Execution Of Juveniles Essays - Legal Procedure, Trial As An Adult

Execution Of Juveniles 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 countrys 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 against 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 Graunger 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