Detroit Free Press

January 30, 2004

Editorial

Even death penal­ty sup­port­ers should applaud the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion to con­sid­er end­ing the exe­cu­tion of killers who were under 18 when they com­mit­ted their crimes.

The argu­ments against exe­cut­ing adults are com­pelling enough. They should be absolute­ly deci­sive against the exe­cu­tion of teens and chil­dren in any decent society.

The high court has already laid the legal and philo­soph­ic ground­work for end­ing this shame­ful prac­tice. It has linked the con­sti­tu­tion­al ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment to a killer’s abil­i­ty to under­stand his or her actions. Justices abol­ished exe­cu­tions for the men­tal­ly retard­ed in 2002.

In mak­ing that rul­ing, the Supreme Court said that exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed was inap­pro­pri­ate by evolv­ing com­mu­ni­ty stan­dards. So, too, is exe­cut­ing teenagers. Seventeen states that allow the death penal­ty still ban it for those who were under 18 when they com­mit­ted their crimes. So does the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for juve­niles pros­e­cut­ed in fed­er­al court. Only a hand­ful of nations permit it.

There are many good rea­sons to oppose the death penal­ty for adults, espe­cial­ly since new DNA tech­nol­o­gy has shown that a dis­qui­et­ing num­ber of death row inmates were actu­al­ly inno­cent. Such inmates also reflect the nation’s legal and social inequal­i­ties, as most of them are poor or minority.

But even those who believe death is rea­son­able ret­ri­bu­tion ought to acknowl­edge that the imma­tu­ri­ty of chil­dren should exclude them from this most severe, and irrev­o­ca­ble, punishment.

The Supreme Court should have no trou­ble rul­ing that exe­cut­ing young cit­i­zens is, by today’s stan­dards, cru­el, unusu­al and unconstitutional.

Sources

Detroit Free Press