feel a bit different about "innocent little children". Gangs often use young kids to go out and be the "trigger pullers" because they know that the younger kids might not have to face capital punishment (Farley & Willwerth, 1998). This shows two different sides to the coin on how people view this issue and some of the differing reasons. In Beccaria's often quotes writing On Crimes and Punishment, he gives us his foundational reason for punishment"; [P] unishmnets and the means adopted for inflicting them should... be so selected as to make the most effacious and lasting impression on the minds of men with the least torment to the body of the condemned" (1995). By this definition we then ask the question, is death the least possible means of correcting our juveniles Later on Beccaria goes on to give his view on the death penalty.

He believed that there were only two reasons to put one to death; if after losing his freedom he still poses a threat to the nation or if "his death is the true and only brake to prevent others from committing crimes" (1998). The Supreme Court in the ruling of the Thompson case struggled with two key terms to try and justify capital punishment for teenagers, retribution and deterrence. The result of their assessment of these two ideas in relationship to juveniles seemed to show that capital punishment was not a very effective punishment. From the retributive standpoint, the justices concluded that it could not be applied to juveniles because of their potential and capacity to grow and their lower standard of "culpability" (Ricotta, 1988).

From the deterrent standpoint, they questioned whether a certain age would be more deterred than another based on the assumption that teenagers do not really engage in a cost-benefit analysis before they commit their crimes (1988). Finally, the overall assessment, whether inconclusive or not, was that without retribution and / or deterrence, capital punishment "is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering" (1998). Thompson's sentence was eventually reversed and his case set a precedent still in use today. Victor Streib outlines a few arguments for and against a juvenile death penalty in his collection of research. We will look at a few of each starting with the arguments for. The first argument is that the problem that we have with teenagers committing homicide is much more severe than in other countries (2000).

Juveniles also do not respond very well to punishment that is less harsh, forcing the need for more intense corrections, which is the second argument. The third reason deals with our political leaders and their strong emphasis on "harsher punishments" (2000). The last argument for the juvenile death penalty is simply that we can not solve the root of the problem, the "societal conditions which breed violent juvenile crime". Therefore we must try to correct the problem through the end result which is punishment for the crime (2000). The first argument against the juvenile death penalty deals with the study that was mentioned above. Many of these kids come from very bad backgrounds and therefore they have not had the chance to grow up and mature and move on from this difficult time in their life.

The second reason opposers hold is that kids of the age we are referring to are not deterred from crime by the death penalty because they have "little realistic understanding of death and instead tend to see themselves as immortal" (2000). Thirdly, opposers believe we must try and start at the root of the problem and improve societal conditions and our neighborhoods (2000). Lastly, another popular view comes from the Thompson case where one justice commented that. ".. executing [Thompson] eliminates all prospects of rehabilitation and affords no more protection for society than secured imprisonment" (Ricotta, 1988). This reason basically charges the death penalty with giving up on our youth and not offering the chance to reform themselves. The youngest juvenile executed by the government was a young boy in the country of Yemen (Executions, 2000). He was only thirteen.

And while this may seem out of touch for our society we must look at the pros and cons of this issue and evaluate our punishment of juveniles. If we do not, it will be only a matter of time before our thirteen year olds are so out of control to the point where a jury will vote "yes" to take that boy's life away. To date, the youngest juvenile executed in the U.S. was Sean Sellers of Oklahoma. He was executed in early 1999 for a crime he committed when he was sixteen years old (Promises, 1999). With the Presidential election coming up as well we need consider the implications that might take place if the Governor of Texas, the state that executes more juveniles than any other state in our nation becomes elected.

What will this mean for the nation This brief overview of the juvenile death penalty should help awaken us to some of the issues and future implications that are associated with this issue. 9 f 2 Amnesty International Press Release. (1997, June). United States of America: Amnesty International outraged about possible sentence against South African teenager in Mississippi. Available: web 1997/25102997. htm Beccaria, C. (1995).

On crimes and punishments and other writings. New York: Cambridge University Press. Beck, A. (1999, March). Background information: March 1999. Available: web juveniles. html Farley, C. & Willwerth, J. (1998, January 19). Dead teen walking.

Time, 151, 50-56. Executions of juvenile offenders. (2000). Available: http: // web Gonnerman, J. (2000, January 5). Kids on the row. The Village Voice [Online].

Available: web. com / issues /0001/gonnerman. shtml Promises broken: Children in conflict with the law. (1999, December). Available: web promises / law. html Ricotta, D. (1988). Eighth amendment-the death penalty for juveniles: A state's right or a child's injustice. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 79,921-951. Streib, V. (2000, June).

The death penalty today: Death sentences and executions for juvenile crimes January 1, 1973-June 30, 2000. Available: web faculty / streib /juv death. htm Whitman, L. (2000, June 20). Bush should halt Texas execution: Human Rights Watch letter to the Texas board of pardons and paroles. Available: web 2000/06/board-ltr. htm.