Birmingham (AL) News

July 26, 2004

Editorial

In a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, Alabama Attorney General Troy King wrote there’s ​“lit­tle room for doubt that at least some ado­les­cent killers most assured­ly have the men­tal and emo­tion­al where­with­al to plot, kill and cov­er up in cold blood. They should not evade full respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions by the serendip­i­ty of chrono­log­i­cal age.“

Of course, soci­ety treats age as more than a mat­ter of chance, or ​“serendip­i­ty,” as King calls it. A 16- or 17-year-old is a child, not an adult. And we cor­rect­ly put restric­tions on what chil­dren can do, as well as stip­u­la­tions on how our legal sys­tem must treat them.

Certainly, those restric­tions should apply to the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles. It’s wrong. Society’s ulti­mate pun­ish­ment should be reserved for adults.

King believes he’s doing his job as the state’s top law offi­cial in writ­ing a friend-of-the-court brief in a Missouri case urg­ing the high court not to ban the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles. Such a ban would apply to Alabama law as well.

But the Alabama law King is try­ing to pro­tect is abhor­rent. Alabama is one of 19 states that con­demn to death those who com­mit­ted their crime before reach­ing adult­hood. Even few­er states sen­tence to die those as young as 16, as Alabama does.

Per capi­ta, Alabama leads the nation in the num­ber of juve­nile offend­ers on Death Row. Only Texas, with a much larg­er pop­u­la­tion, has more con­demned juve­niles than Alabama’s 14.

That is shame­ful. And puz­zling.

Consider that we don’t allow juve­niles to vote, serve on juries, join the Army, buy cig­a­rettes or alco­hol, play the lot­tery, mar­ry with­out their par­ents’ per­mis­sion or even con­sent to med­ical pro­ce­dures — because we deem them too young and too lack­ing in matu­ri­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty. Yet, the law con­sid­ers them old enough to be put to death?

We, as a nation, also should con­sid­er the com­pa­ny we keep. The United States is one of only three coun­tries that exe­cute juve­niles. Do we real­ly want to be on a short list with Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Between 1990 and 2003, the United States exe­cut­ed more peo­ple for their juve­nile crimes than the rest of the world com­bined. There are 73 juve­nile offend­ers on Death Row today across the coun­try.

The Missouri case offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the Supreme Court to right a wrong this fall when it con­sid­ers the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of juve­nile exe­cu­tion.

An impres­sive list of groups and peo­ple has asked the court to end the exe­cu­tion of juve­niles. They include Nobel Peace Prize win­ners, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Child Welfare League of American, the American Bar Association, dozens of reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions and 48 nations of the world, includ­ing our clos­est allies.

It would be regret­table if the high court, with the world watch­ing, upheld juve­nile exe­cu­tion.

Alabamians, rather than sit­ting back and watch­ing their attor­ney gen­er­al lob­by for the con­tin­u­a­tion of an unjust prac­tice, should ask their law­mak­ers to raise the min­i­mum age for the death penal­ty from 16 to 18.

Sources

Birmingham (AL) News