Even though they are just kids, should they be tried as adults? The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the execution of children as young as sixteen is not cruel and unusual punishment. Out of thirty-eight states with the death penalty, thirteen have set the minimum age for death at eighteen; four states set the minimum at seventeen; nine set the minimum age at sixteen; twelve have no minimum age specified. In 1996, prosecutors in the state of Mississippi sought the death penalty for juveniles as young as thirteen years of age (1998, February 17). In 1999, a Texas legislator announced his plan to lower the state’s minimum age to eleven. The youngest person killed since World War II in the United States was George Stinny, a fourteen year-old black boy. George Stinny was so small that when he was being executed his mask fell off. Some argue that children mature enough to murder are mature enough to be punished for it. The death penalty is usually the last alternative for justice. Miriam Shehane, president of Victims of Crime and Leniency says, “I think when my kids were 15 or 16 they knew better than to kill someone.” A victims’-rights movement based in Montgomery, Alabama says, “If someone does adult crime, they are acting as adults, and they have to take responsibility” (1998, May 3). Shehane contends that capital punishment is not only for those with long legacies of criminality but also for anyone, teens included, who commits singularly horrific crimes. Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California has suggested that fourteen year-olds should be eligible for the death penalty. The spokesman for Wilson, Sean Walsh, explained why Wilson was suggesting this. Walsh thought that gangs in California often use underage triggermen because the gangs know that, if the triggermen are caught, they will not be subject to capital punishment. Lowering the minimum age, he argues, would cha...
