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Geocities
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executing children | The US is one of six countries which executes people who were under 18 years-old at the time they committed their crimes.
List of Juveniles executed in U.S. since 1976 |
The first known execution of a teenager (in the U.S.) took place in 1642, in Plymouth Colony, Mass., when 16-year-old Thomas Graunger was hanged for having sex with animals. The youngest to die for his crime within the past 100 years: 14-year-old George Stinney, a youth killed in 1944 for murdering two girls in South Carolina.
Shouldn't the U.S. Supreme Court's Atkins vs Virginia decision exempting prisoners with mental retardation from the death penalty apply to children too? Children don't understand consequences like adults. Children think with their emotions. The execution of juvenile offenders is unconstitutional. How can someone not considered responsible enough to vote legally drink or join the military , be held to the same inhumane and harshest of pnishments as a knowing adult? Shouldn't we be teaching our children that it's wrong to kill someone to solve a problem?
According to Amnesty International, the United States of America has carried out
more documented executions of Juvenile offenders than any other country.
Ironically, the majority of these offenders that have been executed since 1990
were of serious or mental deprivation. These adolescent's lifestyles consisted
of a regular use of drugs and alcohol, and the child held a considerably lower
than average intelligence. Many offenders had some type of brain damage, and
most had poor or inexperienced legal counsel; which resulted in a loss of
important information and incompetent representation.
The execution of Toronto Patterson marked the third time in four months that Texas has executed a black male who was sentenced to die for crimes committed as a juvenile. Texas has accounted for more than half of the juvenile offenders executed in the U.S. since 1976. In the past 2 years, only Texas and Virginia have executed juvenile offenders.
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