Executing Minors: U.S. jus­tices should declare it unconstitutional

Dallas Morning News

October 17, 2004

Editorial

Society right­ly holds chil­dren and adults to dif­fer­ent stan­dards. For exam­ple, it for­bids chil­dren to vote, to smoke and to drink alco­hol because it intu­itive­ly rea­sons that they aren’t mature enough. Now soci­ety can prove that chil­dren are less mature than adults. According to sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence com­piled by the American Medical Association, some regions of the brain, specif­i­cal­ly those asso­ci­at­ed with impulse con­trol, reg­u­la­tion of emo­tions, risk assess­ment and moral rea­son­ing, don’t ful­ly devel­op until after age 18.

The anatom­i­cal and behav­ioral dif­fer­ences between chil­dren and adults are impor­tant to con­sid­er because the U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments on Wednesday in a case that could affect the death sen­tences of the 73 men in Texas and 11 oth­er states who mur­dered before their 18^th birth­days.

Missouri is appeal­ing a state high court deci­sion that exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers is ​“cru­el and unusu­al” and there­fore should be declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Just as the U.S. Supreme Court for­bade exe­cu­tions of the men­tal­ly retard­ed, so should it for­bid exe­cu­tions of juve­nile offend­ers, and on the same grounds that their brains aren’t ful­ly devel­oped, the Missouri court argues.

The Missouri jus­tices are cor­rect; the U.S. jus­tices should val­i­date their sound deci­sion. As Dallas Morning News reporter Doug J. Swanson report­ed last week, the United States is the only devel­oped coun­try to per­mit under­age exe­cu­tions, and Texas exe­cutes more juve­nile offend­ers than any oth­er state.

It goes with­out say­ing that the hor­ren­dous crimes that Mr. Swanson described should be pun­ished. However, the ulti­mate penal­ty — death — should be with­held when the mur­der­er may have been too imma­ture to ful­ly com­pre­hend the moral dimen­sions of his action.

Murder is much worse than oth­er crimes that young peo­ple may be tempt­ed to com­mit and should be harsh­ly pun­ished. But if soci­ety can dis­cern dif­fer­ences between juve­niles and adults where smok­ing and drink­ing are con­cerned, then it should be able to do the same with regard to capital punishment.