In most states the current minimum age to place someone on death row is 18 years old, while other states have the minimum age set at 16 or 17 years old. I believe, for several reasons, that the minimum age to set a person for execution should be 18 years old. At 18 years old an American citizen is legally allowed to join the military, vote, buy cigarettes and play the lottery. Basically, at 18 years old a person is considered independent. Also by the time a person is 18 years old, their parents have chiefly instilled all the morals and ethics in their children that they can. For these reasons I feel a person should not be sentenced to death unless they commit a crime when they are over ...view middle of the document...
While such age limits are set in accordance to the mental development and consideration as a person as "adult," the government should maintain their overall viewpoint of such an age as 18 years old when they set the minimum age for someone to be placed on death row. I believe that a teenager has not completely been given a full chance to develop mentally if the person is placed on death row at such a young age.Parents typically have a lot of influence on their children from the beginning of their life, until they graduate from high school. For these reason, any morals and ethics a parent might instill in their children would most likely be done so by 18 years old. If the minimum age were set at 15 years old for a death row sentence, then that person's criminal actions might have been caused by other variables. For instance, if a child grows up in a poverty stricken neighborhood, has little access to a wholesome education or is abused either sexually, physically or mentally as a child, then he or she is more likely to be involved in criminal activities when older. Waiting to sentence a person to death row until t...
