Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Supreme Court Declares Juvenile Death Penalty Unconstitutional, 03/02/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june05/death_3-02.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Can teenagers be executed for committing serious crimes?

2. What kinds of crime would warrant a death penalty?

3. How are teenagers different from adults?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What law affecting juvenile offenders did the Supreme Court abolish on March 1?

In a move applauded by many civil rights, religious and legal organizations, the Supreme Court on Tuesday abolished the death penalty for juvenile offenders, criminals accused of committing crimes when they were under the age of 18.

2. Was it a unanimous decision?

The decision split the court, with just over half of the justices voting in favor of making the practice unconstitutional.

3. What was Justice Anthony Kennedy's argument for voting against the juvenile death penalty?

"The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who voted along with Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens in favor of the ban.

4. What was the court's stance on executing 16 to 18 year olds prior to Tuesday's decision?

By abolishing the juvenile death penalty, the justices overturned a 1989 Supreme Court decision that allowed the juvenile death penalty to remain legal for 16 to 18 year olds, saying it did not violate constitutional rules against cruel and unusual punishment.

5. Why did some civil rights groups want to see the juvenile death penalty abolished?

Since that ruling, 22 juvenile offenders have been executed, 13 of them in the state of Texas. A majority of those executed were African Americans, leading civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to question the practice's fairness.

"[W]e raise the particular concern, that conscious and unconscious racism operates to punish adolescents of color more harshly, and that is yet another reason why the death penalty should not be used in these cases," Diann Rust-Tierney, director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project, said in a statement.

6. Which states allowed the execution of people under the age of 18?

The states that currently allow executions for people under age 18 are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Texas and Virginia.

7. What will now happen to the juvenile offenders currently on death row?

This decision throws out the sentences of 72 juvenile offenders currently on death row.

8. What is the argument against imposing the death penalty on teens?

The question of whether capital punishment is a good deterrent when imposed on people who commit crimes as teenagers and whether the United States is behind the times in executing such offenders has been a critical social argument in recent years.

Because the United States is one of only three countries to maintain the practice of executing juvenile offenders -- Iran and the Democratic Republic of Congo are the others -- many people argue that the practice is cruel and archaic.

9. What is the argument for keeping the death penalty for juveniles?

On the other hand, many argue that 16 and 17 year olds are capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong and are capable of making a decision about whether to kill or not.

"Just as you have juveniles far brighter than their compatriots or more athletic than their compatriots or more anything, you also have some juveniles far more brutal than their compatriots who knowingly and willingly go out and commit brutal offenses," Robert Horan, commonwealth attorney for Fairfax County in Virginia, has said.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Are teens too young to know the difference between right and wrong and, in your opinion, should they be shielded from the death penalty if they commit murder?

2. Assume you are a judge making the decision about whether to outlaw the death penalty; what argument would you make to the family of a murder victim?

3. What are the issues of race surrounding the death penalty? Research the numbers of criminals executed. Based on the racial breakdown of those criminals, what picture does it paint about the judicial system? Is there a problem or is the system working?

Write a 500-800 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.