Week 4: Youth, Interrogation and Capital Punishment

                 As I read through the articles and viewed the film attached to this week’s subject of youth and capital punishment, I came to one paramount conclusion: we’ve only begun to scratch the surface—that is, we have only minimally begun to understand youth and how to manage those youth who have committed crimes, especially violent crimes. This is especially apparent in the history of the juvenile justice system—which originated with the purpose to provide rehabilitation but has shifted to espouse a more punitive approach. This punitive approach has effectively resulted in things such as trying juveniles in criminal court, bestowing harsher sentences, and most gravely important, the institution of capital punishment for young offenders.

       So why then, in 2005, did the Supreme Court strike down the death penalty for juveniles?  Madlyn C. Morreale and Abigail English in their piece “Abolishing the Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders: A Background Paper” and Laurence Steinberg and Elizabeth S. Scott in “Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence” give very compelling rationale for eliminating the juvenile death penalty. Here, I will try to outline some of those reasons in accordance with the film Death Row Kids and the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons.

       First, it might be beneficial to consult Steinberg and Scott when it comes to framing the death penalty issue: that is, in terms of excuse versus mitigation. Their writing expresses: “The public debate about the criminal punishment of juveniles is often heated and ill-informed, in part because the focus is typically on excuse when it should be on mitigation. It is often assumed, in other words, that the only alternative to adult punishment of juveniles is no punishment at all—or a slap on the hand” (2003). In this sense, our perception of juvenile offenders is often wrongly interpreted to be a ‘black and white’ or transparent issue. When in truth, the issue covers a lot of gray area. By viewing cases, where the death penalty is involved, through the lens of mitigation, we rightly enact a scale of proportionality, where youth who commit crime aren’t allowed to just ‘get away’ with their crime, but are reasonably reprimanded for the crime they have committed.

       Both articles, by Morreale &English and Steinberg &Scott provided a lot of support for the use of mitigation as a means for eliminating absolute sentencing for youth—among the weightiest of support was evidence for psychosocial immaturity, which, it must be mentioned, was also alluded to in Kennedy’s delivery of the court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons:  “From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed” (2005). In “Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence”, Scott gives a number of psychosocial factors that account for differences in decision making by adolescents and adults, including a sensitivity to peer influence, attitudes toward and perception of risk, future orientation and the capacity for self management (Scott, 2003). It is interesting to note here, that in the film, at least one of the interviewees, Soriano, experienced a significant amount of peer pressure. On another level, both Soriano and Jacobs illustrate certain other factors of psychosocial immaturity which include a skewed perception of the risks and the capacity for self management. Soriano’s story makes Scott’s point about psychosocial factors quite poignant.

“…I didn’t know he had a gun, and when we got inside the store, he tells me: ‘Here, get this gun’.  I said: ‘What do you want me to do with a gun’. And he says: ‘I want you to point it at the clerk’… So when I get to the counter I point this gun at the clerk… I don’t want to hurt this man… I knew better than that” (Death Row Kids, 2003).

Separate from the points of mitigation and subsequently psychosocial immaturity, is an idea that the death penalty has a disparate impact when it comes to race. Morreale and English write that Blacks and Latinos make up a disproportionate amount of those on death row (2004). Additionally, the film Death Row Kids mentions that poverty is also heavily correlated in the case of juveniles who have been given the death penalty (2003). With this compilation of facts, we must first ask ourselves whether or not the figures are merely coincidence. If they are not, as Morreale and English express it seems appropriate to suggest that maybe we need to partly treat this issue as a social problem.  

 “I grew up knowing that I had to die for a crime…and I know one day they might have to stick a needle in me… but I know that I didn’t continue in [those] ways” (Oswaldo Soriano, Death Row Kids).

       It seems that the death penalty is an issue marked with doubt and question—this alone is justification enough for the Supreme Court, in Roper v. Simmons, to deem the death penalty unconstitutional. But I’d like to draw attention to the court’s decision in one other way: in the fact that it relies so heavily on an ‘evolving standard of decency’ of national and international society. Should the changing attitudes of society be given weight in such an issue? Or is it just enough to say that we cannot institute capital punishment for juveniles, without knowing the whole truth?

Works Cited

Films for the Humanities and Sciences."Death Row Kids" 2005. Online video clip. Arizona Universities Library Consortium. FMG Video On Demand. Accessed on 14 February 2011. http://digital.films.com/play/ VGL58V

Lane, C. (2005) 5-4 Supreme Court Abolishes Juvenile Executions. The Washington Post, A01-A02.

Morreale, M. C., & English, A. (2004). Abolishing the death penalty for juvenile offenders: A background paper. Journal of Adolescent Health, 35(4), 335-339.


Parker, Jeff. (Cartoonist). (2005). "No Death Penalty for Juveniles". Accessed on 14 February 2011. http://www.cagle.com/news/DeathPenaltyJuveniles/main.asp

Steinberg, L., & Scott, E. S. (2003). Less guilty by reason of adolescence: Developmental immaturity, diminished responsibility, and the juvenile death penalty. The American Psychologist, 58(12), 1009-18.