Death Penalty

Javier Briceno

Flint

English 4 AP- 1st Pd.

06 April 2006

Innocence of a Child

The death penalty, a punishment used since the days of King Hammauarabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for twenty different crimes back in the eighth century B.C. This punishment continues to play a role in today's civilization to chastise those who have committed horrific crimes. The battle on whether or not to keep the death penalty active argued since the dawn of its rise. Now an even bigger battle with whether or not to rewrite the death penalty laws and execute minors under the age of eighteen has evolved. There are two sides of argumentation of these encounters: the right to abolish a child for a crime that he or she may not have fully acknowledged; or the erroneous action of not to execute a minor because he or she dose have the full knowledge of what he or she did. No one knows how to handle the war between trail and punishment for a youth offender. The suggestions that with proper intervention the juvenile can rehabilitate form its violent segment. However, at what age is the juvenile capable of realizing his or her faults?

As a mother and a father, no one wants to see his or her child executed, but as desperate times come so do desperate measures. Nineteen states exist allow the death penalty for youth offenders: some including, but not limited to, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, and most southern states. In 1999 only seven states did not specify a minimum age for which the death penalty may be imposed. Fourteen states and the federal government required a minimum age of eighteen, four states authorized a minimum age of seventeen, and thirteen states required an age of eligibility between fourteen and sixteen (Rein 42).

The suggestion of the death penalty for a juvenile always comes down to the question that crosses everyone's mind: Should juvenile offenders be tried as adults and executed represented as cruel and unusual punishment?

The death penalty comes in to consideration with two circumstances: deterrence of capitol crimes and retribution for committing crimes. In the journal of, Physicians for Human rights, it claims, the juvenile death penalty fails to serve the stated purposes of capitol punishment: deterrence and retribution. These encounters of the two circumstances do not fuse with the adolescent's maturity and culpability. Therefore, testing the question as to yes, it is cruel and unusual, to trial and punishes a juvenile as an adult, and sentencing to execution.

These two leading ways to determine an adolescent maturity based on factors of science and judgment of psychology; and the judgment of the court adhere this evidence, in other words, the penalties of the offense must fit the degree of the criminal and the criminal's culpability.

The adolescents mind works differently then that of an adult. Parents know it, courts have stated it, and legislatures have presumed it for decades or more (McLaughlin). Now, new scientific reasoning has shed the light in the darkness of this hole. Science characterizes the deficiencies of the adolescent by explaining the actions taken by an adolescent are immature due to lack of mental growth. Scientist have come to the conclusion with the presentation of new technology breakthroughs like the high resolution structure called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These new technology examines the different brain developing stages from childhood to adolescents to adulthood. MRI studies the transactions between those eras to conclude a logical and scientific composite of a person's mental being. The scans expose how the development of maturity is processed through the frontal lobe in distinct ways that affect the brain function, first with myelination and second with pruning. The evidence shown in MRI scans show a materialistic structure of the human brain and it is development. It shows the fatty white substance called myelin, this is the pathway of impulse control, risk assessment, and moral reasoning; and pruning, a gray matter composed of the brain cells (or neurons), performs the task of brain maturity, both which are not yet developed in the adolescent's mind until he or she is beyond the years of eighteen.

Although science can prove that an adolescent is immature in a factual way with hard evidence it, however, can not judge the moral culpability of an adolescent. There are areas in which science has no assistance to finding reason for a juvenile's actions. Experts believe the task of psychological and biological behavior is relevant to the understanding of adolescent's actions (McLaughlin). The adolescent's brain acts in two regions of social and emotional factors that calculate his or her capabilities.

In the case of Roper v. Simmons, McLaughlin argues that, cognitive experts show proof of the difference between adults and adolescents is not the understanding of right from wrong but the function to distinguish ability to conduct responsibility for ones own actions. He also declares adolescents cannot be expected to transcend their own psychological or biological capacities. However, an adolescent who has suffered brain trauma, a dysfunctional family life, violence, or abuse cannot be presumed to operate even at standard levels for adolescents (20). Thus, as a result, gives reason to believe that the majority of the populations of juvenile offenders are diagnosed with some case of psychological and biological behavior disturbance. More than thirty percent of death row juvenile offenders had experienced six or more areas of childhood trauma with an overall average of four such experiences per offender (ABA, Jan. 2004).

Therefore, placing the foundation for the court to notice the underdevelopment of an adolescent combined with the immaturity and culpability of the juvenile offender. In a Fox News report, Marsha Levick, legal director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, said that the court recognizes that juveniles are categorically distinct from mature offenders (Ron 2005). In other words, the court can observe the characteristics of a juvenile to determine a verdict. The HOFSTRA Law Review claims that the court interprets the relationship between the seriousness of the crime and the sentence imposed, courts focus almost exclusively on the gravity of the crime rather than the culpability of the actor who caused the harm when they assess seriousness (Feld 2004). The purpose of this evidence is to seek out all possible factors to result in a punishment worthy of the crime committed.

Charles L. Scott, MD explains the court's decision for the case Atkins v. Virginia, that, "...the Court's