four Supreme Court Justices reached the conclusion that: persons under sixteen years of age cannot be sentenced to death (Thompson v. Oklahoma, 1988). Justice Stevens, Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun considered these important issues as they were deliberating on the case: (1) Does a national consensus forbidding executions of juveniles exist?; (2) the extent to which the laws of other Western European nations prohibit or permit the execution of juveniles, and the opinions of " respected professional organizations;" (3) the degree to which the juveniles should be held responsible for their actions; (4) Whether the execution of juveniles contributed to the retributive or deterrent goals of punishment; and (5) Whether the small number of juveniles executed represents the "waton and freakish" application of the death penalty as condemned by Justice Stewart in Furman V. Georgia (Furman v. Georgia, 1972: 2763, Thompson v. Oklahoma, 1988: 487 U.S. 815). Following the decision, thirty eight states and the federal government created statutes authorizing the death penalty for certain forms of murder and other capital offenses ( Streib 1 of 2). Thompson v. Oklahoma held that no state within the minimum age line within its death penalty can go below the age of sixteen. Presently, fifteen states have chosen the min age of eighteen, four states have chosen the minimum age of seventeen (including Georgia), And twenty states have chosen the minimum age of sixteen (Streib 1 of 2). Before 1988, there was an uncertainty as to how the government should handle the juveniles and their capital crimes. There was one consensus among Justices and that was that the constitution and the Eighth Amendment did not outlaw juveniles receiving the death penalty. In furman v. Georgia (1972: 2823) justice powell wrote: " ... The unswerving position that the court has taken in opinions spanning the last hundred years. On Virtually every occasion that any opinion has touch...
