There is an emerging national consensus against executing juvenile offenders. The majority of states do not execute people for crimes committed at the age of 16 or 17, but 19 states still maintain their right to do so. Significant evidence shows that America's death penalty system is broken. To this date, 117 people have been freed from death row because they were proven innocent. Executing juvenile offenders only adds to the immorality of America's flawed capital punishment system.
A total of 228 juvenile death sentences have been imposed since 1973. Seventy-two of these offenders are still on death row. These 72 are being held in 12 states. Texas, which houses America's most active death row, holds 40 percent of the juvenile offenders.
Of the other 156 sentences, 14 percent have resulted in an execution and 86 percent have been reversed or commuted. A 2003 ABC poll showed that only 21 percent of Americans favors the death penalty over life imprisonment for juvenile offenders.
In its 2004/5 term, the Supreme Court once again has the opportunity to ban juvenile executions permanently. This fall, the Court heard oral arguments in the case of Roper v. Simmons. The case came to the Supreme Court on appeal after the Missouri Supreme Court found that juvenile executions constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. The Court should use this case to ban the execution of juvenile offenders nationally.
The Court must consider the overwhelming national consensus against executing juvenile offenders. In the past 10 years, only three states -- Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma -- have executed juvenile offenders.
This is not a surprising statistic considering that those same three states claim 54 percent of the nation's executions in general since 1976. Including the 12 states that do not have a death penalty at all, there are 31 states that ban the execution of juvenile offenders. Of the 19 states that do have a juvenile death penalty, seven do not have juvenile offenders on death row.
These are compelling statistics. Compelling enough for Justice Stevens of the Supreme Court to write: "The practice of executing such offenders [under 18] is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society. We should put an end to this shameful practice" (dissenting in re Stanford - 2002).
"Evolving standards of decency" are extremely significant in regards to the execution of juvenile offenders. The Supreme Court uses evolving standards of decency as a method to determine what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment. In Coker v. Georgia (1977), the Supreme Court said that evolving standards of decency should be measured by objective factors and that the most important objective factor is state legislation.
Thus, in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Court drew upon the fact that 30 states banned the execution of mentally retarded individuals. In Atkins, the Court held that executing mentally retarded people violates evolving standards of decency and, therefore, violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
At the least there is a consensus equal to that discovered in Atkins against executing juvenile offenders. The opposition of 31 states is a clear guide to the Court that standards of decency oppose imposing the death penalty agasint juvenile offenders.
The standards of decency are also rapidly evolving. Since 1993, eight states have made juvenile executions illegal.
It is time for the Court to follow Justice Stevens' lead and take a step in the direction of morality. America should be using the money needed to execute juveniles (contrary to poplar belief, the death penalty is more expensive than life in prison) to stop heinous crimes from being committed in the future.
Execution is not the correct way to keep young people away from crime.
Better funding for schools, support for working single-mothers, and money for drug treatment are all solutions to juvenile crime. State-sponsored execution is not a solution.
--Morgan MacDonald is a senior political science major.
