Testimony on the Execution of Juvenile Offenders in Texas

On behalf of Human Rights Watch, I urge the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee to report favorably on
H.B. 2048, which would raise the minimum age for capital punishment to eighteen.
A majority of states have recognized that putting people to death for crimes they committed as children is
contrary to our evolving standards of decency. Of the thirty-eight states that retain the death penalty,
twenty-three permit its imposition on juvenile offenders.