Death Penalty: Juveniles

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, there have been 18 executions of juvenile offenders, approximately 2.4% of the total number of executions; 10 executions occurred during the 1990s. There are currently 83 inmates on death row who were sentenced as juveniles, approximately 2.24% of the total death row population (NAACP, 2002).

Currently, 38 states and the federal government authorize the death penalty. Sixteen of these states and the federal government mandate that the individual must be at least 18 years of age at the time of the crime to be eligible for the death penalty. Twenty-two states permit the execution of offenders who committed capital offenses prior to their 18th birthday. Five states have chosen 17 as the minimum age, and 17 states have chosen 16 as the minimum age (Death Penalty Information Center, 2002). Twenty-two states permit the execution of an offender who committed a capital crime as a juvenile, but the majority of juvenile defendants on death row were sentenced to death in the state of Texas (see Table 1).

On February 4, 1999, Sean Sellers, 16 years old at the time of his offense, was the first juvenile offender under 17 years of age to be executed in 40 years. Sellers was sentenced to death for the murder of his [Page 126]mother and stepfather, Vonda and Paul Bellafatto, and for the death of Robert Paul Bower. The teen was executed in Oklahoma despite evidence of mental illness and protests from many international organizations. International organizations such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as other international treaties and agreements have given most countries cause to abandon the death penalty for juvenile offenders. For example, since 1990, juvenile offenders have been executed in only six countries, including the United States, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia.

The Supreme Court has made decisions based on the Eighth Amendment's “cruel and unusual punishment” clause to bar the death penalty for juveniles below 16 years of age. In 1958, the Supreme Court decided in Trop v. Dulles that the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment contained an “evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society.” In light of that decision, the Court recognized that in determining the meaning of “cruel and unusual,” it must first determine what the community's current sentiments were. When the Court later applied the “evolving standards of decency” concept to the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972), public opinion was mentioned and discussed explicitly in five of the nine separate opinions written.

Justice Marshall in Furman (1972) argued that “even a punishment that served a valid legislative purpose and was not excessive could violate the Eighth Amendment if popular sentiment abhors it” (p. 332). With this in mind, Marshall concluded that the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment because it had become morally unacceptable to the people of the United States at that time in history.

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