PHR Library

March 1, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

US Supreme Court Abolishes Juvenile Death Penalty

End of Execution of Juvenile Offenders Proves Science Right

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) applauds today’s Supreme Court decision to abolish the juvenile death penalty. In a 5 to 4 decision the Supreme Court struck down the constitutionality of the death penalty for youths under eighteen at the time of the crime. Leading up to the case, Roper v. Simmons, PHR released a Health Professionals’ Call to Abolish the Juvenile Death Penalty, endorsed by hundreds of leading child and adolescent psychiatrists and psychologists, neurologists, pediatricians and behavioral experts based on a widespread scientific consensus that minors "do not yet possess the maturity and mental capacities required to justify the imposition of the ultimate adult punishment."

"We are thrilled about the decision,” said Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights. “It provides a legal grounding for what scientists have shown: that kids are different from adults. Brains of young people are underdeveloped, particularly in the areas that dictate reason, impulse control and decision-making. To impose expectations of adult-level capacities on the thinking and behavior of minors has always been unreasonable, especially when the most severe adult punishment is at hand.”

Research shows that the part of the brain that controls such behavior, and which also permits anticipation of consequences, consideration of alternatives, planning and organization of sequential behavior, does not fully mature until at least the age of eighteen. There is also significant evidence indicating that adolescents most likely to be subject to the death penalty have been subject to abuse.

A recent study conducted by world renowned psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis, published in December 2004 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, examined 18 death row inmates in Texas who were sentenced for crimes committed at the age of 17. Researchers examined psychiatric and neurological functions in addition to available medical, psychological, educational, social and familial data in order to clarify the ways in which immaturity and trauma of the brain, psychiatric illness and violent and abusive upbringings heighten the risk of impulsive and often violent behavior in youth. The study shows that all but one subject experienced serious head traumas in childhood and adolescence, all subjects had signs of prefrontal brain dysfunction, fifteen had one or more severe mental illnesses and all but one came from extremely violent families and were severely neglected and physically and sexually abused.

The Health Professionals' Call to Abolish also states that childhood abuse, neglect and mental impairment can further diminish adolescents' lesser cognitive and emotional capacities. These kinds of disturbances inhibit natural growth and development and profoundly exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities of youth.  

Related Links

Read the Supreme Court Opinion

Read the list of more than 400 endorsers of PHR's Call to Abolish the Execution of Juvenile Offenders.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.