A recent study of 18 juve­nile offend­ers on death row in Texas found that near­ly all par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­enced seri­ous head trau­mas in child­hood and ado­les­cence, came from extreme­ly vio­lent and/​or abu­sive fam­i­lies, had one or more severe men­tal ill­ness­es, and had signs of pre­frontal brain dys­func­tion. The study, con­duct­ed by Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis of Yale along with oth­er experts, sug­gests that most of the juve­nile offend­ers on America’s death rows suf­fer from seri­ous con­di­tions which ​“sub­stan­tial­ly exac­er­bate the already exist­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of youth.” In the study, Dr. Lewis and her col­leagues reviewed all avail­able med­ical, psy­cho­log­i­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, social, and fam­i­ly data for each par­tic­i­pant to clar­i­fy the ways in which these var­i­ous aspects of devel­op­ment may have dimin­ished a juve­nile offend­er’s judg­ment and self control. 

The study’s find­ings are sim­i­lar to ear­li­er research con­duct­ed by Dr. Lewis in 1988. Her work was cit­ed in an ami­cus brief filed last year by the Juvenile Law Center and more than 50 oth­er orga­ni­za­tions in sup­port of juve­nile offend­er Christopher Simmons. In his case, Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court will rule on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers. A rul­ing is expect­ed before July 2005. The arti­cle regard­ing Dr. Lewis’s lat­est study,“Ethics Questions Raised by Neuropsychiatric, Neuropsychological, Educational, Developmental, and Family Characteristics of 18 Juveniles Awaiting Execution in Texas,” was recent­ly pub­lished in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. (32 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 408 (December 2004)). See Juvenile Death Penalty and Resources.

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