Juvenile Death Penalty

The juvenile death penalty is the imposition of capital punishment upon offenders who were under age eighteen when they committed the crime. Notwithstanding the consistent effort over time to recognize the reduced liability of juveniles, there has been a steady effort to hold the most serious juvenile offenders accountable in a meaningful fashion. The Supreme Court has determined that some juveniles may be given the death penalty. In Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 US 815, the Court held that it was unconstitutional to execute juveniles who committed their crime at age fifteen or younger. The rate at which juvenile death sentences have been handed out has remained constant at about 2 percent of all death penalty sentences. Opponents of the death penalty for juveniles continue to argue that younger offenders are both less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation, thus making them poor candidates for capital punishment.