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Capital punishment for juveniles in the United States

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Capital punishment for juveniles in the United States existed until March 2, 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Roper v. Simmons. Prior to Roper, there were 71 people on death row in the United States for crimes committed as juveniles.[1]

The death penalty for juveniles in the United States was first applied in 1642. Before the 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling that instituted a death penalty moratorium nationwide, there were approximately 342 executions of juveniles in the United States. In the years following the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia ruling that overturned Furman and upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty, there were 22 executions of juvenile offenders before the practice was outlawed.

Prior to Roper, states had varying minimum ages for defendants to qualify for the death penalty; 19 states did not permit the execution of juveniles, while the remaining 19 retentionist states allowed juveniles as young as 16 or 17 at the time of their crime to be executed, although due to lengthy appeals processes, none of them were still juveniles by the time of their executions.

History

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Pre-Furman

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Further information: Furman v. Georgia

Since 1642, in the Thirteen Colonies, the United States under the Articles of Confederation, and the United States under the Constitution, an estimated 364 juveniles have been put to death by the individual states (colonies, before 1776) and the federal government. The first confirmed juvenile to be executed in the United States was Thomas Granger, executed for buggery involving several animals, including "a mare, a cow, two goats, divers sheep, two calves, and a turkey." The execution took place on September 8, when Granger was 16 or 17 years old; prior to the execution, the animals involved in Granger's case were slaughtered in front of him.[2][3]

The youngest person to have been executed in the 20th century was likely Joe Persons, a boy executed by hanging in Georgia on September 24, 1915 for the rape of an 8-year-old girl that he committed in June 1915. Persons reportedly confessed to the crime while he was on the gallows. Persons' age has not been confirmed; while he was reportedly 13 at the time of the crime's commission, he was variously reported to have been 12, 13, 14, 15, or "not older than 14" at the time of his execution. He weighed only 65 pounds, leading contemporary death penalty researcher M. Watt Espy to posit that Persons was likely closer to 12 than he was to 15.[4][5][6][7]

The second youngest person to be executed, and the youngest to have a confirmed birth date (of October 21, 1929), was George Stinney, who was electrocuted in South Carolina at the age of 14 on June 16, 1944, after the bodies of two children (ages 7 and 11) were found close to his home. George Stinney maintained his innocence throughout his trial and subsequent execution. The verdict of this case was overturned posthumously.

The third youngest person to be executed in the 20th century was Fortune Ferguson in 1927 for rape in Florida; he allegedly committed the crime when he was 13 years old.[8]

James Arcene, a Native American, was 10 years old when he was involved in a robbery and murder in Arkansas. He was, however, 23 years old when he was actually executed on June 18, 1885.[9]

The last judicially-approved execution of a juvenile was convicted murderer Leonard Shockley, who died in a Maryland gas chamber on April 10, 1959, at the age of 17. Nobody has been under the age of 19 at the time of execution since at least 1964.[10][11]

The peak decade for juvenile executions was the 1940s, when 53 people who were under 18 at the times of their crimes were put to death.[8]

Post-Furman

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Pre-Roper minimum ages for executions by state
  No capital punishment
  Minimum age of 18
  Minimum age of 17
  Minimum age of 16

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976[12] when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty did not violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, 22 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18. All of the 22 executed individuals were males, and all were in states located in the South. Twenty-one of them were age 17 when the crime occurred; one, Sean Sellers (executed on February 4, 1999, in Oklahoma), was 16 years old when he murdered his mother, stepfather, and a store clerk. Due to the slow process of appeals since 1976, none were actually under the age of 18 at the time of execution. The youngest at the time of execution was Steve Edward Roach, who was 23 at the time of execution.

In Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), the Supreme Court first held unconstitutional imposition of the death penalty for crime committed aged 15 or younger. But in the 1989 case Stanford v. Kentucky, it upheld capital punishment for crimes committed aged 16 or 17. Justice Scalia's plurality part of his opinion famously criticized Justice Brennan's dissent by accusing it of "replac[ing] judges of the law with a committee of philosopher-kings".[13] Justice O'Connor was the key vote in both cases, being the lone justice to concur in the two.

Sixteen years later, Roper v. Simmons overruled Stanford. Justice Kennedy, who concurred with Scalia's opinion in Stanford, instead wrote the opinion of the court in Roper and became the key vote. Justice O'Connor dissented.

Before 2005, of the 38 U.S. states that allowed capital punishment:

  • 19 states and the federal government had set a minimum age of 18,
  • 5 states had set a minimum age of 17, and
  • 14 states had explicitly set a minimum age of 16, or were subject to the Supreme Court's imposition of that minimum.

At the time of the Roper v. Simmons decision, there were 71 juveniles awaiting execution on death row: 13 in Alabama; four in Arizona; three in Florida; two in Georgia; four in Louisiana; five in Mississippi; one in Nevada; four in North Carolina; two in Pennsylvania; three in South Carolina; 29 in Texas; and one in Virginia.[14]

Few juveniles have ever been executed for their crimes. Even when juveniles were sentenced to death, few executions were actually carried out. In the United States for example, youths under the age of 18 were executed at a rate of 20–27 per decade, or about 1.6–2.3% of all executions from 1880s to the 1920s. This has dropped significantly when only 3 juveniles were executed between January 1977 and November 1986.[12]

List of juveniles executed in the United States since 1976

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All juveniles executed since 1976 were male.

No. Date of
execution 		Name Age State Method Ref.
At offense At execution
1 September 11, 1985 Charles Francis Rumbaugh 17 28 Texas Lethal injection [15]
2 January 10, 1986 James Terry Roach 25 South Carolina Electrocution [16]
3 May 15, 1986 Jay Kelly Pinkerton 24 Texas Lethal injection [17]
4 May 18, 1990 Dalton Prejean 30 Louisiana Electrocution [18]
5 February 11, 1992 Johnny Frank Garrett 28 Texas Lethal injection [19]
6 July 1, 1993 Curtis Paul Harris 31 [20]
7 July 28, 1993 Frederick Lashley 29 Missouri [21]
8 August 24, 1993 Ruben Montoya Cantu 26 Texas [22]
9 December 7, 1993 Christopher Burger 33 Georgia Electrocution [23]
10 April 24, 1998 Joseph John Cannon 38 Texas Lethal injection [24]
11 May 18, 1998 Robert Anthony Carter 34 [25]
12 October 14, 1998 Dwayne Allen Wright 26 Virginia [26]
13 February 4, 1999 Sean Richard Sellers 16 29 Oklahoma [27]
14 January 10, 2000 Douglas Christopher Thomas 17 26 Virginia [28]
15 January 13, 2000 Steve Edward Roach 23 [29]
16 January 25, 2000 Glen Charles McGinnis 27 Texas [30]
17 June 22, 2000 Gary Lee Graham 36 [31]
18 October 22, 2001 Gerald Lee Mitchell 33 [32]
19 May 28, 2002 Napoleon Beazley 25 [33]
20 August 8, 2002 T. J. Jones [34]
21 August 28, 2002 Toronto Markkey Patterson 24 [35]
22 April 3, 2003 Scott Allen Hain 32 Oklahoma [36]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "The Juvenile Death Penalty Prior to Roper v. Simmons". Death Penalty Information Center.
  2. ^ Mayflower Families - Morality and Sex
  3. ^ Records of the Colony of New Plymouth
  4. ^ Hearn, Daniel Allen (22 December 2015). Legal Executions in Georgia: A Comprehensive Registry, 1866-1964. McFarland. ISBN 9781476620008.
  5. ^ "Hang 13-Year-Old Boy in Georgia". Evening Public Ledger. 1915-09-24. p. 1. Archived from the original on 2023-07-14. Retrieved 2023-07-14. Joe Persons, a 13-year-old negro boy, was executed in Jackson, Ga., today.
  6. ^ "Small Boy Hanged". Hopkinsville Kentuckian. 1915-09-30. p. 1. Archived from the original on 2023-07-14. Retrieved 2023-07-14. Joe Persons, a negro boy not more than 14 years old, was legally hanged at Jackson, Ga., Friday for criminally assaulting a white child 8 years old. The boy admitted his guilt and said he was ready to die. He weighed on [sic] 75 pounds.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  7. ^ Espy, M. Watt (1986-01-07). "Death for Juvenile Crimes: Execution, a Practice Dating to 1642, May Continue This Week". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2023-07-14. Retrieved 2023-07-14. When Joe Persons was hanged at Jackson, Ga., on Sept. 24, 1915, contemporary newspaper accounts estimated his age as being "from 12 to 15," but the same accounts, saying that he weighed only 65 pounds, would indicate that he was nearer the former than the latter age. Because he was so immature and underdeveloped, local officials actually debated the practicality of adding weights to his body to ensure a successful hanging.
  8. ^ a b "History of the Juvenile Death Penalty". The Washington Post. 1988-07-19. Archived from the original on 2020-08-11. Retrieved 2023-07-14.
  9. ^ Before the needles Archived 2007-06-25 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Best Web Archived 2007-06-25 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ "Juvenile News and Developments - Previous Years". Archived from the original on 2007-12-15. Retrieved 2007-11-20.
  12. ^ a b Bartollas, C., & Miller, S. J. (2017). Juvenile justice in America. Boston: Pearson.
  13. ^ "Stanford v. Kentucky". law.cornell.edu. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  14. ^ For detailed summaries of each of these juveniles, see "The Juvenile Death Penalty Prior to Roper v. Simmons". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
  15. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #048 - Charles Rumbaugh
  16. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #051 - James Terry Roach
  17. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #057 - Jay Pinkerton
  18. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #128 - Dalton Prejean
  19. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #161 - Johnny Garrett
  20. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #207 - Curtis Harris
  21. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #209 - Frederick Lashley
  22. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #214 - Ruben Cantu
  23. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #224 - Christopher Burger
  24. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #455 - Joseph Cannon
  25. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #460 - Robert A. Carter
  26. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #485 - Dwayne Allen Wright
  27. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #512 - Sean Richard Sellers
  28. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #601 - Douglas Christopher Thomas
  29. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #604 - Steve Edward Roach
  30. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #609 - Glen Charles McGinnis
  31. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #648 - Gary Lee Graham
  32. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #737 - Gerald Lee Mitchell
  33. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #779 - Napoleon Beazley Archived February 8, 2004, at the Wayback Machine
  34. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #789 - T. J. Jones
  35. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #795 - Toronto Markkey Patterson
  36. ^ The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney - The Death Penalty - #843 - Scott Allen Hain
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