Imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed at age 17 or younger remains rare

Supreme Court decisions prohibit the death penalty for youth younger than 16

The Supreme Court, in Eddings v. Oklahoma (1982), reversed the death sentence of a 16-year-old tried as an adult in criminal court. The Court held that a defendant’s young age, as well as mental and emotional development, should be considered a mitigating factor of great weight in deciding whether to apply the death penalty. The Court noted that adolescents are less mature, less responsible, and less self-disciplined than adults and are also less able to consider the long-range implications of their actions. The Court, however, did not address the question of whether imposing the death sentence on the offender was prohibited because he was only 16 years old at the time the offense was committed.

In Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), the issue before the Court was whether imposing the death penalty on an offender who was 15 years old at the time of the murder violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court concluded that the eighth amendment prohibited application of the death penalty to a person who was younger than 16 at the time of the crime. In Stanford v. Kentucky (1989), the Court stated that, “We discern neither a historical nor a modern societal consensus forbidding the imposition of capital punishment on any person who murders at 16 or 17 years of age. Accordingly, we conclude that such punishment does not offend the eighth amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.”

Youth younger than 18 are a small proportion of those receiving the death penalty

The Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972) struck down all existing death penalty statutes. Sentencing under post-Furman statutes began in 1973. The constitutionality of these current-era statutes was not determined by the Supreme Court until the 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia . Executions under the current-era statutes began in 1977. From 1973 through December 31, 2000, 200 death sentences have been handed down to 185 offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of their crimes. These death sentences account for less than 3% of the roughly 7,000 death sentences imposed on offenders of all ages since 1973.

As with most death sentences, death sentences for offenders younger than 18 are usually reversed. Since 1973, 95 offenders younger than 18 (51%) have had their death sentences reversed, 17 (9%) have been executed, and 73 (39%) remain under sentence of death.

At yearend 2000, 73 offenders were under sentence of death for under-18 crimes

Of the 73 offenders under sentence of death on December 31, 2000, for crimes committed at age 17 or younger, 55 were age 17 at the time of their offense and the remaining 18 were 16. Nearly half of these offenders (33 of 73) were not juveniles at the time of their offense—they were legally adults because they were older than their state’s upper age of original juvenile court jurisdiction. The majority of these (26 of 33) were 17-year-olds from Texas, where original juvenile court jurisdiction ends at age 16.

The youngest of these 73 offenders was 19 years old as of December 31, 2000, the oldest was 42, and the average age was 25. As of yearend 2000, an average of 5 1/2 years had passed since the offender’s initial death sentence.

Most victims of these offenders were adults

More than 8 in 10 of the nearly 100 victims of these 73 offenders were adults. Of the victims whose demographic information was reported, most were non-Hispanic white (67%) and just over half (51%) were female. The majority of offenders were minorities (47 of 73); all were male.