ling an 85 year old woman and a 16 year old convicted in Texas in 1992 of raping and murdering an elderly nun ("Teen-Ager becomes" A20; Nguyen 403).
In the late 1980s, the Supreme Court decided by a five to four margin in Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 US 361 (1989), that capital punishment could be applied to teenage murderers who were sixteen years of age or older at the time a capital offense was committed. In Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 US 815 (1988), the Supreme Court decided, also by a five to four margin, that under the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, an Oklahoma statute could not be constitutionally applied to sanction the execution of a person under the age of 16.
Legal and moral arguments against imposing the death penalty on minors. In its brief in the Stanford case, Amnesty International argued that "there exists a well-developed and unequivocal legal and moral consensus prohibiting all nations
...