Juvenile murderers should remain eligible to receive...

Juvenile murderers should remain eligible to receive the death penalty in South Dakota, a split legislative committee recommended.
The House State Affairs Committee voted 7-6 to reject a bill that would have banned the death penalty for those younger than 18 at the time they committed a crime.
South Dakota currently allows the death penalty for teen-agers who are at least 16 if they are tried and convicted as adults for murder or certain other serious crimes.
SB141 sought to stop the execution of those aged 16 and 17. The measure was passed earlier by the Senate.
Attorney General Larry Long urged that the bill be defeated. He told lawmakers about a number of South Dakota murders committed in recent years by killers who were aged 14-17. None of those juvenile killers were sentenced to death, and are instead serving life in prison without possibility of parole. South Dakota currently has five prisoners on death row, and all were adults when they committed murder. But juvenile killers sometimes make detailed plans and then try to avoid detection, Long said. Some juvenile killers may deserve the death penalty, he said.
''I think a jury in South Dakota ought to at least get the chance to make that decision,'' he said. Former state Attorney General Roger Tellinghuisen supports the death penalty, but said it should not apply to juveniles.
''I can't think of any circumstance where putting to death a young person who committed a crime before they were 18 would be justified,'' Tellinghuisen said.
Young people convicted of horrible murders should be put in prison for life, Tellinghuisen said. Under state law, someone serving a life sentence cannot get out unless a governor pardons them or commutes their sentence to a certain number of years, he said.
Other opponents said the death penalty should not apply to juveniles because they are not yet fully able to comprehend what they are doing, particularly when they under stress.
Twenty-two states still allow the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds, but the rest of the world has banned the execution of minors, said Dr. Mark Wellek of Phoenix, Ariz., past president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry.