Juveniles And The Death Penalty Essays (1498 words) -

Juveniles And The Death Penalty Children Doing Crimes That End up In The Chamber It was a warm summer evening in a small town in the state of Missouri. John Freshman, a white male gang member fourteen years of age, drives down a street that he knows his rival gang members are usually standing along. John pulls his 9 MM. automatic pistol out from underneath his seat and points it at the group of rival gang members. John opens fire and unloads his weapon at anybody standing along the street. As John pulls away from the area, he almost gets into an accident with a parked vehicle and drops his weapon. When John regains control of the vehicle he shouts blood killer coming down the road. When the ambulance and police arrive, they find five people dead two children and one grand mother in the house, and two gang members in the street dead. The police find the weapon and test for fingerprints. They come back to John Freshman AKA Lone G. John has been in juvenile hall nine times and has been on probation or in custody for the past five years. John is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The previous statement is not real but it portrays the life of our country. This statement can be read and seen all over the country in newspapers and watched on the five oclock news. Was Johns sentencing appropriate? Should have John been sentenced to the death penalty? Is John old enough to be put to death? This paper will try to answer these questions. Terms Juvenile - A young Person, one below the legally established age of adulthood. A person under the age of eighteen when the crime was committed. Death Penalty- Capital punishment, sentenced to death. What age is too young for the death penalty? A better question is what age is it too young to die for the murder of another human person. In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled that juvenile under the age of sixteen should not be sentenced to death because they are too young. This was upheld in the case of Thompson V. Oklahoma (487 U.S. 815,1988). Since juveniles are beginning to get more violent in their acts, should the age be lowered? For instance, the previous scenario states that it was a fourteen year old doing the crime. What if it was a twelve year old? When does a juvenile have to pay fully for the crime he or she committed? If you look at the juvenile criminal statistics today and compare them to twenty years ago, we see a dramatic decrease in violent crime and increase use of death penalty sentences. For example, Proffessor Victor Strieb From Claude W. Petit College of Law (Death Penalty for Juveniles) stated juveniles are one to two percent of all people on death r ow in the United States, although they commit more than fifty percent of all the murders in the United States. As we look at the history of juveniles sentenced to death, we see that the rate has been steady and has fluctuated by little more than five percent. The History of the death penalty for juveniles began around 1642 with the execution of Thomas Graunger. Thomas Graunger was executed in Plymouth Colony Massachusetts for a crime he committed when he was sixteen years old. He became the first recorded juvenile in what was to become the United States to be executed for an offense committed under the age of eighteen. There were 343 executions of juveniles before the Supreme Court repelled the death penalty. There have been 13 executions of convicted juveniles since the beginning of the new era. Just like adults, the state of Texas is the leader of juvenile executed with seven. There has been seven Caucasians, five African Americans and one Latino executed. Twelve of those executed were seventeen when they did the crime. (Strieb, Juveniles on death row) Before June 30, 1988, thirty people were on death row for crimes committed while under the age of eighteen. As of June 1999, there are seventy people on death row for crimes they committe d when they were juveniles. About one in fifty