Alberto Monteiro wrote:
>I just heard in the news [apropos a 13 year old kid
>that killed a classmate: "(...) the USA executes with
>the death penalty people that commited the crime while
>under 18 years old. The Human Rights Organizations
>oppose this in the USA, the world's leader in the
>application of the death penalty"
>
>So, now the USA is killing more than China or Iraq? :-)
>
From the Amnesty International news release reprinted in full below:
"Since January 1993, Amnesty International has documented
24 executions of child offenders worldwide -- one in Democratic
Republic of Congo, one in Nigeria, one in Yemen, two in Pakistan,
three in Iran, and 16 in the United States. Pakistan and Yemen
have since legislated to abolish such use of the death penalty,
as did the world's main executing country, China, in 1997."
* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *
25 September 2002
AMR 51/151/2002
The USA continues to defy the United Nations and flout
international law in its pursuit of the death penalty against
children, Amnesty International said today, as it released two
new reports on the execution of people who were under 18 at the
time of the crime.
"Two thirds of the known executions of child offenders in
the past decade were carried out in the USA", the organization
said. "It is clear that the United States is the world's
leading perpetrator of this universally condemned human rights
violation."
In his recent speech on Iraq to the UN General Assembly,
President George Bush spoke of "broken treaties", UN resolutions
being "unilaterally subverted", and of the USA's wish for the UN
to be "effective, and respected, and successful".
"The execution of child offenders leaves treaties just as
broken, resolutions just as subverted, and respect for the UN and
international law just as undermined," Amnesty International
said.
One of the two Amnesty International reports focusses
specifically on the USA. It was prompted by the recent US Supreme
Court decision that the execution of people with mental
retardation violates the constitutional ban on "cruel and
unusual" punishment. In Atkins v Virginia, the Court concluded
that US "standards of decency" had evolved to the point that
there was a "national consensus" against such executions.
"Applying the Supreme Court's reasoning in the Atkins
case to the execution of child offenders leads to the conclusion
that such use of the death penalty is unconstitutional too,"
Amnesty International continued. In its report the organization
points out that, in some respects, the evidence of a "consensus"
against the judicial killing of child offenders is stronger than
that existing against the execution of the mentally impaired.
"The Supreme Court sees state legislation as the primary
indicator of consensus," Amnesty International pointed out. "Yet
for all but a tiny fraction of the past 25 years, the number of
states prohibiting the execution of child offenders has been
greater than in the case of people with mental retardation." The
organization's report suggests that public hysteria in the 1990s
about youth crime may explain the relative slowdown in
legislative progress on the juvenile death penalty issue.
"What is more, states have executed about twice as many
people with mental retardation as they have child offenders",
Amnesty International continued, adding that while there are
about 80 child offenders on death row, the figure in the case of
the mentally retarded was estimated to be around 200 to 300
people at the time of the Atkins decision.
"This would suggest that the death penalty against child
offenders has been the more 'unusual' of the two practices",
Amnesty International said. "It is no less cruel".
"In the Atkins case, the Supreme Court found that the
traits of people with mental retardation render the goals of
deterrence and retribution unachievable," Amnesty International
said. "Characteristics of children, such as impulsiveness, poor
judgment, and susceptibility to peer pressure or adult influence,
surely lead to the same conclusion. Indeed, scientific evidence
indicates that brain development continues into a person's 20s."
The immaturity of teenagers is widely recognized in US
laws. Under-18s cannot serve on a jury, yet can be condemned by
those considered responsible enough to sit on one. In Louisiana,
under-18s are prohibited from witnessing an execution, yet seven
people currently await execution there for crimes committed when
they were 16 or 17.
In the Atkins ruling, the Supreme Court acknowledged that
"within the world community" the execution of the mentally
retarded is "overwhelmingly disapproved". The disapproval is even
clearer in the case of child offenders. Such executions are
prohibited by several treaties and have been the subject of
numerous resolutions at the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Since January 1993, Amnesty International has documented
24 executions of child offenders worldwide -- one in Democratic
Republic of Congo, one in Nigeria, one in Yemen, two in Pakistan,
three in Iran, and 16 in the United States. Pakistan and Yemen
have since legislated to abolish such use of the death penalty,
as did the world's main executing country, China, in 1997.
The USA reserved the right to execute child offenders
when it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, even though that treaty contains a
non-derogable prohibition on such executions. The relevant
expert UN body has found the US "reservation" to be invalid, but
the US has ignored its finding. UN bodies have also affirmed
that the prohibition has become a principle of customary
international law, binding on all countries regardless of which
treaties they have or have not ratified.
"Perhaps this issue provides the starkest example of how
far the USA is from the progressive force for human rights it so
often claims to be," Amnesty International concluded. Since
1990, 191 countries have ratified the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, one of the treaties banning the use of the death
penalty against children who were under 18 years old at the time
of the crime. Only Somalia and the USA have failed to ratify.
*** Please see Amnesty International's two new reports:
Indecent and internationally illegal, the execution of child
offenders in the USA, available as the full 105-page report or an
abridged version of 29 pages, at
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/recent/amr511432002
and
Children and the death penalty: Executions worldwide since 1990,
at http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/recent/act500072002
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