Capital punishment for juveniles in the United States

Capital punishment for juveniles in the United States has existed until March 1, 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court banned it in Roper v. Simmons.

Pre-Furman history

Since 1642, (in the Thirteen Colonies, the United States under the Articles of Confederation, and the current United States), an estimated 364 juvenile offenders have been put to death by states and the federal government.

The youngest person to be executed in the 20th century was George Stinney, electrocuted in South Carolina at the age of 14 on June 16, 1944. The youngest person ever to be sentenced to death in the United States was James Arcene, a Native American, for his role in a robbery and murder committed when he was ten years old. He was, however, 23 years old when he was actually executed on June 18, 1885. The last execution of a juvenile was convicted murderer Leonard Shockley, who died in the Maryland gas chamber on April 10, 1959, at the age of 17. No one has been under the age of 19 at the time of execution since at least 1964.

Post-Furman history

Further information: Furman v. Georgia

File:Minimum age for execution by US state, pre2005.svg

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, 22 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18. All of the 22 executed individuals were males. 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 was actually under the age of 18 at the time of execution.

In Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), the U.S. 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 to "replace judges of the law with a committee of philosopher-kings".

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 to 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 allow 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 juvenile offenders 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. Detailed summaries of each of these offenders can be found here.

List of juvenile offenders executed in the United States since 1976

Number	Date	Name	Age (at Offense)	Age (at Execution)	Sex	State	Method	Source
1	September 11, 1985	Charles Francis Rumbaugh	17	28	M	Texas	Lethal injection
2	January 10, 1986	James Terry Roach	17	25	M	South Carolina	Electrocution
3	May 15, 1986	Jay Kelly Pinkerton	17	24	M	Texas	Lethal injection
4	May 18, 1990	Dalton Prejean	17	30	M	Louisiana	Electrocution
5	February 11, 1992	Johnny Frank Garrett	17	28	M	Texas	Lethal injection
6	July 1, 1993	Curtis Paul Harris	17	31	M	Texas	Lethal injection
7	July 28, 1993	Frederick Lasley	17	29	M	Missouri	Lethal injection
8	August 24, 1993	Ruben Montoya Cantu	17	26	M	Texas	Lethal injection
9	December 7, 1993	Christopher Burger	17	33	M	Georgia	Electrocution
10	April 24, 1998	Joseph John Cannon	17	38	M	Texas	Lethal injection
11	May 18, 1998	Robert Anthony Carter	17	34	M	Texas	Lethal injection
12	October 14, 1998	Dwayne Allen Wright	17	24	M	Virginia	Lethal injection
13	February 5, 1999	Sean Richard Sellers	16	29	M	Oklahoma	Lethal injection
14	January 10, 2000	Douglas Christopher Thomas	17	26	M	Virginia	Lethal injection
15	January 13, 2000	Steve Edward Roach	17	23	M	Virginia	Lethal injection
16	January 25, 2000	Glen Charles McGinnis	17	27	M	Texas	Lethal injection
17	June 22, 2000	Gary Lee Graham	17	36	M	Texas	Lethal injection
18	October 22, 2001	Gerald Lee Mitchell	17	33	M	Texas	Lethal injection
19	May 28, 2002	Napoleon Beazley	17	25	M	Texas	Lethal injection
20	August 8, 2002	T. J. Jones	17	25	M	Texas	Lethal injection
21	August 28, 2002	Toronto Markkey Patterson	17	24	M	Texas	Lethal injection
22	April 3, 2003	Scott Allen Hain	17	32	M	Oklahoma	Lethal injection

See also

• Capital punishment in the United States
• Furman v. Georgia, United States Supreme Court decision that temporarily abolished capital punishment in the U.S.
• Gregg v. Georgia
• Roper v. Simmons
• Stanford v. Kentucky
• Thompson v. Oklahoma

External links

• Juvenilles: Death Penalty Worldwide Academic research database on the laws, practice, and statistics of capital punishment for every death penalty country in the world.
• Death Penalty Information Center – Juvenile Offenders Who Were On Death Row