The age of consent needs to be set at eleven!

[East Coast Pirate]

12. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976,

22 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18. All of the 22 executed individuals were males. Twenty-one of them were age 17 when the crime occurred; one, Sean Sellers (executed on February 4, 1999, in Oklahoma), was 16 years old when he murdered his mother, stepfather, and a store clerk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_juvenile_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States

US Supreme Court Bans Mandatory Life Without Parole for Youth

The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles under 18 violate the 8th Amendment. There are currently 28 states, and the federal government, that allow mandatory life without parole sentences for children.

At the heart of the decision is the recognition that it is fundamentally unjust to mandate a life sentence for children convicted of homicide without considering mitigating factors.

“The Court’s decision is very significant. It builds on prior Supreme Court cases acknowledging that teenagers are developmentally different from adults and that those differences matter a lot in determining what type of punishment is appropriate,” said Fiza Quraishi, staff attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, which signed an amicus brief authored by the Juvenile Law Center in support of Miller and Jackson. “Now, before a juvenile can be sentenced to life without parole, certain factors must be considered, like the individual youth’s background, life circumstances, and the nature of the crime.”

This decision is a critical step forward, though the US remains the only country in the world that allows youth to die in prison.

http://www.youthlaw.org/juvenile_justice/6/us_supreme_court_bans_mandatory_life_without_parole_for_youth/