NCJ Number
122140
Journal
Prosecutor Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Dated: (Summer 1989) Pages: 11-12,14,16-22
Date Published
1989
Length
9 pages
Annotation
The quest for a bright line age limit on capital punishment based on the eighth amendment is premature; the propriety of the juvenile death penalty is properly legislative.
Abstract
This article first discusses the general background of the eighth amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It then examines how, through judicious struggle and legal evolution, the U.S. Supreme Court has reconciled the death penalty with the Constitution. The article contends that the constitutional minimum concerning eighth amendment jurisprudence has been set by elastic principles. Specifically, the principles which give meaning to the concept of "cruel and unusual" punishment are standards of decency, the dignity of man, and sentence by individualized consideration. The article concludes that the constitutional principles of the eighth amendment are elastic in the sense that they gather meaning through time and human experience; therefore, as time passes, the same basic principles may yield different results. The application of eighth amendment principles to the issue of executing juveniles for capital crimes reveals a current legal and social environment unoffensive to constitutional boundaries. This is confirmed in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision (Stanford v. Kentucky) which upholds the constitutionality of the death penalty for juveniles who were 16 or 17 when they committed murder. 155 footnotes.