Sex offenders as young as 12 can be ordered to register as ``sexual predators'' for the rest of their lives, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled.

The Ilinois legislature should revise this law. Juvenile offenders can be rehabilitated. As one of the dissenting judges said,"''The Legislature surely did not intend consequences so inconsistent with reason, logic and common sense."

You can read the opinion here.

The ACLU Capital Punishment Project is sponsoring a Youth Death Penalty Conference. If you know any students that may be interested in attending, please send out an email.

The DC/MD/VA Student Convention will take place on Saturday, February 22nd from 11-5 at Howard Law School in Washington, DC. The conference's purpose is to bring youth together, educate them about the death penalty, and start planning for youth action in these states and on key issues like the juvenile death penalty.

If you would like to attend, help with the conference or help mobilize students to attend (high school, college and grad school students) please contact Josh Noble at the ACLU Capital Punishment Project: dpconf2003@hotmail.com, 202-675-2319, or go here.

In the early 1990's, Georgia, like many other states, enacted harsh laws providing for juveniles to be charged as adults for a variety of crimes. The Georgia legislature will be reconsidering the law, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in an editorial, urges its repeal.

Since Senate Bill 440 became law nine years ago, the state has sentenced 566 children aged 13 to 17 to mandatory 10-year terms. Two-thirds of those children were sentenced for sex crimes. But the predicted wave of juvenile crime never materialized. The law did not make the streets safer. Instead, it forced teenagers to come of age in adult prisons, where they learned to be more violent and antisocial.

Both prosecutors and public defenders oppose the law, saying it "amounts to giving up on children in their most formative years." These juveniles only remain in a juvenile facility until they are 17. Then they are transferred to the adult state prison, where there is no educational or treatment program designed for them.

A study in Florida showed that the rate of recidivism is higher for juveniles sent to an adult prison rather than a juvenile facility. As one long-time juvenile public defender said, "Putting kids in a system where they have to be vicious to survive is insane."

Aside from the draconian terms of imprisonment, the law does not allow reduced terms for those kids who are first offenders, remorseful, or who agree to cooperate with authorities. How's this for a horror story?

Edward Boyd urged his 16-year-old son, a first-time offender, to tell the truth after he was arrested for armed robbery. Using a BB gun, the teenager and two older youths held up a Milledgeville theater worker carrying a money bag with less than $50 in it.

For admitting the crime, the boy was sentenced to remain in prison until he is 26 years old.

The elder Boyd, a college administrator, says his son, now 17, is in the adult prison at Alto with a 48-year-old and a 28-year-old on either side of him. He sometimes fears for his life.

Two legislators, Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) and Rep. Alisha Thomas (D-Austell), are trying to change the law. The editorial, in supporting repeal of the law, wisely observes,

At the end of next year, the first group of young adults who were sentenced under Georgia's harsh law will be released. Much of what they know about life they have learned from hardened criminals. Instead of protecting the public from dangerous juveniles, SB 440 may be producing hundreds more adult criminals. Lawmakers should repeal it.

We agree. The expertise of the family court and the juvenile court system serves a vital function in our society. It's time for legislators and politicians to learn that America cannot jail itself out of its juvenile crime problem.

The Pittsburgh Gazette is backing a bill pending before the legislature that would ban the death penalty for juveniles.

Many Americans will be shocked to learn that Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and the United States are the only nations in the world that permit the execution of juveniles. This isn't the kind of company a liberal democratic society should desire to be included in. We urge our state representatives and our governor to get behind the movement to put a halt to this barbarism.

In conjunction with its newly launched "No Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders" campaign, Amnesty International, USA is going to conduct a public opinion poll this month to gauge opinion on the issue of execution of juvenile offenders. The group believes support for it has waned. We certainly hope so.

A big thanks to Reverand Mr. George W. Brooks, Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House, Chicago, Illinois, who has kindly taken to forwarding us the most current new articles concerning the death penalty. You will be seeing more of them in our newsfeed to the left and undoubtedly more discussion here.

The Supreme Court today refused to accept a case that would have allowed them to reopen the issue of juvenile executions.

"The action, taken without comment, seemed to put off for now speculation that the justices would soon bar states from executing juvenile death row inmates."

From Ross over at Bloviator, a new study shows there may be a link between lead exposure and juvenile delinquency:

Researchers tested the lead bone concentrations of 194 youths aged 12 to 18 convicted in the Allegheny County Juvenile Court in Pennsylvania and 146 students in regular high schools in Pittsburgh who did not have behavioral problems.

The study found delinquent children were four times as likely to have elevated concentrations of lead in their bones. The mean concentration of lead in the convicted youths was 11.0 parts per million, compared to only 1.5 parts per million among other high schoolers. Based on their findings, researchers attribute an estimated 11 percent to 38 percent of juvenile delinquency in Allegheny County to lead exposure.

"This study suggests a substantial proportion of delinquent behavior is due to a preventable cause -- lead," says Dr. Herbert Needleman, lead author of the study and a University of Pittsburgh professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics. "Very small amounts of lead are associated with toxicity."

The study appears in today's issue of Neurotoxicity and Teratology.

Ross has more on this.

NCADP UNVEILS NATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO END JUVENILE EXECUTIONS

"Jan. 7, 2003 - The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty today launched a campaign to end juvenile executions at a time when the United States is one of only two countries actively engaged in the barbaric practice of executing people for crimes committed before they turn 18 years old.

NCADP said it will focus its campaign on state legislatures in the 22 states that still allow people who commit crimes before they turn 18 to be sentenced to death. Approximately 80 juvenile offenders are on death row, primarily in Texas and in the Deep South.

"No civilized society executes juvenile offenders," said Steven W. Hawkins, NCADP executive director. "We do not let juveniles sign contracts, serve in the military, marry, purchase alcohol or cigarettes or even vote. Yet we somehow deem them eligible for the death penalty. The double standard is appalling."

Announcement of the campaign comes one day after Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove announced he is granting a stay of execution to Ron Chris Foster, a juvenile offender. Foster's execution, which had been scheduled for 6 p.m. Central Standard Time Wednesday, has been indefinitely delayed, pending review of Foster's case before the Mississippi Supreme Court and review of another case before the U.S. Supreme Court."

Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz takes sharp issue with what he says is police hyperbole over the juvenile crime rate. In Forget the 'Youth Menace': Crime, It Turns Out, Is a Grown-Up Business, Males points out:

"Meanwhile, felony arrests of California teens plunged from 148,000 in 1980 to 106,000 in 2001, topping national declines. Yet, because crime authorities rigidly insist that adults "age out of their crime-prone years" by 30, the graying of America's criminals has gone mostly unnoticed. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention finally broke the official silence: "Juvenile superpredators are more myth than reality," it declared. "The age group with the greatest increase in violent crime arrest rates is persons in their 30s and 40s."

"The middle-aged crime scourge is devastating. Prisons across the United States, especially in California, overflow with aging addicts, burglars, embezzlers and domestic abusers. California -- which spent $1.3 billion in 2001 caging inmates older than 40 -- and the rest of the nation remain woefully unprepared to manage mushrooming numbers of older convicts whose health costs may be staggering."

"Advocates of tougher sentences and cutbacks in prison rehabilitation services failed to anticipate today's murder and violence surge, as tens of thousands ofes are released every year without drug treatment or job prospects."

"Nevertheless, crime and law enforcement authorities continue to repeat the same alarmism that teenagers, particularly dark-skinned ones, augur more crime. Yes, blaming unpopular demographic groups is routine, wins funding and shields policymakers from accountability for ineffective strategies. But crime authorities' elevation of anti-youth prejudice over science and their warping of data to fit ideological ends remain a disservice to California and the nation that can only be termed criminal."

Marc Shiner, who prosecuted 13 year old Nathanial Brazill for killing his teacher, has switched sides. He is now defending juveniles and decrying the Florida juvenile justice system.

"Shiner says he switched sides to fight what he calls Florida's flawed criminal justice system -- one that goes strictly by the book in sentencing juveniles, without regard for what drove them to crime or how they might be rehabilitated."

"How can we play God with children's lives? And why should we be in that business to put away kids forever?" he asked. "We don't know. We're just gambling. And that's a gamble I don't want to be betting on."

Good for him, we need more prosecutors like him who will speak out on obvious injustices in our system.

The New York Times agrees with us that John Lee Malvo, the 17 year-old accused sniper, should not have been questioned without his guardian present. See, Mr. Malvo, Juvenile:

"The government's disregard for Mr. Malvo's juvenile status was dramatically illustrated last week, when police interrogated him for seven hours outside the presence of his court-appointed guardian. Todd Petit, the lawyer appointed to serve as a stand-in for Mr. Malvo's parents, asked the police to stop, but they continued, and ordered Mr. Petit to leave police headquarters. It makes a mockery of the institution of guardianship for the government to appoint a guardian and then prevent him from being present for an interrogation that could lead to his ward's execution."

"....The Bush administration has already indicated it does not think the Constitution should apply in terrorism cases. Now it seems to be saying that if a crime is sufficiently notorious, time-honored legal protections for juveniles should be abandoned. But this nation is strong enough to prosecute criminals, internal and external, without giving up its principles."

Texas is about to execute another juvenile offender.

We complained about this yesterday but we're giving it a bump because it tells you just how bad Texas is and why we shouldn't be executing juvenile offenders.

From the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty press release today:

TEXAS POISED TO EXECUTE YET ANOTHER AFRICAN AMERICAN JUVENILE OFFENDER

"Aug. 26, 2002 -- Amid growing protests from both within the United States and abroad, the state of Texas is prepared to execute yet another African American juvenile offender. If the execution of Toronto Patterson proceeds as scheduled on Wednesday, Aug. 28, it will mean that the past six executions of juvenile offenders in the United States will have taken place in Texas and will have
involved African Americans...."

"Toronto's coerced confession did not even conform with physical and forensic evidence at the crime scene," Hawkins said. "Toronto's trial attorneys did not reveal to the jury the full circumstances surrounding Toronto's so-called confession. They did not offer to the jury substantial mitigating evidence concerning Toronto's background. They failed even to present biological evidence that juvenile offenders have lesser capacity for reflective judgment
and impulse control than adult offenders. This should obviously not have been a death penalty case."

NCADP Executive Director Stephen Hawkins "renewed his call for Texas Gov. Rick Perry to acknowledge the role that race and geography play in the application of the death penalty, particularly as it relates to juvenile offenders,
and to stay Toronto's execution."

Here are some statistics in the press release:

Of the 80 juvenile offenders on death row in the United States, 51, or almost two thirds, are people of color. Of the 80 inmates, just over half -- 41 -- are from Texas or Alabama.

As to the company we keep:

"Only three countries -- the United States, Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- are believed to currently execute juvenile offenders. Earlier this month, Pakistan announced it is sparing the lives of 72 juvenile offenders while in the Philippines, the Supreme Court ordered the removal of a dozen juvenile
offenders from death row, ruling that their execution would violate the law."

It is just plain wrong and contrary to human decency to execute those who committed crimes as juveniles. As Mr. Hawkins points out:

"The mind of a juvenile offender is by definition less developed than the mind of an adult. Juvenile minds do not handle social pressure, instinctual urges and other stresses the way that adult minds do. Juvenile offenders therefore cannot be held to the same degree of culpability as adults, just as mentally retarded people cannot be held to the same degree of culpability. We now ban the
execution of mentally retarded offenders. There can be little justification for applying a different standard when it comes to juveniles."

On a related matter, 160 death row inmates in Illinois are peparing to file clemency petititions by Monday.

Gov. Ryan initiated the moratorium in 2000 after after 13 Illinois death row inmates had been found to have been wrongly convicted. But he's leaving office in January. The due date for clemency petitions is Monday. Gov. Ryan also appointed a commission to study the cases. The commission issued a report recommending 85 changes to the Illinois death penalty system.

But Gov. Ryan isn't receiving praise today. Seems there isn't enough staff to review all the petitions in time to make a reasoned decision.

``I'm going to think about all these things and see how it all falls into place between now and when I leave,'' the Republican governor said.

"Bill Ryan, president of the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project, said, ``That's ludicrous.'' ``That almost makes me speechless. We're talking about people's lives,'' said Ryan, who is not related to the governor.

And neither George Ryan nor Bill Ryan is related to Jim Ryan, who is running for Governor of Illinois and who Daily Kos today said was receiving his kharmic due for prosecuting Rolando Cruz many years back, another case of wrongful conviction.