Executing juveniles- A legal, societal struggle

The debate over executing juvenile criminals is fraught with legal disagreement and emotional arguments. For now, a 4-3 majority of the Missouri Supreme Court believes individuals younger than 18 at the time they commit what would be a capital crime for adults should not be put to death.

That recent decision has attracted the interest of state legislators, some of whom say the court went too far, ignoring both the will of the people as expressed in state statutes and the will of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled that individuals as young as 16 years old can be executed.

But the state court's majority based its decision on yet another high court opinion that said executing mentally retarded criminals constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. That decision held that the mentally retarded are unable to fully understand their actions. The Missouri court extended that concept (unable to fully understand their actions) to young offenders.

Over the years, the Southeast Missourian has maintained that juveniles have, in some instances, been overly protected by state laws that pertain only to them, both in how they are punished and in the secrecy that surrounds their crimes. Those laws have always intended to provide a level of protection for youngsters that fits the expectations of Missourians.

Executing a child is distasteful, and courts have regularly cited society's standards of decency in dealing with such cases. In its latest opinion on the matter, the Missouri Supreme Court majority suggested that society doesn't want anyone under 18 to face the gas chamber, regardless of existing laws that permit it.

The case at hand involved a teenager who was 17 years old at the time he broke into a woman's home. The teen tied the woman up and threw her from a railroad trestle into the Meramec River.

A Cape Girardeau County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty.

One of the issues in this current debate is what best serves society in these situations. That would include what's best for the juvenile offender. By overturning the teen's death sentence, the Supreme Court reduced the offender's sentence to life in prison without parole. There are many Missourians who would question whether spending 60 or 70 years in prison, given today's life expectancy, is better for a juvenile offender than executing him.

While young criminals deserve to be punished for serious crimes that result in the deaths of others, there is surely room for consideration that a young life might be changed in a productive way.

Another important issue is whether the Missouri court is, in effect, usurping the legislature's role of enacting laws that represent the will of the people. Some legislators last week referred to the "activism" of the four-judge majority.

Juveniles should be punished for their crimes. But most Missourians probably believe the death penalty is too harsh a penalty for juvenile offenders. Some would say life in prison is too much too. Both legislators and judges dealing with this issue will find the options as complex as most Missourians do.