Executions of Juveniles in the U.S. 1976-2005

In 1642, the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts executed Thomas Graunger, making him the first juvenile offender put to death in the American colonies. Between then and the March 1, 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons that ended juvenile executions in the U.S., 365 people confirmed to have been juveniles at the time of their offense were executed. That total constitutes 1.8% of the roughly 20,000 confirmed American executions since colonial times.

Twenty-two juvenile offenders were executed in the United States in the three decades between the Supreme Court decisions upholding the constitutionality of capital punishment in 1976 and the execution bar announced in Roper (see map, below). Those 22 executions comprised about 2% of the executions carried out in that time period. All but one occurred in the South and all were in the states that comprised the former confederacy.