Will America defend its right to execute children?30 January 2004
by Anai Rhoads
The United States Supreme Court has used the U.S. Constitution as a means to justify outdated execution laws. Although the document precludes capital punishment for crimes committed by persons of age fifteen or younger1, it makes no exceptions for criminals once they have reached their sixteenth year. While the established legal age in America is eighteen, there exists a double standard when it comes to dealing with children who have committed crimes. Not even old enough to vote, sign contracts or even purchase cigarettes, offenders are thrown into a legal system that allows them to be punished by death years down the road for acts committed before being considered fully responsible for their own actions. Behind the developing worldInternational rulings dictate that individuals should not be executed below the age of eighteen. Yemen and Zimbabwe updated national laws to comply in 1994, as did China in 1997 and Pakistan in 2000. Iran is close to updating its old regulations to adhere to international law some time in 2004.China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United States of America are the only countries to have in the past violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Of these eight countries spotlighted for having taken part in executions of persons who had committed crimes as minors, the United States is the only nation that openly agrees with this method of correction and claims the right to continue. There have been a total of 34 juvenile executions performed in the above mentioned countries since 1990, and nineteen of the thirty-four were in the United States. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) 160 children have been sentenced to death in the U.S. since 1973 and records have shown that government orders for gassing, electrocution, and lethal injection of child offenders doubled in the last decade. Since 1976 more than six out of every ten persons sentenced to death during their nonage have been of either African-American or Latino descent and currently two out of every three juvenile offenders sentenced to death row are minorities. 2 International Law
More executions scheduledThe National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) was pleased with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on Monday to review laws concerning execution of juveniles within the year. "No civilised society executes juvenile offenders," said Brian Roberts, NCADP's executive director.The state of Texas is scheduled to execute Edward Capetillo on March 30; Efrain Perez on June 23; and Raul Villarreal on June 24. Each person was 17 years old when accused of murder. Texas has been responsible for six of the past seven juvenile offender executions. Meanwhile over 105 countries have stopped using capital punishment altogether. The Supreme Court in mid-2003 came within one vote of endorsing a ban on all executions for crimes committed at age seventeen or younger. ©2004 Veriana Media. Reproduction must be authorised in writing only, and altering the material and this copyright is prohibited and protected by international law. Please contact Veriana Media for reprint and licencing permission.
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