Capital punishment and juvenile offenders in the United States

¶ … capital punishment (the death penalty) as it relates to those that were juveniles when their crimes were committed, and whether this is right or a gross abuse of the justice system. The author, Diane Schetky (2001), defends the opinion that capital punishment should not be an option for juvenile offenders by making several points against this type of punishment. In 1988, the Supreme Court determined that a person could not be executed if that person was under 16 when his or her crime was committed, however, 16 and 17-year-old individuals in this country are still executed (Schetky, 2001). The U.S. is also the only country that refused to sign a UN Convention on the rights of children, that prohibits capital punishment for anyone that was under 18 when the crime was committed (Schetky, 2001). Other points that Schetky (2001) make against capital punishment for children and adolescents include: a lack of adequate representation for adolescents facing the death penalty, the high rate of treatable psychiatric problems that these adolescents have, the inability of adolescents that commit crimes to 'plan ahead' or fully grasp what they are doing, and the high risk of error when determining exactly who did commit a crime.