On February 5, the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to adopt a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty for offend­ers who were 21 or younger at the time of the crime. According to a report accom­pa­ny­ing the res­o­lu­tion, ​“there is a grow­ing med­ical con­sen­sus that key areas of the brain rel­e­vant to deci­sion-mak­ing and judg­ment con­tin­ue to devel­op into the ear­ly twen­ties.” The ABA first opposed apply­ing the death penal­ty against defen­dants younger than age 18 in a res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed in 1983. In 1988, in Thompson v. Oklahoma, the U.S. Supreme Court cit­ed that ABA res­o­lu­tion as part of the evi­dence that ​“it would offend civ­i­lized stan­dards of decen­cy to exe­cute a per­son who was less than 16 years old at the time of his or her offense.” Seventeen years lat­er, in Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Court extend­ed the pro­hi­bi­tion against exe­cut­ing juve­niles to include all defen­dants under age 18 when the offense occurred. The ABA’s report says “[t]he ABA has been – and should con­tin­ue to be – a leader in sup­port­ing devel­op­men­tal­ly appro­pri­ate and evi­dence-based solu­tions for the treat­ment of young peo­ple in our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, includ­ing with respect to the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty.” It cites recent lit­i­ga­tion chal­leng­ing the death penal­ty for defen­dants under 21, includ­ing a rul­ing by a Kentucky tri­al court that said ​“the death penal­ty would be an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate pun­ish­ment for crimes com­mit­ted by indi­vid­u­als under 21 years of age.” The report also high­lights new research on the devel­op­ment of the ado­les­cent brain and leg­isla­tive trends afford­ing juve­nile sta­tus or sim­i­lar pro­tec­tions to peo­ple in their ear­ly twen­ties. The report con­cludes, ​“this pol­i­cy pro­pos­es a prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tion based on age that is sup­port­ed by sci­ence, tracks many oth­er areas of our civ­il and crim­i­nal law, and will suc­ceed in mak­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty fair­er and more pro­por­tion­al to both the crimes and the offenders.”

(Lee Rawles, Ban death penal­ty for those 21 or younger, ABA House says, ABA Journal, February 5, 2018; Seth Miller and Robert Weiner, Report to the House of Delegates, Resolution 111, American Bar Association Death Penalty Due Process Review Project and Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, February 2018.) See Juveniles.

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