Cruel and Unusual Punishments Applied to Juveniles Under the American Criminal Law: An Analytical Study of Execution and Life Imprisonment Without Parole
Assistant Professor – Business Studies Public Authority for Applied Education – Kuwait
Abstract
The punishment imposed upon a juvenile, who has been found guilty or who has pleaded guilty, is the punishment stipulated by the law and applied by the court in the name of the community, in execution of a legal order, which has the force of the adjudged, over a juvenile proved to be responsible for committing a crime. The punishment is determined and carried out in accordance with the law of criminal procedure. However, the punishment as a legal consequence cannot achieve its goal set by the law unless the punishment is correctly executed. Perhaps one of the most significant goals of the criminal law is properly balancing the imposed punishment with the gravity of the crime committed by the accused and the accuser’s degree of maturity. However, the criminal law, in general, distinguishes only between the juvenile offender and the adult offender and imposes a less severe punishment over the over the juvenile offenders because they are deemed to have less fully developed mental perceptions and understating of the nature and consequences of their acts as compared to adults.
However, juveniles law in the United States, since its enactment in 1900, does not distinguish between juveniles and adults in terms of applying punishment, as cruel punishments can be applied against juveniles, such as execution and life imprisonment without parole for committing severe crimes, such as murder, robbery, rape and severe assault. Such punishments can be imposed despite the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments.” The language of this amendment caused much constitutional and legal controversy over the years between those who advocate the imposition of the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole over juveniles in response to the increase in violent crimes committed by them, and those who see that it is necessary to treat juveniles differently than adults, because applying these two punishments to juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution as they are cruel and unusual punishments.
Despite the cruelty of executing juveniles, the United States did not stop imposing this punishment on juveniles after the enactment of the Criminal Law until 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that executing juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. On the other hand, life imprisonment without parole was imposed in the United States upon juveniles found guilty of committing severe crimes, i.e. murder, robbery, rape and severe assault, until 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that imposing life imprisonment without parole on a juvenile for committing these crimes, except for murder in the first degree, violated the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The efforts of the children protection societies and the supporting media may change the opinions of the majority of the American society by persuading them that juveniles are different regarding their abilities to understand the nature of their behavior and the consequences of their actions because of their lack of mental perceptions when compared to adults. These societies and supporting media have also provided the mass media with studies and research that assert this matter periodically.