Applying the Death Penalty to Juvenile Offenders - Essay Example

First 01 December 2006 The Adjudication of Juvenile Offenders as Adults In the recent landmark case of Roper v Simmons, the US Supreme Court declared and upheld by a 5-4 decision that the death penalty cannot be awarded to individuals less than 18 years old at the time that their crime was committed. The justices declared that applying the death penalty to juvenile offenders, regardless of their crime or offense, was cruel and unusual punishment by virtue of the offender's status as a minor or juvenile "..whose culpability or blameworthiness is diminished, to a substantial degree, by reason of youth and immaturity". (543 U.S. 568). The court therefore established, through that landmark decision, that despite the commission of heinous crimes that would warrant the death penalty for adult offenders, juvenile offenders must be differentiated from adult offenders of heinous crimes and they must be placed beyond the reach of the death penalty. The court reiterated that juveniles by virtue of their age and immaturity have less culpability than adult offenders of the same crime and their punishment should be mitigated by this diminished culpability. This notion of diminished culpability and immaturity which gave rise to the court's decision in the above case echoes the very rationale behind the juvenile justice system in the country. In most cases of juvenile crimes, juvenile offenders are tried and sentenced in juvenile courts which provide for softer sentences such as probation in a juvenile center, and are exempted from the penitentiary system applied to adult offenders. In our juvenile justice system, punishment for juvenile offenders is largely focused on rehabilitation rather than retribution. The general logic is that, since the offender is still young, he is still very susceptible to reform and thus he must be given greater opportunity to reform and rehabilitate himself. In general, juvenile offenders may be confined in juvenile centers until the age of 21, after which they are released. In many cases, the juvenile offender may even be allowed to expunge his criminal record. This long-accepted practice of providing special treatment for juvenile offenders, however, has its own share of exceptions. As in the case of Simmons above who was convicted of murder in a criminal court, several cases involving juvenile offenders have been extended into the jurisdiction of the regular criminal courts. Legal mechanisms provide for exceptions to the general rule that places juvenile offenders beyond the scope of the criminal courts. In recent years, new legislation in many states has provided for a rise in the number of such exceptions, and more juvenile offenders now face adult sanctions awarded by criminal courts. Mechanisms of Juvenile Transfer. The trend of placing juvenile offenders in the jurisdiction of adult criminal courts distinguished from regular juvenile courts has been in place even before the 1920s with a number of states already allowing for it back then. Since then, a larger number of states have added to the list of states allowing such transfers, and many have even extended the range of these transfers. Juvenile transfer legislation has increased even more dramatically in the past twenty years as the incidence of juvenile violence also spiked.( ojjdp.ncjrs.org) As of now, all states have at least one transfer mechanism in their legislation which allow for juvenile offenders to face trial and sentencing by jury in adult criminal courts. (Snyder 112). The transfer mechanisms legislated in these states may loosely be segregated into three main forms: judicial waiver, direct-file, and statutory exclusion.(ojjdp.ncjrs.org) Judicial waiver, the most common and oldest in practice among these three mechanisms, provides juvenile court judges the discretion to waive their jurisdiction over the juvenile offender. Juvenile offenders facing trial in the juvenile court may be transferred to the jurisdiction of the criminal courts upon the discretion of the presiding juvenile court judge. Other forms of this mechanism also allow for the juvenile offender himself or his family to motion for the said waiver. According to the study conducted by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the mechanism of judicial waiver accounts for the majority of cases where juvenile offenders are tried in adult criminal courts. The second mechanism places the discretion on the prosecutor himself and is termed a direct-file. Also termed as concurrent jurisdiction, this mechanism operates under the rationale that "original jurisdiction for certain cases is shared by both criminal and juvenile courts, and the prosecutor has discretion to file such cases in either court."(Snyder 112) Specific offenses or crimes, when committed by a juvenile, may thus be directly filed to the criminal court without need of a juvenile court judge's decision or waiver. The third mechanism, called statutory exclusion, takes the decision away from both the juvenile court judge and the prosecutor, and automatically places juvenile offenders of specific crimes under the jurisdiction of the adult criminal court. Under statutory exclusion, state statutes place mandatory exceptions to the jurisdiction of juvenile courts. A juvenile offender is excluded from the jurisdiction of the juvenile court and placed automatically in the ambit of the adult criminal court when he commits a specific crime. Unlike the direct-file and judicial waiver mechanisms, the mechanism of statutory exclusion does not provide a case-to-case analysis of the appropriateness in transferring a juvenile to the criminal court. The juvenile's history of past offenses and reasonable likelihood of rehabilitation are not taken into consideration at all. (Allard 67) Apart from these transfer mechanisms, state legislation limiting the jurisdiction of juvenile courts are also partly responsible for the increase of juvenile defendants in criminal courts. In most states, state laws have been enacted to decrease the age at which a minor may still fall under the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts. Simmons, for example, though still legally a minor at the age of 17, was automatically charged in the adult criminal court because Missouri laws placed those at his age already beyond the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts. As of 1997, 10 States pegged juvenile courts jurisdiction at 16 yrs and below. Three states place original jurisdiction to the juvenile courts only till the age of 15, after which age a juvenile offender is automatically placed under the jurisdiction of the adult criminal courts. (ojjdp.ncjrs.org) Underlying Forces Behind the Rising Incidence of Juvenile Transfers. The main rationale behind transferring juveniles to criminal court jurisdiction is two-fold. Firstly, there is the argument that certain offenses are inherently criminal and reprehensible in nature such that the juvenile's age must not be allowed to bar his accountability for such acts. Secondly, there also exists the argument that some rare juvenile offenders with extensive histories of past offenses warrant harsher rehabilitative sentences not available in the juvenile justice system. The underlying force behind the significant increase in juvenile transfer legislation also stems from public concern for public safety. The past two decades have seen a startling increase in juvenile crimes involving firearms. Before the 80's, less than two-thirds of juvenile crimes were committed with the use of firearms. By 1994, 82% of juvenile crimes were committed with the use of firearms. (ojjdp.ncjrs.org). Juvenile offenders have become more violent and alarmingly much younger than their previous counterparts. In response to this increase in juvenile violence, state legislators have enacted more statutes for juvenile transfer. The risk of facing harsher punishment under the jurisdiction of criminal courts is hoped to deter juveniles from engaging in violent crimes. Risks Involved in Criminal Prosecution of Juvenile Offenders. Despite the acknowledged increase in juvenile violence, however, many opponents of juvenile transfer counter that the risks involved in it far outweigh the presumed benefits. Although the main motive for increasing juvenile transfer in the past decade has been to deter juvenile violence, this deterrence has yet to manifest itself. At the same time that more juveniles are being tried in criminal courts, juvenile violence still continues to grow and the proliferation of firearms among juveniles continue to prevail. The prevalence of gang wars and drug use in many urban communities provide fertile ground for juvenile violence, a factor that is not addressed by juvenile transfer legislation. Transferring juvenile offenders to the criminal courts necessarily equates to putting them at risk of facing adult sanctions corresponding to their offense. Convicted juveniles are placed in adult correctional centers in the hope that the harsher environment would better rehabilitate them. The opposite, however, seems to be the case. Instead of deterring future crimes, studies on juvenile criminals that have been confined in adult correctional centers in fact reveal a higher rate of recidivism. Compared to their counterparts who were retained under juvenile court jurisdiction, therefore, transferred juvenile offenders released from adult correctional centers had a higher tendency for repeated criminal behavior. (Allard 71) The very placement of juvenile offenders in adult correctional centers place them at the mercy of very dangerous conditions that children should not be exposed to. Survival at adult correctional centers with adult criminals for these children involves tolerating a variety of abuses. According to the OJJDP, juveniles in adult correctional centers are generally "five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten by staff, and 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon.." as compared to juvenile offenders detained in juvenile programs or centers. (ojjdp.ncjrs.org) Striking a Balance As of the moment, efforts are already being made to strike a balance between public safety and the well-being of juvenile offenders. New mechanisms have emerged to address the problem of juvenile violence. Among these new mechanisms, the most promising seems to be the new forms of "blended sentencing", similar to the one in place at Minnesota. In blended sentencing, juvenile court jurisdiction is retained on the juvenile offender but the juvenile court judge now has the option to impose adult sentences. (courts.state.mn.us ) New mechanisms such as the one described above are needed to properly balance the two sides in the issue of juvenile transfer. It is clear that although public safety does warrant the state to actively pursue legislation ensuring it, state legislators also cannot be reckless in the enactment of juvenile transfer statutes. The transfer of juvenile offenders to criminal courts should be done at very rare cases and only upon proper consideration of all factors accompanying the case. Juvenile court jurisdiction should not be lowered so as to prevent haphazardly placing all juvenile offenders above the pegged age from immediately being at risk of detention at adult correctional centers. At the same time that legislators have the duty to provide public safety, they also wield a duty to protect legal minors from violence, injustice and in the words of the eighth amendment, "cruel and unusual punishment". Works Cited Allard, Patricia, and Malcolm C. Young. "Prosecuting Juveniles in Adult Court: The Practitioner's Perspective". Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice 2 (2002): 65-78. Bilchik, Shay. "Juvenile Justice Reform Initiatives in the States 1994-1996". ojjdp.ncjrs.org. 1997. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 27 November 2006. Cheesman, Fred, Thomas Cohen, Denise Dancy, Matthew Kleiman, and Nicole Mott. "Blended Sentencing in Minnesota: On Target for Justice and Public Safety" courts.state.mn.us . 1999. Minnesota Court Administrator's Office. 28 November 2006. Roper v Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) Snyder, Howard N.and Sickmund, Melissa. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report, chapter 4. Washington: National Center for Juvenile Justice, 1999. Read More