DEATH PENALTY

Death penalty

Death Penalty

Some people think the death penalty is too high a price to pay for a juvenile who is just going through adolescence and who does not have the full mental capacity required to understand the punishment associated with committing a crime. Anti-death penalty types think that the death penalty is too cruel and inhumane a punishment for a juvenile that has committed a very cruel and inhumane crime, like murder, to get on death row in the first place. They do not think that these "children" should be held accountable for acts they apparently do not fully understand they are committing. These people think that if a judge sentences a juvenile to the death penalty then the judge is essentially killing the future of America, but if the future of America is committing crimes heinous enough to warrant the death penalty, then the future does not look very bright.

On the contrary, juveniles are and should be sentenced the death penalty. The execution of juveniles is legal and practiced in the majority of states that administer the death penalty, the 38 of them. The minimum age for the death penalty in the United States is 16, set by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Thompson v Oklahoma. Currently 24 states allow the death penalty to be given to juveniles (Execution of Child Offenders). So of the 38 states that administer the death penalty, 24 allow juveniles to be executed, or about 63%. That means nearly two out of three death penalty states allow juvenile execution. If the administration of the death penalty on juveniles is so inhumane, then why do the majority of states that administer the death penalty allow it?

While the opposition says that juveniles do not possess the mental capacity to understand what they are doing ...