About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


41 B.C. L. Rev. 1175 (1999-2000)
Killing Kids: The Impact of Domingues v. Nevada on the Juvenile Death Penalty as a Violation of International Law

handle is hein.journals/bclr41 and id is 1187 raw text is: K[LING KIDS: THE IMPACT OF DOMINGUES V NEVADA ON THE JUVENILE DEATH PENALTY AS A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Abstract: This Note examines the debate over the legality of the juvenile death penalty, and concludes that the use of the juvenile death penalty in the United States represents a flagrant transgression of international human rights law. Several forms of international law, including a number of multilateral human rights treaties, customary international law and jus cogens prohibit the execution of children below the age of eighteen. The existence of these contrary legal obligations demands that the United States abandon its vigilante stance and bring its practices into conformity with the greater international community. INTRODUCTION Over the last decade, the issue of juvenile violence has received significant public attention.1 Tragedies such as those that occurred in Littleton, Colorado and Little Rock, Arkansas, have generated height- ened concern over bloodshed amongst America's young. The anger and pain provoked by these highly publicized displays of juvenile vio- lence have been reflected in the words and deeds of politicians who call for tougher approaches to crime and increasingly severe criminal sanctions.2 As a result, the juvenile justice system, founded on the idea that childhood is a distinct stage of life, has slowly been dismantled.3 The century-old notion of children and adolescents as less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation has given way to a harsher real- ity where child criminals are frequently indistinguishable from their I See Victor Streib, TheJuvenile Death Penalty Today: Death Sentences and Executions forfit- venile Crimes, January 1973-June 2000 (last modified June 2000) <http://www.aw.onu.edu /faculty/streib/uvdeat.litml>. 2 See Richard Dieter, International Perspectives on the Death Penalty: A Costly Isolation for the U.S. (last modified Oct. 1999) <http://wNv.deathpenaltyinfo.org/international-report. html> (noting numerous calls by politicians to lower age of death eligibility, even to as low as eleven); NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY, The U.S. leads the world in hilling hids (visited Apr. 15, 2000) <http://ivw.ncadp.org> (noting that in 1996 Missis- sippi sought the death penalty forjuveniles as young as thirteen). 3 Margaret Talbot, Whqat's Become of the Juvenile Delinquent, N.Y. TIMES MAG., Sept. 10, 2000, at 41. 1175