man 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 16 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 younger than 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 from executing children for their
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