A recent­ly pub­lished study by Northeastern crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sors William J. Bowers and Michael E. Antonio, in con­junc­tion with University of Delaware pro­fes­sors Valerie P. Hans and Benjamin D. Fleury-Steiner, finds jurors very reluc­tant to give the death penal­ty to juve­nile defen­dants because of their imma­tu­ri­ty and dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly back­grounds.

“ In inter­view­ing almost 1,200 jurors, we’ve found that jurors across the nation would near­ly always sen­tence a juve­nile to life,” said Bowers. ​“Jurors need to look at juve­niles as imma­ture and inca­pable of com­mit­ting the crimes for which they are on tri­al. As such, the like­li­hood of a death sen­tence drops off dras­ti­cal­ly when jurors know the defen­dant was under the age of 18 at the time of his crime.”

On Wednesday, Oct. 13, the United States Supreme Court is sched­uled to hear oral argu­ments about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the juve­nile death penal­ty in Roper v. Simmons. Christopher Simmons was 17 at the time of his crime, but a jury con­vict­ed him and sen­tenced him to death. Earlier this year, the Missouri Supreme Court set aside his death sen­tence on the grounds that exe­cu­tion of per­sons under 18 years of age at the time of their crimes vio­lates the U.S. Constitution.

The deci­sion-mak­ing of cap­i­tal jurors is a key way to mea­sure com­mu­ni­ty con­science, accord­ing to Prof. Valerie Hans, and the new study from the Capital Jury Project exam­ines the deci­sion-mak­ing of 48 jurors from 12 cap­i­tal cas­es with defen­dants 17 or younger at the time of their crimes, com­par­ing their views with more than a thou­sand jurors who decid­ed cap­i­tal cas­es with old­er defen­dants. The exten­sive juror inter­views reveal that jurors view juve­nile defen­dants dis­tinc­tive­ly. Jurors in juve­nile cas­es see a defen­dan­t’s dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly back­ground and upbring­ing as respon­si­ble in part for his or her behav­ior. They see the defen­dant as less than a ful­ly mature and respon­si­ble mem­ber of soci­ety. Jurors empha­size the juve­nile defen­dan­t’s dimin­ished or par­tial respon­si­bil­i­ty for the crime. All these fac­tors lead jurors to decide on life rather than death for the vast major­i­ty of juve­nile cap­i­tal defen­dants.

The find­ings are based on data from the Capital Jury Project, a study of the deci­sion mak­ing of cap­i­tal jurors con­duct­ed by uni­ver­si­ty-based researchers from 14 states with the sup­port of the National Science Foundation. The project has inter­viewed 1,198 jurors from 353 cap­i­tal tri­als in 14 states.

–A sum­ma­ry of the prin­ci­pal research find­ings can be found in an arti­cle titled ​“Capital Jurors as the Litmus Test of Community Conscience for the Juvenile Death Penalty” in the May-June 2004 issue of the jour­nal Judicature. –A full report of the research find­ings can be found in an arti­cle titled ​“Too Young for the Death Penalty: An Empirical Examination of Community Conscience and the Juvenile Death Penalty from the Perspective of Capital Jurors” in the June 2004 issue of the Boston University Law Review. (Northeastern Univ. Press Release, Oct. 6, 2004). See also DPIC’s Roper v. Simmons page.

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