Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief in this case in the Court of Common Pleas, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, arguing that a court should not consider an individual’s juvenile record when deciding whether to impose the death penalty on him or her as an adult.
Juvenile Law Center’s brief argued that using a juvenile adjudication to enhance an adult sentence violated the right to trial by jury because there was no trial by jury at the juvenile proceeding. The brief also argued that because the juvenile justice system itself is premised on the notion that adolescents are different than adults, the use of juvenile adjudications to enhance adult sentences years later fundamentally undermines the notion of a separate, protective juvenile court system and runs contrary to the United States Supreme Court’s longstanding recognition of the differences between adults and juveniles. Finally, the brief noted that it is fundamentally unfair to use juvenile adjudications—which may lack the reliability of adult court convictions where they were entered in the absence of a jury trial—to impose the death penalty.
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