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ard to present some one-sided opinion concerning the death penalty relating to adult people, but it is even harder to treat the matter of capital punishment of youngsters.
The Twentieth Century is known for the “Progressive Period” of the reforms in the USA. The atmosphere was rather intense as people in the USA were afraid of the influence of the Russian Revolution. Later the USA took part in the World War 1 and the result were the social conflicts between socialists and capitalists. As a result, “five of the six abolitionist states reinstated their death penalty by 1920” (2).
The execution of juveniles began in 1642 with Thomas Graunger from Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. Since that year we know about 366 juvenile offenders who were punished this way. They took place in 38 states and they contribute as 2% to the total 20.000 executions in America since 1608. Twenty – two on them took place in the years between 1973-2003, this is about 2.6 % of total executions within this period of time. Actually all the offenders were 17 years old at the moment of conducting their crimes, there was only one boy of 16 – Sean Sellers from Oklahoma. Nowadays it is enough to mention that about 45% were whites, in comparison to adults less, as among them we get the number of 57%. Their victims were of 81% white people. The issue of race is not new as already in the nineteenth century some states even worsened the situation by applying some special laws concerning death penalty towards slaves. In 1838 the tendency to use some special places for execution instead of making it in public developed. The reforms in 1838 in Tennessee, and later in Alabama brought enactment of discretionary death penalty statutes. “This introduction of sentencing discretion in the capital process was perceived as a victory for abolitionists because prior to the enactment of these statutes, all states mandated the death penalty for anyone convicted of a capital crime, regardless of circumstances. With the exception of a small number of rarely committed crimes in a few jurisdictions, all mandatory capital punishment laws had been abolished by 1963.” (6).
All these offenders were waiting for their death about 6-20 years and thus were actually executed at the age of 23-38. If to compare the percentage of juvenile executions in the states, the statistics shows that in Texas about 59% of these executions were carried out, in Virginia – about 14% and in Oklahoma – 9%, these three states make together 81% of all juvenile executions.
In America juvenile death penalty is authorized by 22 separate state jurisdictions, it is clear that each of them goes its own way, that’s why most of the practices in different states are not alike, but there are some points that could be considered more of less common for the whole country.
The examples of them would be:
- America is known for its violent juvenile crimes, especially homicide and the situation is worse than in other countries
- The mid 1990s brought the increase of juvenile homicides, nowadays the statistics shows the decrease of them, but still the level of public fear of juvenile homicides stays really high after those times.
- Juvenile murders are characterized by absence of responsibility to civilized entreaties stopping the killing.
- Some political leaders are insisting on making the punishment for juvenile crimes harder
- The most important step to be taken in order to stop or at least decrease the juv