Bill would ban executions of minors

Kirsten Searer

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 | 9:50 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Nevada hasn't executed a juvenile since 1949, but the state does have one man on death row for murdering two people when he was 16 years old.

Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, said it is simply wrong to execute people for crimes they committed as children. For the third time, she is backing a bill that would ban executions of people who commit crimes when they are younger than 18.

This time, she said, she hopes the bill can clear the state Senate. The idea has typically stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where chairman Sen. Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, has said he is wary of a blanket ban on sentencing juveniles to death.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee was set to hear Assembly Bill 6 this morning.

"To me, it's a scientific issue," Giunchigliani said, pointing to brain research that shows people under the age of 18 don't fully understand the consequences of their actions.

Clark County Public Defender Phil Kohn agrees that people who commit crimes at a young age don't deserve the death penalty.

Science in the last 5 to 10 years has proven that children, even at ages 16 and 17, are more susceptible to emotions and peer pressure, Kohn said.

"Minors don't think in the same ways as adults," he said. "They don't see the consequences of their actions."

Nationally, there are 72 people on death row who committed crimes when they were 16 or 17 years old, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Nevada is one of 14 states that allows executions of people for crimes committed when the defendants were as young as 16. Another five states allow people to be sent to death row for crimes committed when they were as young as 17.

The legislation would act retroactively and save Michael Domingues, who was 16 years old when he killed his neighbor and her 4-year-old son in 1993.

Kohn said he argued on behalf of Domingues before the Nevada Supreme Court. He called the crime "horrible," but said it was also "a childish act to get back at somebody."

Domingues is the only person on death row for a juvenile crime, but Kohn said he defended several children who he thought didn't understand their crimes but who were originally charged with the death penalty.

He remembers a 17-year-old whose mother was murdered and who was molested while in foster care. The boy was tangled up in a robbery and shot someone in a panic, Kohn said. Prosecutors pursued the death penalty, he said.

"He's not the kind of person we should put to death," he said.

Clark County prosecutors sought the death penalty against another 16-year-old who shot a boy who had raped his girlfriend and was bragging about it, Kohn said.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion in the next few months on another case involving a juvenile on death row, Roper v. Simmons. Attorneys argue in the Missouri case that the death penalty for children constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Richard Siegel, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he thinks there's "a good chance" the Supreme Court will outlaw the execution of minors, just as it did the execution of mentally retarded people.

And, he said, the high court likely will look at how many states outlaw the practice, so Nevada's decision could make a difference.

"It matters what the states do," he said.