Facing the Death Penalty: Essays on a Cruel and Unusual Punishment

4. Juveniles' Attitudes Toward Their Impending Executions

4 Juveniles' Attitudes Toward Their Impending Executions VICTOR L. STREIB Over the last three and a halfcenturies, American jurisdictions have executed 281 people for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18 (see Streib, 1987:55-71). Their ages at execution ranged from 12 to 28. All were healthy young people with no reason to expect to die from natural causes in the foreseeable future. All came to contemplate their deaths from execution during waiting periods that lasted from a few weeks to over ten years. The focus of this chapter is on the attitudes and perceptions of these executed young persons as they face execution. First consider the American experience with the death penalty for juvenile crimes. This topic is not merely a current concern of courts and legislatures but has deep historical roots in our society. Most American death penalty jurisdictions have executed juvenile offenders in the past and many still have a few on their death rows awaiting execution. This chapter is based largely upon the author's recently published book (Streib, 1987), and in particular chapter 8, "Juveniles' Attitudes Toward Impending Execution," pp. 155-64. 38 JUVENILES' ATTITUDES 39 History of the Juvenile Death Penalty The American history of the juvenile death penalty began in Plymouth Colony in 1642 with the execution of Thomas Graunger (16 at the time of his crime and execution). The most recent execution for a juvenile offense occurred on 15 May 1986, when Jay Kelly Pinkerton (17 at the time of his crime, and 24 at the time of his execution) was put to death in Texas (Streib, 1987:73, 127-29). Offenders as young as 10 at the time of crime have been executed; several youths aged 13 or 14 have been executed in this century. Ten of the 281 have been females, the last female juvenile execution having occurred over three-quarters of a century ago (Streib, 1987: 58-59). Most (69 percent) of these executed juvenile offenders were black, and almost all (89 percent) of their victims were white. Their crimes include arson, bestiality, and theft, but 81 percent were convicted of murder, and 15 percent of rape. Although two-thirds of these juvenile executions have been carried out in the South, 36 jurisdictions have had at least one such execution. Georgia is by far the leader with 41 juvenile executions-more than double the number of its nearest competitor. Next in line, with 18 or 19 each, are the southern states of North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, and the northern industrial states of New York and Ohio (Streib, 1987: 63-70). The heaviest concentrations of juvenile executions have been in the older, more populous states east of the Mississippi River, particularly along the eastern seaboard. The Deep South states, except for Louisiana, are consistently heavy, but so are such northeastern states as Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. Several central and western states, ranging from North Dakota down to Oklahoma and over to Idaho, have never executed any juveniles. The only western state with Significant juvenile executions is California, and its six juvenile executions (1864-1923) still constitute only 1 percent of its total of approximately five hundred executions in the past century. Juvenile executions were rare before the Civil War, with only a few being carried out each decade. The number jumped to 12 in the 1860s, rose steadily to 27 in the 1920s, and then jumped again to a peak of 53 in the 1940s. This rate then plummeted to 16 in the 1950s and to 3 in the 1960s (Streib, 1987:55-56). The only execu- 40 VICTOR L. STREIB tions for juvenile crimes since 1970 have been those of Charles F. Rumbaugh in Texas on 11 September 1985, James Terry Roach in South Carolina on lO January 1986, and Jay Kelly Pinkerton in Texas on 15 May 1986. Recent Juvenile Death Sentences The willingness ofjudges and juries to sentence people to death for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18 is slackening markedly. Eleven such sentences were imposed in 1982; 9 in 1983; 6 in 1984; 5 in 1985; 7 in 1986; 2 in 1987; and three during the first nine months of 1988 (Streib, 1988). These are years for which the death-sentencing rate for adults has been about 280 per year. Thus, for the last seven years, juvenile death sentences have usually constituted only about...