Questions about the Death Penalty

Does the 8th Amendment against “cruel and unusual punishment” also prohibit the death penalty for anyone under the age of 16 at the time of the offense? Despite the controversy that capital punishment continually generates, the American public seems to accept it as a just practice. Since 1930, nearly 4,000 prisoners have been executed in the United States. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Furman v. Georgia of 1972, which held that administering the death penalty discriminated against minorities and the poor, made the death penalty in effect unconstitutional. However, the Court soon reinstated capital punishment in 1976 with the ruling under Gregg v. Georgia. It was decided that the constitutionality of the death penalty was the decision of the people, not of the Court.

Questions over the death penalty continued to be rise during the latter half of the twentieth century. One of the prime questions involved age: Should persons under the age of 18, committing up to 10 percent of all murders in 1989, be subject to the death penalty? Many questioned whether or not this was fair under the Constitution. The Rehnquist Court set out to answer this question in case of Thompson v. Oklahoma.

On February 3, 1983, William Wayne Thompson, coupled with his half-brother and two other men, murdered Thompson’s former brother in law who had allegedly physically abused Thompson’s sister. He was severely beaten, shot twice, and cut on the throat, chest, and abdomen. His body was then chained to a concrete block and thrashed down a nearby river where it remained for almost four weeks. Thompson was only 15 years of age at the time.

The three other men were tried separately, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death. Given hi...

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...it lawful.

However, in 2005, the United States Supreme Court ended the option of the death penalty for persons of the age of 16 and 17 years old. It made the claim that juveniles of that age cannot be “classified among the worst offenders.” The Roper v. Simmons case affected the 19 states that authorized capital punishment under youths. Justice Anthony Kennedy felt “When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the state can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the state cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.” (Foxnews.com) Nonetheless, the Court still upheld that exceptional cases must be approached in an exceptional way. Teenagers cannot go around committing heinous crimes and expect not to get what they deserve. In such a case, they are, in fact, deserving of the death penalty.