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) today released a new report: Immature Minds in a ​“Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20 , detail­ing grow­ing sup­port that indi­vid­u­als ages 18, 19, and 20 should receive the same age-appro­pri­ate con­sid­er­a­tions that juve­niles now receive in death penalty cases. 

[T]here is no bright line regard­ing brain devel­op­ment nor is there neu­ro­science to indi­cate the brains of 18-year-olds dif­fer in any sig­nif­i­cant way from those of 17-year-olds. 

Resolution of the American Academy of Pediatric Neuropsychology relat­ing to the impo­si­tion of death as a penal­ty for per­sons aged 18 through 20 years. (2020)

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Supreme Court found a soci­etal con­sen­sus against the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles who com­mit seri­ous crimes, cit­ing the many ways that teenagers under the age of 18 are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly in the eyes of the law. The Court was also per­suad­ed by neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research that described teenagers’ under­de­vel­oped impulse con­trol, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to peer pres­sure, imma­ture char­ac­ter traits, and capac­i­ty for change. DPI’s new report notes that courts and leg­is­la­tures are increas­ing­ly tak­ing notice of this same evi­dence to extend new legal pro­tec­tions to defen­dants ages 18 to 20. Although they remain eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, much of the ratio­nale and evi­dence the Court applied in Roper also applies to this age group. 

This report con­firms that there is very lit­tle evi­dence to jus­ti­fy a legal process that makes a teenag­er death-eli­gi­ble on his 18th birth­day, but not the day before.

Robin M. Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center

Key find­ings of the report include:

  • New death sen­tences for 18- to 20-year-olds have dimin­ished both in absolute terms and as a per­cent­age of all new death sen­tences over the last twen­ty years. During the past five years, juries have sen­tenced just five such indi­vid­u­als to death. 
  • Since the Roper deci­sion, more than three-quar­ters of the death sen­tences giv­en to 18- to 20-year-olds have been imposed on peo­ple of color.
  • Since Roper, peo­ple of col­or who are 18, 19 or 20 are twice as like­ly as white defen­dants in the same age range to be executed.
  • Studies of brain devel­op­ment and juve­nile behav­ior show that key fac­tors cit­ed by the Court in Roper (poor impulse con­trol and unnec­es­sary risk-tak­ing) are not only present in ado­les­cence, but also in 18‑, 19‑, and 20-year-olds. 

The report also fea­tures mul­ti­ple sto­ries of defen­dants 18- to 20-years-old who have faced the death penal­ty. Among them are the sto­ries of Cleo LeCroy’s evo­lu­tion from impul­sive youth to sta­ble adult; the child­hood dra­ma and abuse suf­fered by Christa Pike; the dire con­se­quences of forced con­fes­sions for Henry McCollum and Leon Brown; the exe­cu­tion of Ramiro Gonzales, who experts agreed posed no threat to soci­ety; and the rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent out­comes among three teenage code­fen­dants only two years apart in age that led to the exe­cu­tion of Carey Dale Grayson.

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