Juvenile Offenders Should Be Sentenced To The Death Penalty
When you have a crime committed by a juvenile, who has not even reached their eighteenth birthday, it can be very challenging to determine proper punishment for the most serious of crimes. Roper vs. Simmons decided that juveniles who committed a crime before they reached the legal age of eighteen could not be sentenced to the death penalty (Board, 2016). In the legal case, Miller vs. Alabama, the court system ruled that sentencing a juvenile to life in prison without parole was unconstitutional even if the juvenile was found guilty of committing homicide (Board, 2016). When an adult commits first degree murder or even vehicular homicide, you will hear people screaming for the offender to be spending their life in prison or even receive
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However, while I subscribe to that logic for the most part, an individual that is juvenile still knows right from wrong and should be held accountable for their actions. An offender’s age should be considered when determining sentencing. You would not sentence a five year or ten year old child to death for an event that ended the life of another and if you attempted to do so, the public outcry would be enormous. Maybe not as easily as an eye for an eye, but they still should serve a sentencing term that is categorical upon based on the crime committed. However, as the juvenile offender gets closer to the legal adult age, the more they are aware of what they did and the consequences must be taken into consideration. If you have a seventeen year old who committed murder and they willingly discussed planning it ahead of time, then yes they should receive the stiffest punishment possible and the community would probably demand that. When considering the punishment for the juvenile offender, age, crime committed, and the law regarding punishment for that crime should be taken into account. For any legal manner, there is no clear answer to why this punishment should be and why it should not, you should just consider the facts as they are
However, while I subscribe to that logic for the most part, an individual that is juvenile still knows right from wrong and should be held accountable for their actions. An offender’s age should be considered when determining sentencing. You would not sentence a five year or ten year old child to death for an event that ended the life of another and if you attempted to do so, the public outcry would be enormous. Maybe not as easily as an eye for an eye, but they still should serve a sentencing term that is categorical upon based on the crime committed. However, as the juvenile offender gets closer to the legal adult age, the more they are aware of what they did and the consequences must be taken into consideration. If you have a seventeen year old who committed murder and they willingly discussed planning it ahead of time, then yes they should receive the stiffest punishment possible and the community would probably demand that. When considering the punishment for the juvenile offender, age, crime committed, and the law regarding punishment for that crime should be taken into account. For any legal manner, there is no clear answer to why this punishment should be and why it should not, you should just consider the facts as they are