No Death Penalty for Juveniles

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Children are told to be innovative, explore life, and that there mistakes will teach them life lessons. While most children major punishments are extracted by their parents and guardians, a small number go beyond a petty crime and violated the law. The New Oxford American Dictionary states that the death penalty is, “the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime.” Capital crimes array from murder to drug trafficking. In the United States the death penalty is mostly administered towards first-degree murder, with non-murder crimes varying by state. “Currently, only 58 nations actively practice the death penalty, with 96 countries having abolished it, the remainder have not used the death penalty for 10 years or only allow for death in exceptional circumstances.” (Death Penalty Information Center, n.d.) How does a child get to the position of committing a murder, do they deserve and understand death?

To further understand the death penalty one would need to be knowledgeable on the five different methods that are administered; firing squad, hanging, gas chambers, electrocution, and lethal injection. Lethal injection is the most common way of administering death, being authorized in 37 states. Nothing makes this form of punishment morally correct. In fact, this is cruel and unusual punishment, a rare inflection of pain. Just in recent years has punishments exclusively been lethal injection. There are a profound number of stories of victims catching on fire during the use of the electric chair, gas leaks, and issues during drug injections. (Death Penalty Information Center, n.d., Methods of Execution)

While the cost for the drugs administrated in lethal injection are minimal, cost ...

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...09, August 3). Is the Death Penalty Unconstitutional? Retrieved from http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=1715

Millett, Frederick C. (2002, April 8). End the Death Penalty Now! Retrieved from https://www.msu.edu/~millettf/DeathPenalty/

NCSC.org. (n.d.).Capital Punishment/ The Death Penalty FAQs. Retrieved from http://www.ncsc.org/topics/criminal/capital-punishment-the-death-penalty/faq.aspx

Totenberg, N. (2005, March 2). Supreme Court Ends Death Penalty for Juveniles. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4518051

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2011 from the Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roper_v._Simmons

Lamourie, T., & Parkinson, D. (2007, September 17). Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty: Toronto Patterson. Retrieved from http://ccadp.org/torontopatterson.htm

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