Youth is no excuse

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court this week refused to consider blocking the execution of teenage murderers. In a 5-4 vote, the court rejected an appeal from a death-row inmate in Kentucky who murdered a woman when he was 17. The dissenting four judges—all from the court’s more liberal wing—argued in a six-page opinion that executing minors was a “shameful” relic of the past and “inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.” Of the 38 states with capital punishment, 22 permit the execution of people as young as 16. The court also refused to hear an appeal that argued it is cruel and unusual punishment to keep inmates on death row for decades, while they pursue appeals of their convictions and death sentences, and then execute them. Justice Clarence Thomas said one such prisoner in Florida could have spared himself the ordeal “by submitting to what the people of Florida have deemed him to deserve: execution.”