The St. Louis Post Dispatch has a long analysis of the Missouri Supreme Court's decision this week throwing out a juvenile offender death sentence.

The text of the opinion in the case is here.

If the decision stands, prosecutors in Missouri will no longer be able to seek the death penalty against an offender who was under 18 at the time of the crime.

Here are the current statistics on executing juvenile offenders, from the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty ( NCADP):

Approximately 80 juvenile offenders are on death rows in the United States. Six of the past seven executed juvenile offenders have been from Texas and have been African American. Scott Hain, a white juvenile offender, was executed earlier this year by the state of Oklahoma.

Twenty-eight states now ban the execution of juvenile offenders – 16 states that permit the death penalty and 12 states that ban all executions. Hawkins argues that juvenile offender executions must be banned, just as the executions of people with mental retardation have been.

We need to get the remaining twenty-two states on board.