NCJ Number
176159
Date Published
1998
Length
30 pages
Annotation
The sentencing to death of juvenile offenders has remained fairly consistent over the past two decades, but the actual execution of such offenders has been much more sporadic.
Abstract
The early 1990s saw an extraordinary increase in actual executions of juvenile offenders. One juvenile offender was executed in 1990, another in 1992, and four during the last 6 months of 1993. Reflecting the sporadic nature of execution patterns, no juvenile offenders were executed again until early 1998. The constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty appears to be reasonably well-established, and 38 States and the Federal Government have enacted statutes authorizing the death penalty for certain types of murder. A total of 173 juvenile death sentences have been imposed in the United States since 1973, only 2.7 percent of the total 6,300 death sentences imposed for offenders of all ages. More than two-thirds of juvenile death sentences have been imposed on 17-year-old offenders. Only 70 (40 percent) currently remain in force; 11 (6 percent) resulted in execution and 92 (53 percent) were reversed. As of May 1998, the 70 juveniles on death row constituted 2 percent of the total death row population of about 3,400. All were male and had been convicted of murder. Appendixes contain statistics on juvenile death sentences imposed between 1973 and 1998 and case summaries for current juvenile death row inmates. 24 references and 6 tables