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The death penalty is typically regarded as the last resort of justice. We expect men and women on death row to be men and women--career criminals with hardened hearts and calloused souls, past adolescence and beyond redemption, with long rap sheets and a slimy-slug trail of inflicted suffering. But that's not always the case. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that executes juvenile offenders: criminals whose alleged offenses were committed when they were under the age of 18. There are only six countries in the world that are known to have executed juvenile offenders in the '90s: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen--and the U.S. "We should be embarrassed to find ourselves in that company," says Hawkins. "Every one of those other countries is known for human-rights violations. Even China and Russia have banned the use of the death penalty against children."
The U.S. has executed six juvenile offenders this decade--more than any other country. A 1988 Supreme Court ruling (Thompson v. Oklahoma) is widely interpreted as prohibiting the execution of offenders who committed crimes when under the age of 16, but individual states can set higher minimum ages. Of the 38 states that allow the death penalty, 13 set the age at 18, four set it at age 17, and 21 have a minimum of 16 years of age or no minimum at all.
Some argue that children mature enough to murder are mature enough to be punished for it. "I think when my kids were 15 or 16 they knew better than to kill someone," says Miriam Shehane, president of Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL), a victims'-rights group based in Montgomery, Ala. "If someone does adult crime, they are acting as adults, and they have to take responsibility." Shehane contends that capital punishment is not only for those with long legacies of criminality but also for anyone, teens included, who commits singularly horrific crimes.
She has company. Increasingly, law-enforcement officials are looking to prosecute juvenile offenders as adults. Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California has suggested that 14-year-olds should be eligible for the death penalty. Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh says the Governor was not proposing any new legislation, merely advancing an idea. Walsh says gangs in California often use underage triggermen because the gangs know that, if the triggermen are caught, they will not be subject to capital punishment. Lowering the minimum age, he argues, would change that practice. "We have people who are literally assassins, and although they may be under the age of 18, they know what they are doing," says Walsh. "We need, as a society, to see if there is some action that can be taken. And, by God, the death penalty is a deterrent."