Human Rights Watch publicly released a letter to Virginia Governor James Gilmore, calling for a stay of execution for Dwayne Allen Wright.
"No one should be executed for crimes committed as a minor," said Lois Whitman, Executive Director of the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights. "The rest of the world has recognized this as a barbaric practice. The United States should too."
The letter notes that every country in the world, with the exception of the United States and Somalia, has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which specifically prohibits the execution of juvenile offenders. Since 1990, only five other countries - Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - are known to have executed juvenile offenders. The United States, however, has executed eight juvenile offenders during this time period, more than the reported total for any other nation in the world.
Human Rights Watch also noted a disturbing trend of executing juvenile offenders who may be mentally retarded. During 1998, two other juvenile offenders—Joseph John Cannon and Robert Anthony Carter—have been executed in the United States. Like Dwayne Allen Wright, both were reported to be brain damaged, and border-line mentally retarded. In both cases, the jury received little information about the defendants' mental condition before they were sentenced to death.
Wright's jury also was not informed that at age thirteen, he was diagnosed with brain damage and mental illness. Two of the jurors have publicly stated that had they received this information, they would not have voted to impose a death sentence.
"The United States has more juvenile offenders on death row than any other country in the world," said Jo Becker, Children's Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch. "This is a shameful claim to world leadership, especially considering that every juvenile offender scheduled for execution this year may have been mentally retarded."
The execution of individuals for crimes committed before age eighteen is specifically prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been ratified by the United States, and more than 125 other countries, as well as by the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
