Defense attor­neys for Travis Bredhold, a Kentucky defen­dant fac­ing the death penal­ty for a mur­der com­mit­ted when he was 18 years old, are ask­ing a judge to extend the death-penal­ty exemp­tion for juve­nile offend­ers to those younger than age 21. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court (pic­tured) ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment when applied to offend­ers who were under age 18 at the time of the crime. The Court held at that time that a nation­al con­sen­sus had evolved against such exe­cu­tions and that the death penal­ty was a dis­pro­por­tion­ate pun­ish­ment for juve­nile offend­ers. In reach­ing that deter­mi­na­tion, the Court said that nei­ther ret­ri­bu­tion nor deter­rence pro­vid­ed ade­quate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for impos­ing the death penal­ty. Justice Kennedy wrote for the major­i­ty, Retribution is not pro­por­tion­al if the law’s most severe penal­ty is imposed on one whose cul­pa­bil­i­ty or blame­wor­thi­ness is dimin­ished, to a sub­stan­tial degree, by rea­son of youth and imma­tu­ri­ty.” Joanne Lynch, an attor­ney for Bredhold, told Fayette Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone that research indi­cates that brain mat­u­ra­tion con­tin­ues beyond the age of 18, and the juve­nile exemp­tion should be extend­ed, because peo­ple under the age of 21 are almost com­plete­ly like peo­ple under the age of 18. You real­ly don’t mature until you are in your mid-20s.” According to Temple University psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Laurence Steinberg, a process called myeli­na­tion con­tin­ues into a per­son­’s twen­ties, affect­ing their abil­i­ty to plan ahead, ana­lyze risks and rewards, and make com­plex deci­sions. In a 2014 paper, Hollis Whitson cit­ed both neu­ro­log­i­cal evi­dence of the imma­tu­ri­ty of late-ado­les­cent brains, as well as exam­ples of how the law dif­fer­en­ti­ates peo­ple under 21, includ­ing liquor laws, inher­i­tance laws, and eli­gi­bil­i­ty for com­mer­i­cal dri­vers’ licens­es. She also found that death sen­tences for those aged 18 – 20 were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly applied to racial minori­ties. From 2000 through 2015, 142 pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed in the United States for offens­es com­mit­ted before age 21: 87 (61.3%) were black or Latino.

(G. Kocher, Are 18-year-olds too imma­ture to face the death penal­ty? Lexington attor­ney says yes.,” Lexington Herald Leader, June 9, 2017; Defense wants judge to remove death penal­ty option in dead­ly Lexington rob­bery,” WKYT, June 9, 2017; O. Gur, H. Whitson, et al., Capital Punishment for Offenses Committed by Youth: A Population-Based Analysis,” American Society of Criminology, Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, November 16, 2016.) See Juveniles.

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