State Delegate Vincent Callahan (R-34) introduced House Bill 1975 Monday, a bill that would change the age for the juvenile death penalty from 16 to 18 years old.
“There’s something fundamentally wrong with executing children,” Callahan said from his Richmond office.
The bill was presented a week after Senate Bill 1078 was introduced by Sen. Patsy Ticer (D-30), calling for the same change. Sen. Ticer was unavailable for comment at the time of this publication.
Testifying in favor of the bill were Melissa Goemann, director of the Mid-Atlantic Juvenile Defender Center at the University of Richmond and Dr. Jeffery Aaron from the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents.
“It is morally wrong” to execute offenders under the age of 18, Goemann said. “There is a strong international consensus against it. Even Pakistan and Iraq will not admit to the practice in their own countries.”
In her written testimony before the Senate last week, Goemann cited that ‘only seven states have actually executed a juvenile offended since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976,’ and that in 2002, ‘The United States was the only country in the world to execute those who committed an offense while under the age of 18.’
“We hope Virginia follows many of the states and other countries and abolish the death penalty for juvenile offenders,” she said.
Recent studies have proven, medically at least, that “kids are not the same as adults, and there’s a lot of research that shows that reason, judgment, planning, rational thought, that part of the brain doesn’t fully develop until the early 20s and is actually the last part of the brain to fully mature,” Aaron said.
“Of course there’s a challenge to that finding, that adolescents are different from each other, but there’s no way of telling by looking at an adolescent, who’s got the maturity and who doesn’t,” he said.
If the process of executing juveniles under the age of 18 is allowed to continue, Aaron believes the punishment cannot fit the crimes committed “due to lack of development.”
BOTH TICER AND CALLAHAN’S BILLS were tabled and sent to the Crimes Commission for further research.
It is possible that the bills were tabled pending an upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the case of Roper vs. Simmons, the case of a 17-year-old Missouri youth convinced of abducting and killing a woman in 1993. The Missouri Supreme Court overruled a death sentence saying the punishment could be considered cruel and unusual because of his young age.
“If the Supreme Court rules that carrying out the death penalty for those who are under 18 when committing a capital offense is unconstitutional, the current Virginia statute will be invalidated and the Crime Commission can work on a new statute,” Goemann said. “If they allow the sentencing to stand, the Crime Commission can start researching from there.”
“I’m happy with the outcome,” Callahan said. “The bill won’t be passed right away, but the Crime Commission will be studying the issue.”