In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision ending the juvenile death penalty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) has released a new report: Immature Minds in a “Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, detailing the growing support for the idea that individuals ages 18, 19, and 20 should receive the same age-appropriate considerations that juveniles now receive in death penalty cases. The report also reveals troubling new data about racial disparities within this age group.
According to a new DPI analysis, more than three-quarters (78%) of all death sentences imposed during the last twenty years on individuals age 18, 19, or 20 have been imposed on people of color. This is well above the rate found in older defendants: by comparison, fifty-seven percent of the death sentences imposed during this same time frame on adults 21 and older were imposed on people of color.
Emerging adults disproportionately comprise those who are arrested and incarcerated across the country … in a criminal justice system rife with racism, available data suggests racial disparities are worst for this age group.
Nearly all jurisdictions that have sentenced people under 21 to death since Roper have sentenced young people of color, and particularly young Black people, at disproportionate rates. In eighty-seven percent of jurisdictions that sentenced anyone in this age group to death since Roper, half or more were people of color. In seventy-three percent of the jurisdictions that sentenced any 18- to 20-year-old to death since Roper, half or more were Black people. In some states this trend is even more pronounced: in California, in the twenty years since Roper, nine out of ten death sentences given to emerging adults at the time of their crime were imposed on people of color. For comparison, roughly three-quarters of all death sentences imposed in the state during this timeframe were imposed on people of color.
Studies suggest that Black youth are held to different standards and judged more harshly than their white peers when it concerns guilt and punishment. They are more likely to be perceived as older than their actual age; as less innocent; and as more angry — all of which can lead to harsher punishments.
The new DPI analysis also shows how age and race affect outcomes in unexpected ways. The average age at crime for people sentenced to death is 34.3 years old for white people and 29.7 years old for people of color, a nearly five-year gap. In some states, the gap is as large as 15 years.
Once sentenced to death, emerging adults of color also face a higher chance of being executed. Since Roper, people of color who have been sentenced to death for crimes committed as emerging adults are almost twice as likely as white emerging adults to be executed. Texas alone accounts for half of all emerging adult executions since Roper. Almost eighty percent of the emerging adult cohort members executed in Texas during this timeframe were people of color.
