The juvenile death penalty is prohibited by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Only Iran and Somalia still impose it. The US Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for felons under 15 in 1988 and for all juveniles in 2005. The decision was based on the criminal’s immaturity and inability to understand the consequences of their crime. Some dissenting opinions questioned the relevance of foreign law and the role of the judiciary. 35 US states still have the death penalty.
The juvenile death penalty involves sentencing criminals to death who were under the age of 18 when they committed a capital crime. A capital crime in the United States is defined as murder, mass murder, genocide, or treason. The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the death penalty for juveniles. As of 2010, only two countries – Iran and Somalia – impose the death penalty for criminals under the age of 18.
The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that the death penalty was unconstitutional for felons who were 15 years of age or younger at the time of the crime. In the case Thompson v. Oklahoma, Thompson was convicted of participating in the killing of his former brother-in-law. At the time, a study of 14 juvenile cases in which the death penalty was pending showed that most of the offenders involved had suffered head injuries as children or had been subjected to physical, mental or sexual abuse during their lifetime. Only two of the offenders had an intelligence quotient (IQ) above 90, and most were illiterate or learned to read while in prison.
On March 1, 2005, the US Supreme Court approved a law that excluded the death penalty for all criminals under the age of 18. At the time, 72 prisoners in 20 states were affected by this sentence. The case in question is Roper v. Simmons, in which Simmons committed premeditated murder during a burglary when he was 17. Simmons’ troubled past was not disclosed to the jury, who sentenced him to death.
The Supreme Court based its review on Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, in which it was declared unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on mentally retarded criminals mainly because they could not understand their guilt. Discussions focused on the criminal’s immaturity and inability, due to his age, to understand the consequences of his crime. Eventually it was highlighted that “evolving standards of decency” had determined that the juvenile death penalty violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Dissenting opinions questioned the “national consensus” of opinion on the juvenile death penalty, because only 18 of the 38 states that then had the death penalty prohibited the execution of juveniles, and questioned whether that consensus was even relevant. The propensity of the Supreme Court of the time to refer to foreign law in interpreting the United States Constitution has also been questioned. It has been argued that the role of the judiciary is to rule on what the law states and not on what it should say. As of 2010, 35 US states have the death penalty.
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