Post by meaghangarrigal on Mar 1, 2009 19:03:08 GMT -5
A minor under the age of eighteen cannot vote, buy cigarettes, or get a tattoo, why is it logical for them to get the death penalty? In my opinion it’s not, On March 1st, 2005 the Supreme Court ruled to abolish the death penalty for minors, saying it was cruel and unusual punishment. In this paper I intend to prove why the death penalty should continue to be banned for minors.
In recent years Americans have watched in horror as teenagers committed more grisly crimes than ever before. Shooting sprees at high schools, acting as a sniper on the freeway, and murdering neighbors for the sake of a few dollars worth of jewelry. But if the government kills a minor, because that minor killed someone wouldn’t that go back to the saying an eye for an eye? And if we are going back to the saying of an eye for an eye what is that teaching anyone? It’s teaching the people of America it is wrong to kill someone, but not wrong enough that we will not do that same thing to them. By killing someone because they did something wrong is barbaric, and if we are going back to the barbarian times than our society as we know it will cease to remain civilized.
In a social-science experiment it showed evidence that teenagers are too immature to be held accountable for what they did. Is that saying that all crimes committed by minors are excused? Absolutely not, but it’s a scientific fact that teenagers brains are not fully developed. The teenage years are a transitional period of life where emotions, judgment, impulse control, and identity are still developing. By nature, teenagers are less mature, less able to assess risk, make good decisions, and control anger. By giving them the death penalty don’t you think it would be unfair if that minor could not take full responsibility for their crime and their brain was to blame.
Doctors believe that young criminals should be held accountable for what they did, bit it’s not in society’s best interest to impose the death penalty upon them. We should detain them, counsel them, and study them, so that we can learn how to minimize such tendencies in future generations of people. A study of forty percent of the juveniles on death row in the mid 1980’s found that all had head injuries, nine had major neurophsychological disorders, seven had psychotic disorders and another seven had serious psychiatric disturbances. Only two had IQ’s above 90. Only three had average reading abilities and twelve had been physically or sexually abused. These statistics just back up the fact that some teens live a troubled life and cannot be held accountable for how they react.
The death penalty alone is a barbaric and inhumane thing, but to have the death penalty for minors is just wrong. Every teenager makes a mistake during their teenage years, some mistakes bigger then others, but that doesn’t mean they should die for them. While DNA testing and other methods of modern crime science have become almost perfect, there is always that small chance that an innocent person could be found guilty and they could die for something they did not do. By putting a minor on death row you are not teaching him or her a lesson you are just teaching them that they have no chance of redemption, that they don’t deserve a chance of redemption. And what good is that to anybody?