The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er whether the exe­cu­tion of those who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crime vio­lates the Constitution’s ban on ​“cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.” The Court will like­ly hear argu­ments in the case of Roper v. Simmons , No. 03 – 633, this com­ing fall. The Justices have not vis­it­ed this issue since 1989 and will like­ly decide whether there is now a nation­al con­sen­sus against the prac­tice of exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers. The Justices used a sim­i­lar ​“evolv­ing stan­dards of decen­cy” test when they ruled to for­bid the exe­cu­tion of offend­ers with men­tal retar­da­tion in 2002. The United States is the only coun­try in the world in which the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers is offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned and one of the very few nations that has not rat­i­fied the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that for­bids the prac­tice. Within the U.S., only three states (Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma) have exe­cut­ed a juve­nile offend­er dur­ing the past ten years, with Texas car­ry­ing out 13 of the 22 such exe­cu­tions in the U.S. since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. There are 73 juve­nile offend­ers on death row in America. Only two juve­nile offend­ers received death sen­tences in 2003, the fewest in 15 years. (New York Times, January 27, 2004) See Juvenile Death Penalty. Note: There are two excel­lent sources for the num­ber of juve­niles on death row: the peri­od­ic reports of Prof. Victor Streib, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s ​“Death Row, USA.” Statistics from both sources are avail­able on DPIC’s Web site. The sources dif­fer slight­ly in their totals because Death Row USA con­tin­ues to count defen­dants whose death sen­tences have been over­turned but where the res­o­lu­tion of the case may not be final.

Citation Guide