Capital Punishment in the Field of Juvenile Delinquency - Term Paper Example

Capital Punishment in the Field of Juvenile Delinquency Capital Punishment in the Field of Juvenile Delinquency It is only in 2005 that the US, under pressure from domestic and international players, abolished capital punishment for juveniles. The country became the last one in the world to abolish the practice with cases of executions standing at 71. Nevertheless, why did it take the world’s biggest democracy that long to realize what other countries had long realized to be wrong? That question forms the basis of the argument in this paper. The issue of whether the execution of children is right or wrong is still a subject of debate to date. The proponents of juvenile capital punishment argue that a person’s age should not be offered as a reason to believe that he/she would not be a danger to the community in the future. The antagonists, on the other hand, argue that the ability to prevent emotions, being rational, and exercising caution is relatively less developed in adolescents as compared to adults. The execution of persons under the age of eighteen is explicitly banned under the UN Convention. This has great implications because the convention is ratified by all the countries except US and Somalia. It perhaps is no surprise, therefore, that among the 39 juvenile executions recorded since 1990, 19 were done in the US. Amnesty International, through its director, says that juvenile executions does nothing to deter crime and is actually a violation of human rights. Besides, Levesque, (2005) argues, innocent children are prone to wrongful executions. The case of US is not an isolated one. As much as the world would wish to condemn America for taking too long, it is important that certain facts be put across. For one, juvenile crime, specifically homicide, is apparently more prevalent in the US than in other countries. Secondly, these juvenile murderers are brutal and non-responsive to pleas from others urging them to stop. Thirdly, correcting the societal conditions that juvenile crime thrives upon is a hard task that has been rendered almost impossible. These situations, coupled with the blend of different cultures in the US, may just be the reasons why the country took that long to abolish juvenile capital punishment. According to Melusky & Pesto, (2011) about 20,000 people have been executed, legally in the past 350 years in the US alone. Though the executions declined in the 1950’s and 60’s, they only came to a halt in the year 1967 pending decisions by the Supreme Court. The decisions of the Supreme Court were to determine whether capital punishment was cruel and unusual. A punishment is interpreted by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional if: It is a punishment originally understood by the framers of the Constitution to be cruel and unusual. There is a societal agreement that the punishment offends the cultured standards of human wellbeing. It is (1) vilely disproportionate to the extent of the offense or (2) makes no quantifiable contribution to tolerable goals of punishment. In the Furman v. Georgia ruling, the Supreme Court held that capital punishment was cruel and unusual as imposed under the existing laws. As a result of this landmark ruling, more than 600 death sentences for prisoners were vacated. Convicted of bestiality, Thomas Graunger is the first known juvenile to be executed in the US. He was convicted in 1642 in Plymouth Colony, MA. Since his execution, 361 more juveniles have faced the conviction of juvenile capital punishment. In Kent v. United States, the Supreme Court limited the waiver discretion of juvenile courts. Initially, juvenile courts could at their own discretion decide when to waive criminal charges against a minor. The court availed guidelines for use by the judge in deciding whether to give a waiver or not. Part of this list was: the juvenile’s history record; the seriousness and type of offence; and the prospects of rehabilitating the juvenile among others. Though the juveniles were guaranteed of certain rights, they were still as vulnerable as the adults to the capital punishment conviction. In the 1980’s, the Supreme Court, in the case of Eddings v. Oklahoma, vacated the death penalty on Eddings. The Supreme Court found that the judges in the trial court failed to consider other mitigation options. At the time of the offence, Eddings was 16. Palmer, (2008) sees the ruling as a win for juvenile capital punishment antagonists since the age of juveniles was qualified as a mitigating factor. In 1987, while ruling in the case of Thompson v. Oklahoma, the death sentence of a 15-year-old who had killed his brother-in-law was vacated by the Supreme Court. However, only half of the bench agreed that the execution of the minor would be unconstitutional under all the circumstances. Ultimately, the Court found that capital punishment of minors aged 16 or 17 did not offend societal standards of decency. After the series of Supreme Court rulings upholding juvenile death penalty, there have been consistent convictions at least in the last 20 years. Since 1973, there have been 196 juvenile sentences, approximately 3% of the total death sentences in the US. According to Latzer & McCord, (2010) the average range of convictions has been between 15 and 17 years. Immediately after 1972, and following the Furman ruling, juvenile capital punishments started to fluctuate. However, in the 1980’s, they became more consistent perhaps owing to the many Supreme Court rulings maintaining its constitutionality. The rate then went on a decline, possibly because of the many cases pending before the Supreme Court. In the 90’s, the rate reverted to the 3% of all death sentences rate. Of all the juvenile capital sentences issued since 1973, 74 remain in force while 105 have been reversed. Normally, convicts are well into adulthood when the executions happen as the length of time in the death row ranges from 6 to 20 years. As at mid-2000, 74 adults remain in death rows for crimes committed while they were underage. Palmer, (2008) opines that a big percentage of these adults are male who were convicted while they were still underage. With the ever increasing globalization trend, international law greatly affects whether or not the juvenile capital punishment is banned or upheld in a country. The international community has inclined in favor of the banning of the juvenile capital punishment as evidenced in the UN convention. More than half of the world countries have abolished juvenile death sentences since the adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations’ ICCPR prohibits the imposition of the death penalty on minors. Though the US signed the covenant, the Federal Government expressly reserved the right to impose the juvenile capital punishment (Lavesque, 2005). Is juvenile capital execution, therefore, an unusual punishment? Since its reinstatement in 1976, only 28 states have expressly prohibited the execution of convicts who committed murder while at the age of 17 or below. Of the remaining 22 states that allow juvenile executions, only seven have actually ordered such executions. In those seven states, only two have had these executions more than once. These two states are Texas and Virginia with 13 and three executions respectively. The general trend appears to be a trajectory towards the banning of juvenile executions. In fact, in recent years, five more states have banned the punishment. After 1995, when Kansas and New York States reintroduced the punishment, offenders under the ages of 18 were exempted specifically. In 2003 alone, ten states were designing legislation against juvenile legislation. Such demonstrations serve to show that the zeal to have the executions banned in totality is gaining momentum. Public opinion is also at the center for the push to have these executions done away with. In 2002, for example, 69% of Americans were opposed to juvenile capital punishment despite 72% of them supporting the punishment, in general. Support for juvenile executions has always been low the world over, perhaps due to the general assumption that children are naturally innocent. For a long time, lawyers have argued that juvenile capital punishment does not serve the purposes of deterrence and retribution. This is despite the purposes being the major reason for awarding such punishment. The law has consistently held that the death penalty should be served to those that are most culpable, something that juveniles are not. With the increasing dependence on science to shed new light on areas of speculation, it is important to borrow a leaf when making decisions on this subject as well. Researchers have over time used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to map the development of the human brain from childhood to adulthood. The results have confirmed what people have long feared to be true - that the adolescents make decisions that are not their fault. The thinking tissue that is also known as the frontal lobe undergoes some of pruning during one’s youth in a bid to acquire efficiency. This results in some form of decline in people’s capacity to think leading them to make decisions that have adverse consequences. It is understood that this process continues late into adolescence, and the brain becomes an inhibition to the adolescents’ thinking. These findings confirm that issues of juvenile culpability are not just moral or theoretical but also biological. Part of the reasons why juvenile executions have been on a decline is the legislations put in place. Since the Stanford decision, no State has decreased its age limit from 18 years, despite a go ahead to lower it to 17 years. Instead, more states prohibited the juvenile capital punishment. These legislations show a general societal inclination against juvenile executions since the law-making bodies are a representation of the people’s views. Another reason for this decline is the favorable jury sentencing decisions made. The Supreme Court in abolishing the punishment relied on past trial court judgments that poked holes on the constitutionality of juvenile executions. Perhaps, another reason for the decline in juvenile executions is the discovery that some convicts were actually innocent, long after they are executed. This, Latzer & McCord, (2010) say brought a campaign for the substitution of the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ clause with a ‘beyond any doubt’ clause in cases involving murder. It is disheartening to learn that a person who was convicted of murder was in actual sense innocent and was therefore wrongfully executed. The burden of proof should, therefore, not be on the accused to prove his/her innocence, but on the accuser to prove the accused’s guilt. The fear of convicting someone wrongly may have had an impact on the judges’ decisions and hence led to fewer juvenile executions. It is peculiarly noteworthy that most of the countries in which juvenile executions have taken place are largely Islamic countries. These include countries like Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A great exception is the US, which is seen as largely practicing Christianity. In these Islamic countries, offences that warranty execution include cursing the name of Prophet Muhammad, incest, sodomy, fornication and lesbianism. The laws in books of religion to a great extent influence the path that a country’s legislation takes. It is a common fact that murders committed by underage offenders cannot be guaranteed to decline anytime soon. This is because, as more and more children are exposed to the violent nature of the society, they find themselves yearning to be engraved in this same violence. It is for this reason that you will often find young students burning their entire schools to ashes. What is required is not just legislation to deal with the issue but an entire paradigm shift on how society perceives life. Cliff, (2003) says that though the world stands to gain by abolishing juvenile capital punishments, it might still lose if care is not taken. Criminals could start hiring underage teens because they are guaranteed that they will not be convicted, or at least the conviction will not be harsh. Now, that as it may, the world is still a better place without juvenile executions. References Cliff, C. (2003). Capital punishment: A bibliography with indexes. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Latzer, B., & McCord, D. (2010). Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment. Burlington: Elsevier Science. Levesque, R. J. R. (2005). The psychology and law of criminal justice processes: Cases and materials. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Melusky, J. A., & Pesto, K. A. (2011). Capital punishment. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood Palmer, L. J. (2008). Encyclopedia of capital punishment in the United States. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co. Read More