High Court Asked to End Executions Of Minors

Lawyers for six states -- Virginia plus Alabama, Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah -- are supporting Missouri's contention that the death penalty is appropriate for some teenage killers.

A "bright-line rule categorically exempting 16- and 17-year-olds from the death penalty -- no matter how elaborate the plot, how sinister the killing, or how sophisticated the coverup -- would be arbitrary at best and downright perverse at worst," they said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in April.

In the briefs filed yesterday, 48 nations, 18 Nobel Peace Prize winners, 28 U.S. religious groups and a host of medical, legal and child advocacy groups argued against executing juvenile offenders.

"Adolescents as a group, even at the age of 16 or 17, are more impulsive than adults. They underestimate risks and overvalue short-term benefits. They are more susceptible to stress, more emotionally volatile, and less capable of controlling their emotions than adults," said a brief submitted by the American Medical Association and other medical groups.

The retired diplomats, including former ambassadors Thomas R. Pickering, Stuart E. Eizenstat and Felix G. Rohatyn, wrote that in the last four years only five countries -- China, Congo, Iran, Pakistan and the United States -- have executed juvenile offenders.

"While I was ambassador, I don't think there was any issue, including even when we were bombing Iraq and Bosnia, that elicited as much anger and demonstrations as executions in the United States," Rohatyn, who served as ambassador to France from 1997 to 2000, said in an interview.

"From the elites down to the common man, this is viewed in Europe as a very basic failing of our society," he said.

Mark Chopko, general counsel to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and author of the brief by religious groups, said all major religions teach that "the young don't have the same moral culpability" as adults.

"There is a great consensus among religious organizations that executing juveniles should offend the sense of decency in any society," he said.

Staff writer Maria Glod contributed to this report.