The authors use a developmental perspective to examine questions about the criminal culpability of juveniles and the juvenile death penalty. Under principles of criminal law, culpability is mitigated when the actor’s decision-making capacity is diminished, when the criminal act was coerced, or when the act was out of character. The authors argue that juveniles should not be held to the same standards of criminal responsibility as adults, because adolescents’ decision-making capacity is diminished, they are less able to resist coercive influence, and their character is still undergoing change. The uniqueness of immaturity as a mitigating condition argues for a commitment to a legal environment under which most youths are dealt with in a separate justice system and none are eligible for capital punishment.

Since 1990, only a handful of countries in the world—Congo, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and the United States—have executed individuals whose crimes were committed when they were juveniles (Bradley, 2002; de la Vega, 2002). Twenty-one states in the United States allow the execution of individuals under the age of 18, and in most of these states, adolescent offenders as young as 16 can be sentenced to death (Streib, 2002). The United States Supreme Court has held that the death penalty is unconstitutional for youths who are under 16 at the time of their offense ( Thompson v. Oklahoma, 1998) but has declined to categorically prohibit capital punishment for 16- and 17-year-olds ( Stanford v. Kentucky, 1989).

Several events have occurred recently that, considered together, suggest that it is time to reexamine the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty. First, in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of mentally retarded offenders violates the U.S. Constitution; some of the reasons offered by the Court for the ban may also apply to the capital punishment of juveniles. Second, following the Atkins decision, three Supreme Court justices took the unusual step of urging reconsideration of the constitutional status of the juvenile death...