Youth

Overview

Children are not as cul­pa­ble as adults for their actions. In the death penal­ty con­text, that prin­ci­ple has caused debate about what age is too young for some­one to be sub­ject to exe­cu­tion. International human rights law has long pro­hib­it­ed the use of the death penal­ty against peo­ple who were younger than age 18 at the time of the offense. See Executions of Juveniles Outside of the U.S. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court brought the U.S. into com­pli­ance with that inter­na­tion­al norm, rul­ing that the U.S. Constitution also pro­tects peo­ple from being sen­tenced to death for crimes com­mit­ted when they were under 18. For more infor­ma­tion, see the Roper v. Simmons Resource Page.

The Court had ear­li­er (1987) held that the prop­er age cut­off should be 16, but states grad­u­al­ly applied more strin­gent stan­dards to avoid con­flict with oth­er areas of the law where chil­dren were treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. By 2005, thir­ty states had either abol­ished the death penal­ty for all offend­ers or at least for those under the age of 18. As with its ear­li­er rul­ing exempt­ing defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, the Court found that a nation­al con­sen­sus had formed around exclud­ing those under 18, and that there was lit­tle to be gained in terms of deter­rence or ret­ri­bu­tion by exe­cut­ing younger offend­ers. Some Justices point­ed to the fact that the U.S. was vir­tu­al­ly alone in the world in allow­ing juve­nile offend­ers to be exe­cut­ed. The emerg­ing sci­ence of brain devel­op­ment also con­tributed to this decision.

At Issue

Debate now focus­es on whether 18 year olds should be held as respon­si­ble as adults for vio­lent crime. Some have sug­gest­ed that 21 would be a more appro­pri­ate age both because of the rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties con­ferred by soci­ety at that age and because new brain sci­ence shows that crit­i­cal areas of the brain relat­ing to judg­ment, impulse con­trol, and con­se­quen­tial think­ing do not mature until the mid-twen­ties. The Court’s ratio­nale on why it excludes juve­niles from death penal­ty eli­gi­bil­i­ty has been applied to oth­er deci­sions regard­ing the use of life-with­out-parole sen­tences for this same age group.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC has care­ful­ly mon­i­tored the flow of state leg­is­la­tion and court deci­sions regard­ing the appro­pri­ate age for the death penal­ty. The per­ti­nent Supreme Court deci­sion is ful­ly ana­lyzed. DPIC also makes avail­able the thor­ough research by oth­ers on the use of the death penal­ty for juve­niles in U.S. his­to­ry, with sta­tis­tics on sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and the race of defendants.