Fewer
minors being sentenced to death
Malvo's
prison term marks a broader trend away from capital punishment for juveniles
By
Seth Stern |
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When
a Virginia jury voted against a death sentence for Washington-area sniper John
Lee Malvo this week, it followed a national trend away from sentencing
juvenile offenders to death.
The
annual death-sentence rate for juvenile offenses has declined rapidly in
recent years and death-penalty opponents say it's only a matter of time before
capital punishment for those under 18 is eliminated.
"The
question is whether it will end by states passing laws banning it, the Supreme
Court ruling it unconstitutional, or juries ending the practice by refusing to
vote in favor of it," says Victor L. Streib, a law professor at Ohio
Northern University in Ada, Ohio.
Of
those now on death row, 78 were juveniles when they committed their crimes,
according to Professor Streib. Twenty-one states allow death sentences to be
imposed on juvenile offenders who were at least 16 at the time of their crimes
- a requirement of a 1988 Supreme Court ruling, which said that executing a
15-year-old was unconstitutional. The US is the only country besides Iran that
formally allows the death penalty for juveniles; the practice is prohibited
under several international treaties.
The
22 juvenile offenders executed since 1973 represent only 2.5 percent of the
total executions during that period. Still, death-penalty opponents view this
as the next place to roll back capital punishment.
Those
opposing capital punishment had feared that the heinous nature of the crimes
with which Malvo is connected - 10 people were killed during a three-week
shooting spree - would bring on a death sentence and set back their cause.
Instead, the sentence of two simultaneous life terms without parole could pave
the way for the Supreme Court to outlaw the practice, experts say. Earlier
this year, the Supreme Court ruled that executing mentally retarded defendants
is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. And four Supreme Court
justices have publicly announced their willingness to strike down the juvenile
death penalty as well.
Experts
say Malvo was far from a typical juvenile defendant in a capital case. Defense
attorneys argued that John Allen Muhammad brainwashed him. "Given the
elder sniper's influence upon him as a surrogate father figure, we cannot say
[Malvo] was the worst of the worst," says New York Law School Prof.
Robert Blecker.
Malvo,
who was four months shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the attacks, may
also have been helped by his youthful appearance at the trial, attorneys on
both sides of the case agreed.
It's
a setback for death-penalty advocates, including Attorney General John
Ashcroft who argued that both suspects deserved the "ultimate sanction."
The
verdict was all the more striking, given that it came in a conservative part
of Virginia, one of only three states to have executed multiple juvenile
offenders since 1973.
Sentencing
juveniles to death has been controversial since the days of the Plymouth
Colony in 1600s, says Cornell Prof. Joan Jacobs Brumberg.
What's
changed, says Ms. Brumberg, is new research by developmental psychologists
that suggests adolescent minds aren't yet fully formed - and so don't reason
and judge as effectively as the minds of adults. "There are more people
today who think it's inappropriate to conflate childhood and adulthood,"
says Brumberg.
Nonetheless,
Mr. Blecker says his 2,000 hours of jailhouse interviews over 13 years with
juvenile offenders have convinced him that some convicted youth street killers
"do deserve to die."
|