NCJ Number
144010
Date Published
1993
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This report presents statistics on over 20 years of juvenile death sentencing under modern death penalty statutes in the United States.
Abstract
The current American death penalty era began when new death penalty statutes were passed following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972), which in effect struck down all then existing death penalty statutes. Sentencing began under the new statutes in 1973 and continues through today. For the purposes of this study, a juvenile crime is defined as one committed while the offender was under age 18. In Stanford v. Kentucky (1989), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the eighth amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, does not prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed at age 16 or 17, regardless of State statutory provisions. A total of 116 juvenile death sentences have been imposed since 1973, only 2.4 percent of the approximately 4,824 death sentences imposed for offenders of all ages. Two-thirds of these juvenile death sentences have been imposed on 17-year-olds, and the other one-third have been ages 16 and 15. Of these 116 death sentences, only 36 remain currently in force. Five have resulted in execution, and 75 have been reversed. A chart shows the name, age at crime, race and sex, State, and current status for each of the juveniles sentenced to death from January 1, 1973, to May 1, 1993. Case summaries are presented by State for those on death row as of May 1, 1993, for a crime committed as a juvenile. 3 tables