Death Penalty for Juveniles

Death Penalty for Juveniles

On January 5, 1993, behind a wall where he may have heard the voices of people cheering outside, Westley Allan Dodd was hanged by the state of Washington (Dority). But the people parading outside were not sadists. They were merely displaying their agreement with the verdict and the sentence. They opened champagne bottles and set off fire crackers not because they were simple minded but because they wanted it to be over (Dority).Families waited for justice and it was within arm’s reach. The people demonstrating along with numerous experts said that Dodd was a “sadistic psychopathic pedophile incapable of empathy, that his greatest fear was being ‘a nobody,’ and that he had successfully manipulated us into making him ‘a somebody’ via the sensational media coverage of his hanging” The families and the people of Washington did get justice that night. But Dodd was not a juvenile. Yet, had he been executed years earlier, perhaps others would not have had to suffer. Lives would have been saved. In the end, Dodd’s life was lost anyway. Perhaps executing murderers at younger ages would serve not only as a deterrent and a form of retribution but also effective in creating a safer society.

There is extreme opposition to the use of the death penalty for minors, even among capital punishment supporters. The United States is in the minority, and one of only seven countries in the world, that executes minors (Eckford). This may surprise some as the United States’ system of justice has always been looked up to compared with the barbaric practices we see in other countries. It is true that our prisoners get cable television and other perks that go along with American life. Yet, as juvenile crime rises, something has to be done. Allowing the death penalty for juvenile murderers is one solution. With the high rate of recidivism this is actually quite practical.

A 1988 telephone survey conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency revealed that more than two thirds of the respondents supported a treatment and rehabilitation-oriented juvenile court; also, more than half the total sample indicated that they did not favor giving juveniles the same sentences as adults (Schwartz). A 1986 study that was conducted in Ohio was designed to test the level of public support for the juvenile death penalty. This poll found strong opposition to "passing a law to allow the death penalty for juveniles over 14 years of age convicted of murder"; in Cincinnati, 69% of the respondents expressed opposition to such a law and 65% of the respondents in Columbus felt the same way. Authors say that their findings are consistent with other death penalty studies. A 1965 Gallup Poll also showed similar results (Schwartz). A 1990 Michigan study showed gender differences with males being more prone to favor the death penalty for juvenile