One of the most controversial issues in the rights of juveniles today is
addressed in the question, Should the death penalty be applied to juveniles? For
nearly a century the juvenile courts have existed to shield the majority of
juvenile offenders from the full weight of criminal law and to protect their
entitled special rights and immunities. In the case of kent vs.
United states in 1996, Justice Fortas stated some of these special rights
which include; Protection from publicity, confinement only to twenty-one years
of age, no confinement with adults, and protection against the consequences of
adult conviction such as the loss of civil rights, the use of adjudication
against him in subsequent proceedings and disqualification of public employment
(Kent vs. US 1966:1055).
These special rights and immunities exist so that the justice courts can
provide measures of guidance and rehabilitation for the child along with
protection for society. However, there are some youths who are extremely
dangerous and do not respond to attempts to reform themselves. The question is,
should established mechanisms for transferring or waiving juvenile court
jurisdiction in these exceptional cases take away these special rights and
subject the youth to the full range of penalties for criminal behavior
including, in some jurisdictions, execution (Thomson vs. State, 1986:784) ?
Should These juveniles who perform the same malicious acts as some adult
capital offenders be subject to the harshness of the criminal courts and the
finality of the death penalty ? This paper will discuss a history of capital
punishment for juveniles in the United States, methods of transferring juvenile
cases to criminal courts, and also my position on the subject and justice of
justice of juveniles and the death penalty.
The constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty reached a settlement in
1988 in the case of Thompson v. Oklahoma when four Supreme Court Justices
reached the conclusion that: persons under sixteen years of age cannot be
sentenced to death (Thompson v. Oklahoma, 1988).
Justice Stevens, Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun considered these important
issues as they were deliberating on the case: (1) Does a national consensus
forbidding executions of juveniles exist?; (2) the extent to which the laws of
other Western European nations prohibit or permit the execution of juveniles,
and the opinions of respected professional organizations; (3) the degree to
which the juveniles should be held responsible for their actions; (4) Whether
the execution of juveniles contributed to the retributive or deterrent goals of
punishment; and (5) Whether the small number of juveniles executed represents
the waton and freakish application of the death penalty as condemned by Justice
Stewart in Furman V. Georgia (Furman v. Georgia, 1972: 2763, Thompson v.
Oklahoma, 1988: 487 U.S. 815). Following the decision, thirty eight states and
the federal government created statutes authorizing the death penalty for
certain forms of murder and other capital offenses ( Streib 1 of 2). Thompson v.
Oklahoma held that no state within the minimum age line within its death penalty
can go below the age of sixteen.
