he] company” (Farley & Willwerth, 1998) of countriessuch as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, and Yemen. These were the only countries outside the U.S. that stillused the death penalty for juveniles up until two years ago. Currently, the U.S. is the only country in the world thatpractices this punishment for juveniles (Streib, 2000). TheInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(Gonnerman, 2000) and the United Nations (UN) Convention onthe Rights of the Child (Amnesty, 1997) both outlaw thedeath penalty for persons under the age of eighteen. TheU.S. ratified the former in 1992 and has yet to ratify thelatter. The UN Convention goes one step farther than thisdiscussion and also outlaws life imprisonment without paroleor juveniles (Amnesty, 1997). The U.S. definitely does notlook good when it comes to this subject when compared toother countries, countries that are known for human rightsviolations, and countries that decided to ratify theInternational law.So who are the “kids” that are committing these crimesthat force us to be in this debate in the first place? Almost all the juveniles given the sentence of death aremale, 98% of the total (Streib 2000). Two-thirds of thejuveniles are minority offenders (Streib 2000), 20% beingLatino and the other 43% are African American (Gonnerman,2000). One statistic of particular interest is that 80% ofthe victims of these juveniles are adults (Streib 2000), notkids their own age. As of June 2000, their were seventy-four juvenilesunder death sentence, the majority of which are in Texas. Texas houses 26 of these young felons, one third of thenational total (Whitman, 2000), and has executed nine of theseventeen that have been executed since 1973. Besides theseventy-four sentenced to die currently and the 17 that havebeen executed since 1973, there have been another 105adolescents that have their sentences reversed (Streib2000). On an even more individual note, a...
