Pre-Furman Since 1642, in the
Thirteen Colonies, the United States under the
Articles of Confederation, and the United States under the
Constitution, an estimated 364
juveniles have been put to death by the individual
states (colonies, before 1776) and the
federal government. The first confirmed juvenile to be executed in the United States was
Thomas Granger, executed for
buggery involving several animals, including "a mare, a cow, two goats, divers sheep, two calves, and a turkey." The execution took place on September 8, 1642, when Granger was 16 or 17 years old. Prior to the execution, the animals involved in Granger's case were slaughtered in front of him. The youngest person to have been executed in the 20th century was likely Joe Persons, a black boy executed by
hanging in
Georgia on September 24, 1915, for raping an 8-year-old white girl on June 14, 1915. On the gallows, Persons admitted his guilt to the nearly 50 witnesses present. His age has not been confirmed. He was variously reported to have been 12, 13, 14, 15, or "not older than 14" at the time of his execution. However, he was reportedly 13 at the time of the crime. He weighed only 65 pounds. The youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century who had a confirmed birth date (born October 21, 1929), was
George Stinney, a 14-year-old black boy who was
electrocuted in South Carolina on June 16, 1944, for the murders of two white girls (ages 7 and 11). In 2014, Stinney's conviction was posthumously vacated since he had not received a fair trial, albeit the judge who made this ruling stated that Stinney "may well have committed this crime." The verdict of this case was posthumously overturned in 2014. The third youngest was Irving Hanchett (born July 3, 1895), a 14-year old white boy who was executed by hanging in
Florida on May 6, 1910, for the murder of a 13-year-old white girl, whom he stabbed 63 times after she spurned his advances.
James Arcene, a
Native American, was 10 years old when he was involved in a robbery and murder in
Arkansas. However, Arcene was not recaptured until 1884. He was 23 years old when he and a codefendant, who was an adult at the time of the murder, were executed by hanging on June 18, 1885. The last person to be executed for a crime committed at the age of 14 was 15-year-old James Lewis Jr., who was executed for murder in
Mississippi on July 23, 1947. The last person to be executed for a crime committed at the age of 15 was 18-year-old Irvin Mattio, who was executed for murder in
Louisiana on January 9, 1948. Going forward, all executions of juvenile offenders were of those who were at least 16 years old at the time of their crimes. The last execution of a juvenile was 17-year-old
Leonard Shockley, who was executed for murder in
Maryland on April 10, 1959. Shockley was also the last person to be executed for a crime committed at the age of 16 in the pre-Furman era. Nobody has been under the age of 19 at the time of execution since 1964, when 19-year-old James Andrew Echols was executed in Texas for participating the
gang rape of a woman when he was 17. Echols was the last juvenile offender to be executed in the United States prior to
Furman v. Georgia. The peak decade for juvenile executions was the 1940s, when approximately 58 juvenile offenders were executed in the United States. Additionally, on June 1, 1945, the
United States Army executed two German youths, 16-year-old Heinz Petry and 17-year-old Josef Schöner, for espionage committed against American forces during the final stages of
World War II. The two boys were part of the
Werwolf, a Nazi plan for continued resistance after the occupation of Germany. Although the sentences normally would've been commuted to prison terms, the sentences were upheld in order to compel Nazi fanatics into ceasing all resistance.
Post-Furman Since the
reinstatement of the capital punishment in 1976 when the Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the
Eighth Amendment's prohibition against
cruel and unusual punishment, 22 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18. All of the 22 executed individuals were males, and all were in states located in the South. Twenty-one of them were age 17 when the crime occurred; one,
Sean Sellers, was 16 years old when he murdered his mother, stepfather, and a store clerk. Another, Jay Kelly Pinkerton, had received another death sentence for a separate murder committed at age 18 and would not have been spared execution under
Roper. Due to the process of
appeals since 1976, all 22 juvenile offenders were adults when they were executed. The youngest at the time of execution was Steve Edward Roach, who was 23. The oldest at the time of execution was Joseph John Cannon, who was 38. Jay Kelly Pinkerton was executed solely for the murder he committed at age 17 since he exhausted his appeals in that case first. In
Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988), the Supreme Court first held unconstitutional imposition of the death penalty for crime committed aged 15 or younger. But in the 1989 case
Stanford v. Kentucky, it upheld capital punishment for crimes committed aged 16 or 17.
Justice Scalia's plurality part of his opinion famously criticized
Justice Brennan's dissent by accusing it of "replac[ing] judges of the law with a committee of
philosopher-kings".
Justice O'Connor was the key vote in both cases, being the lone justice to concur in the two. Sixteen years later,
Roper v. Simmons overruled
Stanford.
Justice Kennedy, who concurred with Scalia's opinion in
Stanford, instead wrote the opinion of the court in
Roper and became the key vote. Justice O'Connor dissented. Before 2005, of the 38 U.S. states that allowed capital punishment: • 19 states and the federal government had set a minimum age of 18, • 5 states had set a minimum age of 17, and • 14 states had explicitly set a minimum age of 16, or were subject to the Supreme Court's imposition of that minimum. At the time of the
Roper v. Simmons decision, there were 71 juvenile offenders were on death row: 13 in Alabama; four in Arizona; three in Florida; two in Georgia; four in Louisiana; five in Mississippi; one in Nevada; four in North Carolina; two in Pennsylvania; three in South Carolina; 29 in Texas; and one in Virginia. A 72nd juvenile offender, Laquan T. Robinson in
Delaware, had been condemned by a jury, but had his sentence hearing delayed to await the outcome of the ruling. The decision also resulted in a judge reducing the sentence of Robinson's adult accomplice, Darrell Page, to life imprisonment on the grounds that his sentence should not be harsher than Robinson's sentence. A 74th juvenile offender, serial killer
Harvey Miguel Robinson, remains on death row for another murder he committed after turning 18. Four other juvenile offenders had been awaiting new trials or resentencing hearings that were delayed to await the ruling: William Arthur Kelly and Robert Lewis Conyers in South Carolina and James Davolt and Christopher Huerstel in Arizona. Few juveniles have ever been executed for their crimes. Even when juveniles were sentenced to death, few of them were executed. In the United States, youths under the age of 18 were executed at a rate of 20–27 per decade, or about 1.6–2.3% of all executions from 1880s to the 1920s. == List of juveniles executed in the United States since 1976 ==