Three Supreme Court Justices urged a broader death penalty ban for juvenile offenders.

They recommended that the full court consider abolishing the death penalty for killers who committed their crimes as minors.

"Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer were outvoted in the case of a Texas inmate who was scheduled to die yesterday for a killing committed when he was 17. Toronto Patterson had asked the high court to delay his execution and consider whether such executions are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. He was executed late yesterday."

"Given the apparent consensus that exists among the states and in the international community against the execution of a capital sentence imposed on a juvenile offender, I think it would be appropriate for the court to revisit the issue at the earliest opportunity," Stevens wrote in a dissent."

Here's more on Toronto Patterson and the execution of juveniles in the U.S. and other countries.