Articles

Roanoke Times and World News July 23, 2004 Editorial Lawyers representing Virginia are among those arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that states know better whether killers who committed crimes as juveniles deserve the death penalty. The justices should dismiss the errant position staked out by Virginia and a few other states and heed the call of an impressive group, including Nobel laureates, that has asked the court to end the execution of killers who committed crimes as teens.

The Coloradoan July 21, 2004 Editorial By Julie Baxter Remember those misspent days of your youth? When you were invincible, intelligent and incapable of making a bad decision? Now, can you remember just how vulnerable, foolish and gifted you were at making rotten choices? We all did things in our younger days we aren’t proud of, things we regret, things that after the heat of the moment passed, we would have done much differently. Turns out there’s good cause for that; our brains just…

The Republican (Springfield, MA) July 21, 2004 Editorial Most of the world agrees on this much: A civilized nation does not execute its young. Virtually every nation in the world shares this fundamental standard of decency, even some nations with histories of human rights violations. In this spirit, 48 nations asked the Supreme Court this week to end the execution of people in the United States for crimes they committed before they turned 18. Briefs were also filed by 18 Nobel Peace Prize…

The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA) July 21, 2004 Editorial Fact: The United States is just one of five countries in the world that allows the execution of juveniles. Opinion: This nation has many reasons to be proud. But this is not one of them. Solution: Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court invoked the concept of “evolving standards of decency” and used that to abolish capital punishment for mentally retarded criminals. That same standard should be expanded to include the execution of…

Miami Herald July 21, 2004 Editorial OUR OPINION: ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY FOR JUVENILE OFFENDERS The United States should follow the majority in this country and the rest of the world and abolish the death penalty for offenders who committed their crimes as juveniles. That’s what a chorus of advocates — among them the American Bar Association, Nobel Prize winners, former U.S. diplomats and 48 countries — told the U.S. Supreme Court this week in friend of the court briefs. Executing…

In 1993, when 17-year-old Christopher Simmons abducted and murdered his neighbor, little did he know that some of the nation’s top brain researchers and psychiatrists would one day rush to his defense before the Supreme Court. Emerging scientific research is shedding light on what people have long suspected: The brain changes dramatically during adolescence and these changes may account for the impulsive, often irrational behaviors seen in some teenagers. Now psychiatrists, lawyers and…

By Lee Bowman Recent popular films depicting teenagers suddenly housed in adult bodies have more than a little truth in them. The latest brain research has found strong evidence that when it comes to maturity, organization and control, key parts of the brain related to emotions, judgment and “thinking ahead” are the last to arrive. “It seems that regulation of impulse control is the last on board and often the first to leave in the brain as we age,” said Dr. Ruben Gur, a professor of…

By Claudia Wallis; Kristina Dell, with reporting by Alice Park/New York Five young men in sneakers and jeans troop into a waiting room at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., and drape themselves all over the chairs in classic collapsed-teenager mode, trailing backpacks, a CD player and a laptop loaded with computer games. It’s midafternoon, and they are, of course, tired, but even so their presence adds a jangly, hormonal buzz to the bland, institutional…

Daytona Beach News-Journal April 29, 2004 Editorial Florida doesn’t execute children anymore. It hasn’t in 50 years, but nothing in the law says it can’t. Currently the law allows Florida juries to sentence 16-year-olds to death. Three inmates currently on Florida’s death row were 17 when the murders were committed for which they’re condemned. On Tuesday, the state Senate decided it can no longer countenance the statute’s duplicity, reasoning that other Florida laws recognize people under…

St. Petersburg Times April 28, 2004 Editorial Florida once executed a 17-year-old boy only three weeks after his one-day trial for rape before a jury that had taken only two hours to select. At least seven other prisoners, the last in 1954, went to the electric chair at Raiford before they had reached their 18^th birthdays. All were black. But for the racism that permeated this state, it is unlikely that any of them would have been on death row. Of the 19 states that still provide for…