Ban under-18 executions

Palm Beach Post

April 21, 2004

Editorial

A small shaft of enlight­en­ment has cut into the dark think­ing in Florida about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

2 com­mit­tees in Tallahassee have approved leg­is­la­tion that would ban the death penal­ty for peo­ple who are under 18 years of age when they com­mit a cap­i­tal crime. Last week, the pro­pos­al cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee 7 – 0 and the House Public Safety Committee 17 – 1.

As with almost all oth­er mat­ters that relate to the death penal­ty, Florida is behind the nation­al curve. Thirty-one states either pro­hib­it exe­cu­tion of those who were minors at the time of their crime — South Dakota and Wyoming are the most recent addi­tions — or ban cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Supreme Court has made it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to exe­cute those who were 16, and this fall, the jus­tices will hear argu­ments in a case from Missouri that could lead to the court expand­ing the ban to include all minors.

One rea­son for chang­ing atti­tudes in Florida is the record of killing by very young chil­dren. Even the ardent­ly pro-death penal­ty polit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Tallahassee did­n’t want the bad pub­lic­i­ty that might attend a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion of death for some­one who was too young to dri­ve. Cover for the Legislature comes from Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Director Guy Tunnell, who sup­port the death penal­ty but also sup­port the leg­is­la­tion, which would allow a sen­tence of life with­out parole.

A sign of nation­al sen­ti­ment came when a jury refused to hand down a death sen­tence for Lee Malvo, the younger mem­ber of the Washington, D.C.-area sniper pair. He killed an FBI agent in Virginia, where most peo­ple favor cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. That’s why Attorney General John Ashcroft want­ed the first sniper tri­al held there.

Senate President Jim King, R‑Jacksonville, seems sup­port­ive. The prob­lem seems to be House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, R‑Plant City, who does­n’t want to seem soft on crime in his cam­paign for the U.S. Senate. There’s soft, though, and then there’s barbaric.