Fewer minors being sentenced to death

Malvo's prison term marks a broader trend away from capital punishment for juveniles. By Seth Stern | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

When a Virginia jury voted against a death sentence for Washington-area sniper John Lee Malvo this week, it followed a national trend away from sentencing juvenile offenders to death.

The annual death-sentence rate for juvenile offenses has declined rapidly in recent years and death-penalty opponents say it's only a matter of time before capital punishment for those under 18 is eliminated.

"The question is whether it will end by states passing laws banning it, the Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional, or juries ending the practice by refusing to vote in favor of it," says Victor L. Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio.

Of those now on death row, 78 were juveniles when they committed their crimes, according to Professor Streib. Twenty-one states allow death sentences to be imposed on juvenile offenders who were at least 16 at the time of their crimes - a requirement of a 1988 Supreme Court ruling, which said that executing a 15-year-old was unconstitutional. The US is the only country besides Iran that formally allows the death penalty for juveniles; the practice is prohibited under several international treaties.

The 22 juvenile offenders executed since 1973 represent only 2.5 percent of the total executions during that period. Still, death-penalty opponents view this as the next place to roll back capital punishment.

Those opposing capital punishment had feared that the heinous nature of the crimes with which Malvo is connected - 10 people were killed during a three-week shooting spree - would bring on a death sentence and set back their cause. Instead, the sentence of two simultaneous life terms without parole could pave the way for the Supreme Court to outlaw the practice, experts say. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that executing mentally retarded defendants is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. And four Supreme Court justices have publicly announced their willingness to strike down the juvenile death penalty as well.

Experts say Malvo was far from a typical juvenile defendant in a capital case. Defense attorneys argued that John Allen Muhammad brainwashed him. "Given the elder sniper's influence upon him as a surrogate father figure, we cannot say [Malvo] was the worst of the worst," says New York Law School Prof. Robert Blecker.

Malvo, who was four months shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the attacks, may also have been helped by his youthful appearance at the trial, attorneys on both sides of the case agreed.

It's a setback for death-penalty advocates, including Attorney General John Ashcroft who argued that both suspects deserved the "ultimate sanction."

The verdict was all the more striking, given that it came in a conservative part of Virginia, one of only three states to have executed multiple juvenile offenders since 1973.

Sentencing juveniles to death has been controversial since the days of the Plymouth Colony in 1600s, says Cornell Prof. Joan Jacobs Brumberg.

What's changed, says Ms. Brumberg, is new research by developmental psychologists that suggests adolescent minds aren't yet fully formed - and so don't reason and judge as effectively as the minds of adults. "There are more people today who think it's inappropriate to conflate childhood and adulthood," says Brumberg.

Nonetheless, Mr. Blecker says his 2,000 hours of jailhouse interviews over 13 years with juvenile offenders have convinced him that some convicted youth street killers "do deserve to die."

On Law: The execution of teenage murderers

By Michael Kirkland
UPI Legal Affairs Correspondent
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031211-014456-3148r.htm

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- As the case against Lee Boyd Malvo hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion -- a guilty verdict and a sentence of death -- it's time to examine whether someone should be executed in the United States for crimes committed when the killer was too young to vote or order a beer.

Malvo, of course, was one half of the sniper team that allegedly killed 10 people and wounded three others in the Washington area last year, according to state and federal investigators. At the time of the shootings he was 17.

His mentor and surrogate father, John Allen Muhammad, has been convicted and sentenced to death by a Virginia jury for one of the killings.

Both trials were moved from the Washington area to avoid having a prejudiced jury. Malvo's is in Chesapeake, Va., where he is charged in the killing of FBI analyst Linda Franklin.

So far, Malvo's defense seems about as weak as a cup of my brother-in-law's coffee. His court-appointed attorneys are not saying that he didn't commit the crimes. They're saying that he was so much under the influence of Muhammad that he didn't know right from wrong, and is therefore innocent by reason of insanity.

The state's mental health experts will in due course completely contradict the defense's mental health experts and the jury will ultimately agree with the prosecution.

So does Malvo deserve to die?

Of course he does.

The entire capital area was held hostage. Victims were chosen out of the blue, struck down by a high-caliber round as they pumped gas into their cars, or crossed the parking lot of a discount store or did any of the hundred other mundane things that people do when they're going about the business of living their lives.

And the killers were not acting for the thrill alone or to strike back at an unjust society. They had a plan to extort money from the government, $10 million, and then somehow slip into oblivion and live on the cash stashed in one of those legendary Swiss bank accounts.

It was a supremely stupid plan, but not demonstrably insane.

None of the victims deserved the end that fate had in store for them. The blow and shock to the body, the ripping of flesh and bone and organs, then perhaps a few seconds of intense pain before the end. None of their families deserved this either.

From more than a decade of watching state executions flow by the Supreme Court of the United States, I can tell you that teenagers commit some of the most brutal and heartless murders. And if the execution of murderers who committed their crimes while teenagers is ever outlawed, watch for street gangs and even organized crime to use juveniles as a kind of baby button men.

So should Malvo actually be executed?

Of course not, even though he allegedly deserves to be.

Seventeen of the 38 states that allow the death penalty refuse to apply it to murderers who killed before they were 18, though Virginia is among those that do. A series of recent public opinion polls shows about a third of the U.S. public supports the execution of such inmates, though there are 75 juvenile murderers among the 3,500 residents on the nation's death rows.

There is something about holding an adult responsible for crimes committed as a child that sticks in our craw.

The public has a natural understanding of what it's all about. How many of us are the same people we were at 15, 16 or 17? I'm certainly not. Are you?

The Supreme Court itself is close to dealing with the issue. In October 2002 four of the nine justices -- the entire liberal wing of the court -- signaled their unease with sentencing juvenile murderers to death.

Since it only takes four justices to accept a case for review, why hasn't the liberal bloc forced a Supreme Court argument on the issue? Because for the moment, there isn't a fifth vote that could end such executions and the four don't want to put the dispute to the decision-making process.

But it is only a matter of time before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor or some other conservative joins the liberals. Trust me, the time is coming.

When the liberal bloc -- Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- issued their statement, they called the practice of sentencing teenagers to death "shameful."

In Stevens's words, "The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society."

There will always be Malvos in this world. Whether we execute them is not a test of how decent and civilized they are; it's a test of how decent and civilized we are.

--

(Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community since 1993.)

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