A recently published study by Northeastern criminal justice professors William J. Bowers and Michael E. Antonio, in conjunction with University of Delaware professors Valerie P. Hans and Benjamin D. Fleury-Steiner, finds jurors very reluctant to give the death penalty to juvenile defendants because of their immaturity and dysfunctional family backgrounds.

“ In interviewing almost 1,200 jurors, we’ve found that jurors across the nation would nearly always sentence a juvenile to life,” said Bowers. “Jurors need to look at juveniles as immature and incapable of committing the crimes for which they are on trial. As such, the likelihood of a death sentence drops off drastically when jurors know the defendant was under the age of 18 at the time of his crime.”

On Wednesday, Oct. 13, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons. Christopher Simmons was 17 at the time of his crime, but a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. Earlier this year, the Missouri Supreme Court set aside his death sentence on the grounds that execution of persons under 18 years of age at the time of their crimes violates the U.S. Constitution.

The decision-making of capital jurors is a key way to measure community conscience, according to Prof. Valerie Hans, and the new study from the Capital Jury Project examines the decision-making of 48 jurors from 12 capital cases with defendants 17 or younger at the time of their crimes, comparing their views with more than a thousand jurors who decided capital cases with older defendants. The extensive juror interviews reveal that jurors view juvenile defendants distinctively. Jurors in juvenile cases see a defendant’s dysfunctional family background and upbringing as responsible in part for his or her behavior. They see the defendant as less than a fully mature and responsible member of society. Jurors emphasize the juvenile defendant’s diminished or partial responsibility for the crime. All these factors lead jurors to decide on life rather than death for the vast majority of juvenile capital defendants.

The findings are based on data from the Capital Jury Project, a study of the decision making of capital jurors conducted by university-based researchers from 14 states with the support of the National Science Foundation. The project has interviewed 1,198 jurors from 353 capital trials in 14 states.

—A summary of the principal research findings can be found in an article titled “Capital Jurors as the Litmus Test of Community Conscience for the Juvenile Death Penalty” in the May-June 2004 issue of the journal Judicature. —A full report of the research findings can be found in an article titled “Too Young for the Death Penalty: An Empirical Examination of Community Conscience and the Juvenile Death Penalty from the Perspective of Capital Jurors” in the June 2004 issue of the Boston University Law Review. (Northeastern Univ. Press Release, Oct. 6, 2004). See also DPIC’s Roper v. Simmons page.