Articles

Tallahassee Democrat April 12, 2004 Editorial By Sheila S. Hopkins Children are different from adults. That is why society does not allow them to buy tobacco or alcohol, own a handgun, serve in combat or vote. With few exceptions, a general rule of law is that parents have an obligation to financially support their children until age 18 when they would be considered adults. The Florida Catholic Conference joins other voices supporting the passage by the Florida Legislature of SB 224 and…

Orlando Sentenial April 12, 2004 Editorial We support the death penalty — for adults. But it’s wrong for Florida to consider executing people for crimes they committed before age 18. Yet a measure in the Florida Legislature intended to reserve capital punishment for convicts older than 18 has been twisted by a House subcommittee. It allows the execution of people who committed crimes when they were 17. It’s incumbent that reasonable lawmakers set the age limit at 18. Reserving the death…

The Miami Herald April 7, 2004 Editorial By Rosalynn Carter Florida Senate Bill 224, which would eliminate the death penalty for individuals who commit offenses when they are under the age of 18, is under consideration in Florida during this legislative session. Florida should join 31 other states that recognize that executing juveniles violates current principles of American justice. Our country has sought to protect juveniles in almost every facet of their life, enacting laws prohibiting…

Globe and Mail (Canada) April 5, 2004 An astonishing 75 juveniles are on death row in the United States, the only country apart from Iran that formally executes youths 17 and under. In the past dozen years, the remaining holdouts have banned the practice — Yemen and Zimbabwe in 1994, China in 1997 and Pakistan in 2000 — while the Democratic Republic of Congo has placed a moratorium on it. This is not, by and large, an axis of good, yet even it has managed to do the right thing. The U.S.

St. Petersburg Times March 30, 2004 Editorial Shamefully, Florida is one of the few places in the entire world where people can be put to death for crimes they committed as juveniles. The Legislature, amid one of its spells of death-penalty hysteria four years ago, spawned a constitutional amendment that, among other things, lowered the minimum age from 17 to 16. At the time, leaders promised to offset that with a law raising the age to 18, which would correspond to the laws of 19 states and…

The (Louisville, KY) Courier-Journal March 9, 2004 Editorial The case against sentencing 16- and 17-year-olds to death is very strong, but Kentucky law still allows it. House Bill 475 would change that. Just last week, South Dakota and Wyoming became the 30^th and 31^st states to abolish the juvenile death penalty. HB 475 would make Kentucky the 32^nd. The argument for executing someone like Kevin Stanford (who was 17 when he committed his especially grisly crime — the torture and murder of…

Kentucky Courier- Journal March 3, 2004 Editorial By Mark S. Wright, past president, Kentucky Psychiatric Association The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 determined that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded because their “disabilities in areas of reasoning, judgment and control of their impulses” mean “they do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct.” Even those who support the death penalty agree that mentally…

Oregonian February 28, 2004 Editorial No juveniles for the chair — The Supreme Court should rule that lengthy prison sentences are more appropriate for young killers Oregon doesn’t execute murderers younger than 18, nor does it casually hand out death sentences like they were parking tickets. But some states do, earning the periodic scrutiny of the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court’s decision this week to revisit the constitutionality of executing juveniles is yet another needed and…

Lexington Herald Ledger By William S. Sessions, former Director, FBI I urge Kentucky’s legislators to pass and Gov. Ernie Fletcher to sign legislation to raise the age of eligibility for capital punishment to 18. I write as a citizen with many years of law enforcement experience, having served three presidents as the director of the FBI. I also was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas and, before that, was a U.S. attorney. I am also privileged to be a…

Los Angles Daily Journal February 19, 2004 Editorial By Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center The U.S. Supreme Court took a step in the right direction when it agreed to review the constitutionality of executing juvenile offenders in Roper v. Simmons. As a society, we value our youth. We put great hope in them for our future, and we do not give up on them. For these reasons and more, juveniles ought not be subject to the death penalty. As this case moves…