Executing teens cru­el, unusu­al and bar­bar­ic — Outside of the United States, only sev­en coun­tries still execute minors.

Minnesota Daily

October 19, 2004

Editorial

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments in Roper v. Simmons, which will re-eval­u­ate whether the state may con­tin­ue exe­cut­ing juve­niles. Because the death penal­ty itself is immoral, the Court must ter­mi­nate this more particular evil.

The only state inter­est the death penal­ty serves is the pub­lic’s sadis­tic need for ret­ri­bu­tion (a civ­i­lized word for ​“revenge”). The death penal­ty has nev­er been found to deter crime. In an attempt to ensure the exe­cut­ed are guilty, the Court requires so many pro­ce­dur­al safe­guards that it costs more to kill them than let them live their days behind bars.

Furthermore, these pro­ce­dures are only an attempt — mis­takes are still made. When DNA or oth­er evi­dence exon­er­ates an impris­oned indi­vid­ual, it’s unfor­tu­nate he or she lost years of his or her life to the state’s mis­take, but the state cor­rects its error, if tardi­ly. If the state has already mur­dered the inno­cent per­son, the cor­rec­tion effec­tive­ly nev­er comes.

That the death penal­ty is cru­el is intu­itive. The ques­tion is whether it is unusu­al. As the American Psychological Association and American Medical Association not­ed in ami­cus briefs, stud­ies have new con­clu­sions on minors’ imma­tu­ri­ty. While there must be con­se­quences for crimes com­mit­ted, juve­niles’ lives should not end for actions tak­en before their con­sciences, moral­i­ties and per­son­al­i­ties have matured.

Much has been made of the inter­na­tion­al trend against the death penal­ty in gen­er­al and par­tic­u­lar­ly against exe­cut­ing juve­niles. On this issue, the United States is in poor com­pa­ny. Outside of the United States, only China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen still exe­cute minors. Normally, inter­na­tion­al opin­ion is only illus­tra­tive. But in this case, oth­er states’ prac­tices are legal­ly rel­e­vant as it shows how unusu­al the exe­cu­tion of a 16-year-old is. Even in the United States, where 19 states allow exe­cu­tions of teenagers, only three have per­formed them in the last decade.

Executing juve­niles is cru­el, unusu­al and bar­bar­ic It must stop. If the Court fails to do so, 19 state legislatures must.