Videresender denne artikkelen.
Da jeg besøkte på Texas death row den ene av dagene - den 7. januar, var det 6 fanger tilstede i besøksrommet. Da jeg kom hjem til Norge igjen et par uker senere, var det 2 igjen av disse som fremdeles levde.
Texas har henrettet 5 fanger i januar. Den 24. februar skal de henrette en bestemor på 62 år. Bettie Lou Beets, som er døv og ute av stand til å gjøre rede for seg. Odell Barnes Jr. som kan bevise uskyld blir henrettet den 1. mars. (http://www.feastofpan.com/odellbarnes/index.html)
Turid Sandberg.
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In executing youths, US stands alone
January broke the record for such deaths, illustrating the gulf between US,
world.
By Warren Richey, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Although they never met one another, Steven Roach, Douglas Thomas, and Glen
McGinnis will forever share a grim page in United States history.
All three were put to death as convicted murderers in January. All three
were 17 years old at the time they committed the crimes that landed them on
death row.
It marked the most juvenile offenders put to death in a single month since
the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
The relative obscurity of the three executions, which were barely noticed by
the national media, points up a growing chasm between the US and the rest of
the international community over adult sanctions like the death penalty for
teenagers convicted of adult crimes.
"Every other country in the world has done away with this in the last five
to 10 years, including China," says Victor Streib, a lawyer and law school
dean at Ohio Northern University in Ada, who has studied the issue for a
quarter-century. "We are left out here by ourselves, and one has to ask
why?"
At its core, the issue is whether juvenile killers have the judgment and are
mature enough to understand all ramifications of their crimes at the time
they commit them. If they lack an adult level of judgment, the argument
goes, why should they face an adult level of punishment?
The international standard
That's the reasoning behind the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child, an international treaty that bars executions of anyone who
commits a crime when younger than 18. The United States is the only country
in the world to refuse to sign the accord.
(Somalia also has not signed, but it lacks a working legislature to
authorize the treaty, analysts say. And Iran, which signed the UN treaty,
nonetheless executed a 17-year-old recently, according to human rights
reports. Outside the US, it is the only reported execution of a juvenile
offender in the past year.)
While the international community views the juvenile death penalty as a
question of human rights, in America, executing teenage criminals is good
politics, analysts say.
"The death penalty is very political," says Richard Dieter of the Death
Penalty Information Center in Washington. "It is as much part of the
political system as the criminal-justice system."
Many victims' rights groups favor tough sanctions whenever a criminal
commits a particularly horrendous crime. They argue that in cases when
juveniles commit vicious murders in which they show no compassion for their
victims, the government should also show no compassion to the murderer.
Some crimes are just so awful, they argue, that they deserve the ultimate
punishment.
Opponents counter that teen killers are different than adult killers. "Even
many supporters of the death penalty will draw the line at 18," says Mr.
Dieter. "It has to do with the death penalty being reserved for the worst of
the worst offenders, those most responsible for their actions in terms of
understanding the consequences, those most in control of their choices."
Dieter adds, "Teenagers are somewhat there, but they are not fully in
adulthood. We recognize that by saying that they can't vote, can't serve on
a jury, buy alcohol, be drafted. There are a lot of lines we draw for which
18 is a bright line."
What the court says
Roughly a decade ago, the US Supreme Court drew a bright line in deciding
two juvenile death-penalty cases. The court ruled in one case that 15 was
too young an age to execute a convicted murderer, but in a second case it
ruled that state laws authorizing the execution of those 16 and older did
not offend the Constitution.
In writing the majority opinion in the second case, Justice Antonin Scalia
answered critics who suggest that anyone who isn't old enough to drive,
vote, or drink alcohol isn't old enough to receive the death penalty. "It is
... absurd to think that one must be mature enough to drive carefully, to
drink responsibly, or to vote intelligently, in order to be mature enough to
understand that murdering another human being is profoundly wrong,..." he
wrote.
Justice Scalia said that age-specific voting, driving, and drinking statutes
"do not represent a social judgment that all persons under the designated
ages are not responsible enough to drive, to drink, or to vote, but at most
a judgment that the vast majority are not." Such laws are not individualized
maturity tests, but rather general rules that apply to all teens.
"The criminal-justice system, however, does provide individualized testing,"
he said. The Constitution requires that juries determine individual guilt
and that there be an individualized determination of an appropriate sentence
based on laws passed by an elected state legislature.
Is parole an option?
Today there are roughly 70 death-row residents in the US who committed
murder prior to their 18th birthday. Death-penalty opponents say it would in
no way undermine the criminal-justice system to sentence such murderers,
instead, to life without parole.
Some 22 states have statutes authorizing the execution of murderers under
18. But there is movement toward ending the practice. Since the mid-1990s,
Montana, Maryland, New York, and Kansas all adopted 18 as the appropriate
age cutoff.
"Whether it is in my lifetime or not, we are certainly in the last era of
the juvenile death penalty," says Mr. Streib. "All patterns are that it is
fading away."
"It almost has to happen quietly," says Dieter. But he notes that it is
happening. "We are moving in the right direction."
Illinois takes a closer look
Moreover, evidence is growing that the death penalty, in general, is
undergoing closer scrutiny in some parts of the US. Yesterday, Illinois Gov.
George Ryan was expected to halt all executions in the state pending a
review of death-penalty procedures there. In Illinois, since the death
penalty was reinstated in 1977, 13 men sentenced to die were later found to
be wrongly convicted.
As for the three young men executed in January, Thomas shot and killed his
girlfriend's parents, Roach killed an elderly neighbor while robbing her,
and McGinnis gunned down a mother of two while robbing a coin laundry
business. Thomas and Roach were executed in Virginia. McGinnis's death
sentence was carried out in Texas.
A deterrent, or not?
Although some public officials say such executions may have a deterrent
effect on other potential teen killers, Streib says this view ignores the
way troubled teens really think. "They are impulsive, they don't plan ahead.
They think they are immortal, they don't fear death," he says. "Treating
them like adults just assumes that they think like adults."
Streib adds: "Prosecutors say they want to send [potential teen killers] a
message, and I tell them these kids are not tuned in to our station. They
will not hear your message.
"Kids are not deterred by death because they don't perceive it," he says.
"And so many kids living on the street don't plan to live to 18 anyway."
Some experts argue, in fact, that the possibility of a long prison sentence
- as opposed to a death sentence - can deter troubled teens because they can
more readily understand the deprivations of life behind bars.
*Tomorrow: why Yemen, an Islamic nation with four times as many guns per
person as the US, decided to ban the death penalty for juveniles.
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