Eleanor Jordan
Representative
2704 Grand Ave.
Louisville, KY 40211

Currently in Kentucky we can execute a 17 year old for committing a capital offense. House Bill 311 changes that to age 18 for a youthful offender. We also changed the punishment for youthful offenders to life imprisonment without benefit of parole for 25 years.

The juvenile death penalty is both controversial and emotionally charged. It’s impossible to know the pain, the anguish, and the loss a victim’s family is faced with each and every day when a loved one has been murdered, unless it has happened to your family. I’d like to use this opportunity to go on record denouncing the Benniton Company marketing strategy by resurrecting that kind of pain and anguish in many families across this nation, and particularly two families in Louisville. However, in Kentucky our criminal justice system continues to practice the very antithesis of what we condemn the most, murder.

Ladies and Gentlemen of this Committee a 17-year-old is still a child. I could not effectively make this argument if we as legislatures and parents have not clearly set limits on the rights and privileges of our youth. We have instructed them through our legislation that they lack the maturity and sound judgment to vote at that age, to buy, possess, and drink alcohol, to buy and possess cigarettes. Children are not allowed to contract until they are eighteen. They cannot drive in this state if they have not graduated from high school or are not currently enrolled in school. They must be 18 before donating bodily organs. And, they must have our consent to marry. As parents, we set curfews, we give them advice, and we instruct them on proper behavior. We correct their English, we forbid them to listen to certain types of music, and see certain types of movies. The list goes on and on.

We guide our children through adolescence and even beyond. That is true at some point that we hold them accountable and we expect sound judgment in their decision making, and a level of maturity to match or exceed our own. But, what about the children who not only do not have the love, the guidance, and the protection that most of us provide? But, the many times those children are even victims at the hands those who are supposed to protect them. The profile of the juvenile homicide offender most often reveals these two common characteristics. They are more likely to be psychologically disturbed, because often they have been victims of horrifying child sexual and physical abuse; and/or, alcoholism, drug abuse, and psychiatric treatment and hospitalization are prevalent in the history of their parents. We are not advocating or excusing a child whom commits a capital offense. The Bill clearly addresses punishment, but with what we now know, what we have learned during the interim what we’ll talk about this very session regarding early brain research, and the proper early childhood and what it means to adulthood. It is clear in that in these kinds of cases death is not the punishment.

If any one you were to walk into a child care center today and see a room full of infants, could you tell which one might commit murder one day? Our life experiences teach us how to be adults. What kind of adults we become depends on what those life experiences are. If we continue to permit juveniles to be put to death, then we are in fact giving up on one of those infants. I am asking you to do what is in the best interest of our children, and giving up on them is not.

T. Kerby Neill, Ph.D.
Child Psychologist
3767 Winchester Road
Lexington, Kentucky 40509
(859) 231-8830

As a psychologist I have worked with children and families in the Commonwealth since 1974 and evaluated a number of youth charged with capital offenses. I served on the legislative Task Force that recommended youth be tried as adults in cases of serious or repeated felonies. The youth I personally evaluated were often wounded and immature. I know more comprehensive research tells us that youth who commit serious crimes often suffer disabilities, disadvantages and victimization which further handicaps their social judgment.

As a parent of teenagers, two fears haunt me. The first, is my memory of foolish decisions that I made or nearly made as a teen? There are few of us who cannot recall a choice they regret making at 16 or 17 that they would not have made at 20. The second, is an awareness that children are growing-up in a dramatically more stressful society than we did. Competition for things and social status can be intense. There is often little family interaction. Violence pours into our homes via the media. Advertising shapes youthful identities around appearance and possessions --not the content of their character.

As a society we withhold responsibilities until youth reach certain ages--16 to drive, 18 to enter contracts, 21 to consume liquor. Our wisdom is matched by research on child development. This research indicates that youth under 16 perform a number of thinking tasks differently than adults. At age 16 or 17 most, but not all, youth can solve many thinking tasks like adults. But, we recognize the process of balancing limited life experience with pressures and emotions in order to make good decisions --the process we call judgment--is more complex than solving research thought problems. The newly acquired thinking skills of youth are not tested under such stress or complexity. We pay a premium for the demonstrated poor judgment of youth when we insure our cars for our teenaged children. While we recognize the limitations of those under 18 in so many ways, we suspend this wisdom when a youth commits a serious offense. That is why we have states which allow the death penalty for youth, but prohibit their getting tattoos.

If we can remember poor judgments we made in our teens, we can also remember that we usually "knew better." We knew enough to be held responsible on more than a young child’s level. There are many serious consequences for youth in the adult system short of death. A youth of 17 only has about 12 years of his life within ready access of his memory. Twenty-five years without parole would constitute double of what he knows as a lifetime.

We can all experience such rage that can cause us to wish for the death of another. Such rage allows us to see people narrowly--only in terms of their offense against us. It is in such a stereotyped and detached way that criminals often see the rest of us when they offend. In this sense the revenge of the death penalty diminishes us all, the more so, the younger and more vulnerable the persons upon whom we inflict it.

One message prevalent in our society that facilitates youth violence is simply that violence solves problems. In our decisions regarding the death penalty for juveniles we have the power to say yes or no to that message.

Ralph Kelly
Commissioner
Juvenile Justice

Thank you Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you on what I think is a very important piece of proposed legislation:

When we began our 20th Century some one hundred years ago, almost every nation on earth, with the exception of Costa Rico and Venezuela, allowed the execution of convicted murderers, including those under 18. By the end of the century, the list has dramatically changed to the extent that the only regimes that allowed the death penalty for youngsters under the age of 18 was Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, 23 states in our own great country the United States of America.

As we closed the last century, we executed four men who were convicted of murder when they were under the age of 18, three were seventeen and one was sixteen. As we opened the new century in January, we’ve already executed two who committed murder when they were seventeen and one who committed murder when they were sixteen. So, I guess we could say if you are on whichever side of the coin, the nation is off to a great start.

It’s amazing that the Supreme Court and Thompson v. Oklahoma held that executions of offenders under 16 was unconstitutional. And then, almost a year later, they came back in Stanford v. Kentucky and held that it was a good standard of decency for the state to execute 16 and 17 year olds. It is equally ironic that in January of this year, the President of the United States hailed an important advance in human rights when the United States agreed with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in raising the standard for the age that a young man or woman can go to war. So, the Convention said that no person under the age of 18 should really be allowed to fight in a war. Yet the same nation, our great nation, continues to allow the execution of 16 and 17 year olds.

Statistics and data clearly prove that the juvenile death penalty is blatantly racist. Over two-thirds of the 357 juveniles executed in this nation have been African-American. And that certainly fits in with the fact that even in Kentucky we have a disproportionate number of minorities in general in the juvenile justice system, just like there is in the adult correctional system. Now, one of the things we pride ourselves on in Kentucky is having a real good juvenile justice system. We came into existence, this Department, on the heels of federal consent decree. We have worked very hard with the support and approval of the legislature and our Governor to change our juvenile justice system. We have imbued in our statutes the fact that we are a treatment and rehabilitated-oriented system. We imbued very clearly the (parent’s patree) philosophy, which came out of England for this country in terms of trying to do things in the best interest of the child.

We do some great things here in terms of youngsters under eighteen, unlike many of our sister states. All juveniles in this state go through the juvenile justice system no matter what crime they committed if they are under the age of eighteen. While most of our border states and many other states in the nation transfer juveniles as young as 13 to the adult correctional system where they are housed. We serve all types of kids in the juvenile justice system with the goal being treatment and rehabilitation. Almost all of our other statutes begin to draw a distinction between young people and adults. You can’t buy cigarettes unless you are over 18. You can’t drink until you are 21 and a host of other kinds of things. It almost seems just unusual that we look at age of adulthood in one fashion and then we look at in another fashion. There is no question that we deal with some very difficult and dangerous young people in our state. And some of our young people are very sophisticated criminals and some have committed some very horrific crimes. But, I’m not sure if it serves any useful purpose if the eleven young people now in the juvenile justice system who committed horrific crimes of murder and otherwise would be under the death penalty. I’m not even sure how we as a Department would be focusing on their rehabilitation if they were condemned individuals. How do you rehabilitate somebody, how do you treat somebody in terms of trying to help them focus on making a better life in the future if the state is going to take that life away?

I commend you ladies and gentlemen for all the things that you have done to improve the juvenile justice system in this state. I think the passage of this legislation out of the Committee would take us one step further in making Kentucky a model type juvenile justice program.

Debra Miller
Executive Director
Kentucky Youth Advocates

My name is Debra Miller and I am the Executive Director of Kentucky Youth Advocates. KYA is a child advocacy organization founded in 1975 and dedicated to creating policies and conditions that recognize children’s rights and serve their best interests.

We were very involved in the work in the late 70’s and early 80’s to revise Kentucky’s juvenile statutes. Eventually the Kentucky Unified Juvenile Code was completed and passed by the General Assembly. It was hailed nationally as model juvenile law – clearly placing Kentucky in the forefront of states committed to the treatment and rehabilitation of youth. Since that time, we have built on this commitment.

HB 311 gives the General Assembly another chance to be a leader – and do what we believe is the right thing for children – by eliminating the death penalty for juveniles.

Kentucky has executed six persons for crimes committed as juveniles and two more individuals are on death row today.

As we can see from today’s meeting, the death penalty is a visceral issue – and even more so when the talk turns to juveniles.

Yes, the crimes behind the sentences may be horrendous. These crimes certainly call into question the general concept of the innocence of youth. Yet we know that those executed for crimes committed as children share some common characteristics:

• They are likely to have mental retardation or mental illness.
• They are likely to have histories of sexual or physical abuse.
• They have been victimized by lives of poverty and poor education.
• And in a further irony of their marginalization, they are often poorly represented in trial.

We claim to a child-oriented nation – and state – but the juvenile death penalty contradicts this claim.

• Internationally, only five other nations sentence juveniles to death.
• Nationally, a minority of states allow the death penalty for juveniles.

• Children are impulsive and reckless by nature.
• Children seem to have an inherent belief in their own invincibility and immortality – despite any presentation of evidence to the contrary.

We don’t condone crime committed by juveniles but we see no useful purpose in the death penalty. Its use is one more time adults say to kids, "do as we say, not as we do." Kentucky Youth Advocates urges you to support House Bill 311.

Ernie Lewis
Public Advocate

I am personally not in favor of capital punishment but if we are going to have the death penalty in Kentucky, I encourage us to have a very carefully drawn statute. The ABA looked at the death penalty in 1997 across America and said there are four major problems: 1) the states allow the execution of the mentally retarded; 2) there are disproportionate numbers of people of color on death row; 3) the death penalty is arbitrary since we are not funding indigent defense, so people do not have a proper representation, and 4) we still allow the death penalty for children in this country.

Kentucky has gone a long way toward carefully drawing a capital statute. In 1992, you addressed the first question and eliminated the death penalty for the mentally retarded. In 1998, you addressed the problems of race and passed the Racial Justice Act. This year, the problem of indigent defense is being addressed by the Governor’s recommendation of $10 million additional funding for indigent defense. Question four remains, we still allow the death penalty for children.

I encourage the General Assembly to carefully craft a narrowly drawn statute and pass HB311.
 

Return to the Table of Contents