Juvenile Death Penalty Today: Present Death Row Inmates Under Juvenile Death Sentences and Death Sentences and Executions for Juvenile Crimes, January 1, 1973, to August 31, 1994

• NCJ Number: 150953
• Author(s): V L Streib
• Date Published: 1994
• Length: 19 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services; Cleveland State University
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This report documents over 21 years of juvenile death sentencing under modern death penalty statutes in the United States.

Abstract

For the purposes of this study, a juvenile crime is defined as one "committed while the offender was under age 18, the most common age jurisdictional dividing line between juvenile and criminal courts." A juvenile death penalty is one imposed for a juvenile crime. The actual execution of juvenile offenders began in 1642 (Thomas Graunger, Plymouth Colony, Mass.). In the three-and-one-half centuries since that time, approximately 350 juvenile executions were imposed by 38 States and the Federal Government. They constitute only 1.8 percent of the total of approximately 18,600 confirmed American executions since 1608. Four juvenile offenders were executed in the last 6 months of 1993, as many as had been executed in the entire preceding 7 years. In the past decade, homicide arrests of adults have increased approximately 25 percent. In this same period, homicide arrests of juveniles increased 170 percent. Many have predicted that this recent wave of homicides committed by juveniles will result in greater use of the death penalty for juveniles. The spate of recent executions of juvenile offenders suggests that this is happening. The data compiled in this report, however, show this is not the case. In fact, a juvenile arrested for homicide today is less likely to be sentenced to death than in the past. Consistent with the general pattern over the 21-year period examined, both the annual juvenile death sentencing rate and the juvenile death-row population remain small compared to that for adults, each being between 1 percent and 2 percent of the totals. The spiraling number of arrests of juveniles for potentially capital crimes has resulted neither in a comparable increase in juvenile death sentencing or in the number of juvenile offenders on death row. 6 tables and appended case summaries for current death-row inmates under juvenile death sentences, August 31, 1994