Are Juvenile's too young and underdeveloped physically and mentally to be sentenced to death for the murders they commit? Or do they really know what the thoughts are going through their head and the consequences for the actions they take regarding the thoughts they are thinking? Could it be the genes they were born with made them commit the crimes, or it was that they grew up in poverty and had no other choice but to become criminals? With all these reasons and excuses should they still be sentenced to the death penalty for crimes committed by minors under the age of 18, and in some states 21 years of age?
             Thirty-nine out of the fifty states in America authorize the death penalty, out of those thirty-eight only twenty-three allow offenders who commit murder under the age of eighteen be sentenced to the death penalty. The minimum age for the death penalty varies from state to state. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia all have a minimum age of sixteen to be sentenced to death. The states with the minimum age of seventeen are Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Texas. In Connecticut, New York and North Carolina all offenders sixteen years of age and older are tried as adults. All suspects seventeen years of age and above are tried as adults in Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. (DPIC)
             The first known execution of a juvenile was Thomas Graunger, from Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts back in 1642. A total of 365 people have been executed for juvenile crimes since 1642, 20,000 Americans have been executed since 1608. Only twenty-two of those executions have been made after the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
             In the 1990's the annual rate went to a consistent 2-3 percent of all sentences, despite the dramatic in...