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Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Sentencing Children to Death∗

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Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Sentencing Children to Death∗ HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN WRONGS: SENTENCING CHILDREN TO DEATH∗ I. INTRODUCTION It is time for the United States to relinquish its status as the world leader in sentencing persons to death for crimes they committed as children. The U.S.’s unparalleled use of the juvenile death penalty not only has provoked express condemnation from the international community, but also has triggered a domestic momentum demanding reform. Over the past several years, we have seen an increasing refusal among states to sanction juvenile executions, an emerging medical consensus that adolescents are less culpable for their actions than adults, and announcements from several Supreme Court Justices that the practice offends this nation’s evolving standards of decency. This report examines the history of juvenile executions in the United States, the juvenile death penalty in the current era, the growing momentum toward abolition, the decisive role that race plays in juvenile executions, developmental issues surrounding adolescence, the legal landscape of the juvenile death penalty, and the international consensus condemning the practice. The report further examines the lives of four juvenile offenders—two of whom have been executed and two of whom remain incarcerated on death row. The report concludes that continued reliance on the juvenile death penalty not only fails to serve any rational purpose but also leaves the nation starkly isolated from the rest of the world. 2. HISTORY The first recognized juvenile execution in the United States occurred in 1642, when Thomas Graunger was executed in Plymouth, Massachusetts for committing the crime of bestiality when he was sixteen years old1. Since then, the U.S. has executed an additional 365 persons for offenses they committed as children2. This amounts to the execution of approximately one child offender per year during the past three and a half centuries—notwithstanding the illustrious social, economic and political advancements that have been made over the same period. The youngest known children to be executed in the U.S. were Native American. James Arcene, who was ten years old at the time of his crime, was hanged by the federal government in Arkansas in 18853.Hannah Ocuish, who was twelve years old at the time of her crime and execution, was hanged in 1786 in Connecticut for murdering a six-year-old white girl five months earlier4.Hannah grew up being bounced from foster home to foster home and was believed to be developmentally disabled.5 The youngest known person to be executed in the U.S. in modern times was George Stinney, a fourteen year-old African-American boy. He was executed by the state of South Carolina for the murder of two white girls, ages eight and eleven, in 19446. His case provides an acute example of the injustices that have historically plagued the country’s use of capital punishment. ∗Authored by Sapna Mirchandani, Soros Justice Postgraduate Fellow, assisted by Kelly Dolan and Mary Stewart Atwell. Presented by Brian Roberts at the First International Conference on the Application of the Death Penalty in Commonwealth Africa organized by the British Institute of International & Comparative Law held in Entebbe, Uganda from 10th to 11th May 2004 on behalf of the National Coalition against the Death Penalty( NCADP). Since its inception in 1976, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) has served as the only fully staffed national organization exclusively devoted to eliminating the death penalty. The NCADP provides public education, legislative advocacy and grassroots mobilization to individuals and institutions that share its unconditional rejection of capital punishment. NCADP is a network of more than 100 local, state, national and international affiliates and has an individual membership in the thousands. 1Streib, V, ‘The Juvenile Death Penalty Today: Death Sentences and Executions for Juvenile Crimes, January 1, 1973 – December 31, 2002’ available at <http://www.law.onu.edu/faculty/streib.> 2 ibid 3 ‘Capital Punishment in Indiana’ updated April 26, 2002, available at <http://www.indystar.com/library/factfiles/crime/capital_punishment/deathrow.html.> 4 ibid 5 Nat Hentoff, ‘Does anyone remember Karla Faye Tucker?’ Newspaper Enterprise Association, 1998, available at <http://www.ardmoreite.com/stories/061498/opE_hentoff.html> 6 Gado, M., ‘Child Killing,’ available at http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics/childkilling/index.htm; Potter, K., Juvenile Death Juvenile Executions In The United States George’s trial commenced one month after his arrest. The prosecution did not present any eyewitness testimony or physical evidence that linked George to the crime. The only evidence implicating George was his own confession, given to two white police officers and presumed to have been coerced. George’s court- appointed attorney, an aspiring politician, did not present any evidence on his behalf, did not cross-examine witnesses, and did not ask to have his client evaluated. The trial lasted only three hours and the jury (all white males) convicted George after only ten minutes of deliberation. Following the conviction and sentencing, George’s attorney failed to inform him that he could appeal the death sentence to the state’s Supreme Court. George was executed only six weeks after his conviction. Prior to the trial, George's family was advised to leave town to avoid any further retribution. They did as they were told, leaving George to face his death sentence alone. At the time of his execution, George was so small, weighing only 95 pounds, that the guards had difficulty strapping him into the electric chair. When the hidden executioner began, the first jolt of electricity caused the oversized mask to fall from George’s face7. III. THE CURRENT ERA Death Sentences Imposed On Juvenile Offenders In the ‘current era’ of capital punishment (since 1973), a total of 224 persons have been sentenced to death for offenses they committed as children8. This represents approximately 3% of all death sentences imposed during the same period9. All but five of the 224 juvenile offenders sentenced to death were male. Four states, three of which are in the Deep South – Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Indiana – were responsible for the five sentences of death given to female juvenile offenders10. More than half of the 224 death sentences imposed on juvenile offenders have been reversed or commuted11. As of December 31, 2002, 81 juvenile offenders remain incarcerated on death row (see Appendix B)12. All were sentenced in 15 of the 22 states that permit juvenile executions. Execution Of Juvenile Offenders Since 1973, the United States has carried out 21 executions of juvenile offenders13. The executions took place in 7 of the 22 states that currently allow the practice: Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. All of the juvenile offenders were seventeen years old at the time of the crime except for Sean Sellers, who was executed by the state of Oklahoma in 1999 for a crime he committed at the age of sixteen. EXECUTION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS SINCE 1973 Name Execution Date State Age at Crime Charles Rumbaugh September 11, 1985 Texas 17 James Terry Roach January 10, 1986 South Carolina 17 Jay Kelly Pinkerton May 15, 1986 Texas 17 Penalty Speech Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, November 18, 1999, available at <http://www.uky.edu/~ksmill2/ speech3.html.> 7 ibid 8 Streib, V., ‘The Juvenile Death Penalty Today,’ (n 1) 9 ibid 10ibid 11ibid. Most juvenile offenders facing capital punishment are represented by inexperienced or overworked counsel appointed by the state. A study found that in 14 cases involving juvenile offenders sentenced to death who suffered from serious psychiatric disorders, in only one-third of the cases did counsel request that a psychological evaluation be performed before the juvenile offender stood trial. ‘Juvenile Offenders and the Death Penalty: Is Justice Served?,’ Child Welfare League of America, National Center for Program Standards and Development, Juvenile Justice Division (2002), at 7. 12 Streib, (n 1) 13 ibid Dalton Prejean May 18,1990 Louisiana 17 Johnny Garrett February 11, 1992 Texas 17 Curtis Paul Harris July 1, 1993 Texas 17 Frederick Lashley July 28, 1993 Mississippi 17 Ruben Cantu August 24, 1993 Texas 17 Christopher Burger December 7, 1993 Georgia 17 Joseph John Cannon April 22, 1998 Texas 17 Robert Anthony Carter May 18, 1998 Texas 17 Dwayne Allen Wright October 14, 1998 Virginia 17 Sean Richard Sellers February 4, 1999 Oklahoma 16 Douglas Christopher Thomas January 10, 2000 Virginia 17 Steve Edward Roach January 19, 2000 Virginia 17 Glen Charles McGinnis January 25, 2000 Texas 17 Gary Graham June 22, 2000 Texas 17 Gerald lee Mitchell October 22, 2001 Texas 17 Napoleon Beazley May 28, 2002 Texas 17 T. J. Jones August 8, 2002 Texas 17 Toronto M Patterson August 28, 2002 Texas 17 Geographic Distribution Of Juvenile Death Sentences An examination of the geographic distribution of juvenile death sentences across the United States reveals a dramatic concentration of such sentences in the South. In fact, southern states account for 84% of all death sentences imposed on juvenile offenders nationwide (see Appendix A). Only three of those states—Texas, Florida and Alabama—account for exactly half of all juvenile death sentences imposed nationwide14. Texas—the unabashed leader among the states in sentencing juvenile offenders to death—is responsible for two-thirds of all juvenile executions carried out and more than one-third of all juvenile offenders currently on death row15.Nonetheless, the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to death cannot be described as uniformly ‘Texan’ any more than it can be described as uniformly ‘American.’ This is because only 16 of Texas’s 254 counties are responsible for all of the state’s 28 juvenile offenders currently on death row. And although one would assume that the residents of the aforementioned counties would support the practice, this is not the case.
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