Capital punishment for juveniles in the United States
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In the United States, capital punishment for juveniles existed until March 2, 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Roper v. Simmons. Prior to Roper, there were 71 people on death row in the United States for crimes committed as juveniles.[1] The last juvenile offender to be executed in the United States was Scott Hain in Oklahoma in 2003. The last female juvenile offender to be executed was Virginia Christian in Virginia in 1912.
The death penalty for juveniles in the United States was first applied in 1642. Before the 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling that instituted a death penalty moratorium nationwide, there were approximately 343 executions of juveniles in the United States. In the years following the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia ruling that overturned Furman and upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty, there were 22 executions of juvenile offenders before the practice was outlawed, albeit one of them had received another death sentence for a separate murder committed at age 18.
Prior to Roper, states had varying minimum ages for defendants to qualify for the death penalty; 19 states did not permit the execution of juveniles, while the remaining 19 retentionist states allowed juveniles as young as 16 or 17 at the time of their crime to be executed, albeit due to lengthy appeals processes, none of them were still juveniles by the time of their executions. The youngest, Steve Edward Roach, was 23 years old. The oldest, Joseph John Cannon, was 38 years old.
Since 1642, in the Thirteen Colonies, the United States under the Articles of Confederation, and the United States under the Constitution, an estimated 364 juveniles have been put to death by the individual states (colonies, before 1776) and the federal government. The first confirmed juvenile to be executed in the United States was Thomas Granger, executed for buggery involving several animals, including "a mare, a cow, two goats, divers sheep, two calves, and a turkey." The execution took place on September 8, when Granger was 16 or 17 years old; prior to the execution, the animals involved in Granger's case were slaughtered in front of him.[2][3]
The youngest person to have been executed in the 20th century was likely Joe Persons, a boy executed by hanging in Georgia on September 24, 1915 for the rape of an 8-year-old girl that he committed in June 1915. Persons reportedly confessed to the crime while he was on the gallows. Persons' age has not been confirmed; while he was reportedly 13 at the time of the crime's commission, he was variously reported to have been 12, 13, 14, 15, or "not older than 14" at the time of his execution. He weighed only 65 pounds, leading contemporary death penalty researcher M. Watt Espy to posit that Persons was likely closer to 12 than he was to 15.[4][5][6][7]
The second youngest person to be executed, and the youngest to have a confirmed birth date (of October 21, 1929), was George Stinney, who was electrocuted in South Carolina at the age of 14 on June16, 1944, after the bodies of two children (ages 7 and 11) were found close to his home. George Stinney maintained his innocence throughout his trial and subsequent execution. The verdict of this case was overturned posthumously.
The third youngest person to be executed in the 20th century was Fortune Ferguson in 1927 for rape in Florida; he allegedly committed the crime when he was 13 years old.[8]
James Arcene, a Native American, was 10 years old when he was involved in a robbery and murder in Arkansas. He was, however, 23 years old when he was actually executed on June18, 1885.[9]
The last judicially-approved execution of a juvenile was convicted murderer Leonard Shockley, who died in a Maryland gas chamber on April10, 1959, at the age of 17. Nobody has been under the age of 19 at the time of execution since at least 1964.[10][11]
The peak decade for juvenile executions was the 1940s, when 53 people who were under 18 at the times of their crimes were put to death.[8] Additionally, in June 1945 the United States Army executed two German youths, aged 16 and 17, for espionage committed against American forces during the final stages of World War II.[12][13]
Since the reinstatement of the capital punishment in 1976[15] when the Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, 22 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18. All of the 22 executed individuals were males, and all were in states located in the South. Twenty-one of them were age 17 when the crime occurred; one, Sean Sellers was 16 years old when he murdered his mother, stepfather, and a store clerk. One of them, Jay Kelly Pinkerton, had received another death sentence for a separate murder committed at age 18.[16]
Due to the process of appeals since 1976, none were actually under the age of 18 at the time of execution. The youngest at the time of execution was Steve Edward Roach, who was 23. The oldest at the time of execution was Joseph John Cannon, who was 38. Jay Kelly Pinkerton, the sole juvenile offender who would've been executed regardless of any court rulings, was executed solely for the murder he committed at age 17 since he had exhausted his appeals in that case first.
In Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), the Supreme Court first held unconstitutional imposition of the death penalty for crime committed aged 15 or younger. But in the 1989 case Stanford v. Kentucky, it upheld capital punishment for crimes committed aged 16 or 17. Justice Scalia's plurality part of his opinion famously criticized Justice Brennan's dissent by accusing it of "replac[ing] judges of the law with a committee of philosopher-kings".[17]Justice O'Connor was the key vote in both cases, being the lone justice to concur in the two.
Sixteen years later, Roper v. Simmons overruled Stanford. Justice Kennedy, who concurred with Scalia's opinion in Stanford, instead wrote the opinion of the court in Roper and became the key vote. Justice O'Connor dissented.
Before 2005, of the 38 U.S. states that allowed capital punishment:
19 states and the federal government had set a minimum age of 18,
5 states had set a minimum age of 17, and
14 states had explicitly set a minimum age of 16, or were subject to the Supreme Court's imposition of that minimum.
At the time of the Roper v. Simmons decision, there were 71 juvenile offenders were on death row: 13 in Alabama; four in Arizona; three in Florida; two in Georgia; four in Louisiana; five in Mississippi; one in Nevada; four in North Carolina; two in Pennsylvania; three in South Carolina; 29 in Texas; and one in Virginia.[18] A 72th juvenile offender, serial killer Harvey Miguel Robinson, remained on death row since he had received separate death sentences for murders committed at age 18.[19]
Few juveniles have ever been executed for their crimes. Even when juveniles were sentenced to death, few of them were executed. In the United States for example, youths under the age of 18 were executed at a rate of 20–27 per decade, or about 1.6–2.3% of all executions from 1880s to the 1920s. This has dropped significantly when only 3 juveniles, one of whom waived his appeals and one of whom was also condemned for a murder committed as an adult, were executed between January 1977 and November 1986.[15]
List of juveniles executed in the United States since 1976
Indicates cases where the executed defendant was under another sentence of death for a separate murder committed as an adult
↑ Pinkerton received another death sentence for a murder committed at age 18, but was executed for the murder he committed at age 17 since he exhausted his appeals in that case first.
↑ "Hang 13-Year-Old Boy in Georgia". Evening Public Ledger. September 24, 1915. p.1. Archived from the original on July 14, 2023. Retrieved July 14, 2023. Joe Persons, a 13-year-old negro boy, was executed in Jackson, Ga., today.
↑ "Small Boy Hanged". Hopkinsville Kentuckian. September 30, 1915. p.1. Archived from the original on July 14, 2023. Retrieved July 14, 2023. Joe Persons, a negro boy not more than 14 years old, was legally hanged at Jackson, Ga., Friday for criminally assaulting a white child 8 years old. The boy admitted his guilt and said he was ready to die. He weighed on [sic] 75 pounds.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑ Espy, M. Watt (January 7, 1986). "Death for Juvenile Crimes: Execution, a Practice Dating to 1642, May Continue This Week". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 14, 2023. Retrieved July 14, 2023. When Joe Persons was hanged at Jackson, Ga., on Sept. 24, 1915, contemporary newspaper accounts estimated his age as being "from 12 to 15," but the same accounts, saying that he weighed only 65 pounds, would indicate that he was nearer the former than the latter age. Because he was so immature and underdeveloped, local officials actually debated the practicality of adding weights to his body to ensure a successful hanging.
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