Florida Senator Victor Crist (R‑Tampa), a long-time death penal­ty sup­port­er, is ask­ing his leg­isla­tive col­leagues to sup­port a bill to bar the juve­nile death penal­ty in Florida. ​“In my heart and soul I believe it’s the right thing to do. There is a cer­tain essence of juve­niles that make them dif­fer­ent,” said Crist. Research sup­ports that notion. David Fassler, a Vermont psy­chi­a­trist who helped the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry draft its pol­i­cy against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for juve­niles stat­ed, “[L]aws rais­ing the drink­ing age to 21 or set­ting the vot­ing age at 18 already rec­og­nize that ado­les­cents are dif­fer­ent than adults. Now we real­ly have very sol­id sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that, even when they do hor­ri­ble things, they shouldn’t face the same pun­ish­ment as adults.” Crist believes the bill will suc­ceed in the Senate, which passed a sim­i­lar mea­sure in 2001. Nationally in 2004, South Dakota and Wyoming have both aban­doned the juve­nile death penal­ty, bring­ing the total num­ber of states that for­bid the prac­tice to 31, includ­ing the 12 non-death penal­ty states. The Supreme Court will con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the juve­nile death penal­ty this fall when it hears argu­ments in Roper v. Simmons. (Orlando Sentinel, March 8, 2004) For edi­to­ri­als from around the coun­try in sup­port of such a mea­sure, see DPIC’s Roper v. Simmons page and Juvenile Death Penalty.

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