Also known as: juvenile offenders · juvenile delinquent · minor offender
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A person under the age of eighteen who commits a criminal offense. Such offenders receive categorical Eighth Amendment protections that bar the death penalty in all cases and life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide crimes.
Jonathan Jaffe, age sixteen, repeatedly contaminated food orders at a fast-food restaurant as a prank, causing hundreds of customers to become ill but no deaths. After conviction on multiple felonies, the court imposed life imprisonment without parole. The sentence violates the Eighth Amendment because Jonathan was a juvenile at the time of the non-homicide offenses.
Joy Jiang, age seventeen, fatally shot a classmate after weeks of planning documented in notes and social media posts. Prosecutors sought the death penalty upon conviction for capital murder. The Eighth Amendment forbids execution because Joy was under eighteen at the time of the offense.
Jorge Juarez, age fifteen, faced delinquency proceedings after allegedly taking property from a store. The court applied the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard to each element of the charged conduct. This standard protects the juvenile offender by ensuring the same level of certainty required in adult criminal trials.
During a 1967 adjudicatory hearing conducted pursuant to section 742 of the New York Family Court Act, a judge in New York Family Court found that the twelve-year-old appellant had entered a locker and stolen one hundred twelve dollars from a woman's pocketbook. The petition which charged appellant with delinquency alleged that his act, if done by an adult, would constitute the crime or crimes of larceny. The judge acknowledged that the proof might not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but relied on section 744(b) of the New York Family Court Act, which provides that any determination at the conclusion of an adjudicatory hearing that a juvenile did an act or acts must be based on a preponderance of the evidence. After a subsequent dispositional hearing, appellant was ordered placed in a training school for an initial period of eighteen months, subject to annual extensions of his commitment until his eighteenth birthday, six years in appellant's case. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial Department, affirmed without opinion. The New York Court of Appeals then affirmed by a four-to-three vote, expressly sustaining the constitutionality of section 744(b). The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction.
View caseJames Johnson, age seventeen, killed a coworker during a workplace dispute and received a mandatory life-without-parole sentence under state law. The court must instead consider the offender's youth and individual circumstances before imposing such a penalty.
In November 1999, fourteen-year-old Kuntrell Jackson and two other boys decided to rob a video store in Arkansas. En route, Jackson learned that one of the boys carried a sawed-off shotgun. Jackson initially stayed outside the store but later entered while the robbery was underway. When the clerk, Laurie Troup, refused to hand over money and threatened to call the police, one of Jackson's co-defendants shot and killed her. The three boys fled without taking any money. Arkansas prosecutors exercised their discretion to charge Jackson as an adult with capital felony murder and aggravated robbery. A jury convicted him of both offenses. The trial court imposed the statutorily mandated sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Jackson did not challenge the sentence on direct appeal, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the convictions. In 2003, fourteen-year-old Evan Miller and a friend, Colby Smith, spent an evening drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana with Miller's neighbor, Cole Cannon, at Cannon's trailer in Alabama. After Cannon passed out, Miller stole his wallet. Cannon awoke and grabbed Miller by the throat. Smith struck Cannon with a baseball bat, and Miller then repeatedly hit Cannon with the bat. The boys set two fires in the trailer before leaving. Cannon died from his injuries and smoke inhalation. Miller had previously been in and out of foster care, regularly used drugs and alcohol, and had attempted suicide four times. Alabama law initially required that Miller be charged as a juvenile, but the district attorney sought and obtained removal of the case to adult court. A jury convicted Miller of murder in the course of arson. The trial court imposed the statutorily mandated sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence. Following this Court's decisions in Roper v. Simmons and Graham v. Florida, Jackson filed a state habeas petition arguing that his mandatory life-without-parole sentence violated the Eighth Amendment. The circuit court dismissed the petition, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed. Miller's direct appeal was likewise unsuccessful. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in both cases.
View caseJoanna Jung, age seventeen, engaged in sexual conduct with a younger partner. The statute imposed criminal liability only on males in her position. The distinction survives equal-protection review because it addresses the risk of teenage pregnancy that applies only to female victims.
The petitioner, Michael M., was seventeen and one-half years old when, on June 3, 1978, he and two friends approached Sharon, a sixteen-and-one-half-year-old female, and her sister at a bus stop. Petitioner and Sharon had been drinking. They moved away from the others and began to kiss. After petitioner struck Sharon in the face for rebuffing his initial advances, she submitted to sexual intercourse with him. In July 1978, a complaint was filed in the Municipal Court of Sonoma County. The complaint alleged that petitioner had unlawful sexual intercourse with a female under the age of eighteen in violation of section 261.5 of the California Penal Code. Prior to trial, petitioner sought to set aside the information on the ground that the statute unlawfully discriminated on the basis of gender. The trial court denied the motion, and petitioner was convicted after a jury trial. The California Court of Appeal denied petitioner's request for relief.
View caseJeanette Jensen, age seventeen with documented severe developmental delays, set a fire that caused a death. The court barred the death penalty because her intellectual disability independently rendered her ineligible for capital punishment.
Daryl Renard Atkins and William Jones abducted Eric Nesbitt at gunpoint from a convenience store parking lot in August 1996. They robbed him of cash on his person, drove him to an ATM in his pickup truck where cameras recorded additional withdrawals, and then took him to a deserted area where they shot him eight times despite his pleas for his life. Jones and Atkins both testified during the guilt phase of Atkins’s trial in Virginia state court. Each confirmed most details of the incident but blamed the other for firing the fatal shots; the jury found Jones’s more coherent and credible testimony sufficient to convict Atkins of abduction, armed robbery, and capital murder. At the penalty phase, the defense presented forensic psychologist Dr. Christine S. H. Hammond, who had evaluated Atkins through interviews with people who knew him, a review of school and court records, and administration of a standard intelligence test yielding a full-scale IQ of 59, and who concluded that Atkins was mildly mentally retarded. The prosecution presented a psychiatrist who evaluated Atkins and concluded he was not mentally retarded but instead possessed average intelligence and suffered from antisocial personality disorder; the jury sentenced Atkins to death. The Virginia Supreme Court ordered a second sentencing hearing because the trial court had used a misleading verdict form. At resentencing the same expert testimony was presented, the jury again imposed death, and the Virginia Supreme Court affirmed, finding the record supported the jury’s determination that Atkins was not mentally retarded.
View caseYes. The Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits sentencing a juvenile offender to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole when the crime is a non-homicide offense. The rule applies regardless of the seriousness of the conduct or the degree of planning involved.
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No. The Eighth Amendment categorically bars the death penalty for any offender who was under eighteen years of age at the time of the capital crime. The prohibition is absolute and does not depend on the level of premeditation or the severity of the offense.
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Yes. The Due Process Clause requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element of the charged offense before a juvenile can be adjudicated delinquent and committed to a state institution.
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…an act which would constitute a crime if committed by an adult. Section 712 of the New York Family Court Act defines a juvenile delinquent as "a person over seven and less than sixteen years of age who does any act which, if done by an adult, would constitute a crime." During a 1967 adjudicatory hearing, conducted pursuant to…