Juvenile Offenders next in Death Penalty Fight

U.S. death penalty opponents, elated at the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw the execution of the mentally retarded, said on Thursday their next big battle would be to eliminate the execution of juveniles.

"The Supreme Court has recognized that executing mentally retarded people violates the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," said Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

"The next step for the court should be to apply the same, exact standard to the execution of youthful offenders," Hawkins said in a statement.

In recent years, death penalty opponents have adopted a "salami slicer" strategy with some success. Instead of mounting an all-out assault on capital punishment, which public opinion polls suggest is still supported by around 2/3 of electorate, they have pointed out injustices in the way the death penalty is applied while attacking the execution of specific classes of offenders.

Across the nation, 83 people are currently on death row for crimes committed while under the age of 18. 2 are facing execution next month, both in Texas.

T.J. Jones, is scheduled to die Aug. 8 for murdering an elderly man in 1994 when he was 17. Toronto Patterson, is set to die Aug. 28 for a triple murder of his cousin and her 2 daughters, also committed in 1995 when he was 17.

"The next logical arena to challenge capital punishment will be the execution of minors," said Rick Halperin, who teaches human rights at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and heads the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

"The concept of an evolving standard of decency will now shift to the constitutionality of killing juvenile offenders but we're looking at a very long battle."

Abraham Bonowitz, of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said the argument the Supreme Court applied to the mentally retarded of "diminished culpability" could also be applied to juveniles.

"In the United States, we set the age of adulthood at 18. Voting begins at 18; the ability to join the armed forces begins at 18. There is an understanding that younger people have fewer rights and fewer responsibilities and are therefore less culpable," he said.

Currently, 28 states exclude the execution of juvenile offenders, including the 12 states that ban all executions. Most of the rest allow the execution of those who committed crimes aged 16 or over, while four have a minimum age of 17.

Worldwide, the United States is one of five nations that executes people who committed crimes before the age of 18, the others being Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

Between 1973 and 2000, 196 juveniles were sentenced to death, according to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department.

Of these, 13 were aged 15, 47 were aged 16 and the rest aged 17 when they committed their crimes. However, just over half of these sentences were later revised or reversed.

One problem death penalty opponents face is that by the time juvenile offenders are put to death, they have typically spent several years on death row and are no longer juveniles.

The Supreme Court had considered the question of the death penalty for juveniles several times.

In 1987, it ruled that executing children under 15 constituted cruel and unusual punishment. But the following year, in a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that Constitution did not prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed at age 16 or 17.

(source: Reuters)