Charged Texas Shooter Cannot Face Death Penalty
May Even Be Paroled Due to Controversial Legislation
May 20,2018
Dimitrios Pagourtzis,
17, was charged Friday as an adult with capital murder and aggravated assault on
a peace officer, but cannot face the death penalty, according to a 13-year-old
Supreme Court decision.
Moreover, SCOTUS ruled in 2012 that juveniles cannot face life in prison,
either.
In other words, the teenager accused of killing eight students and two teachers
as well as injuring 13 others could be eligible for parole around 2058, near his
57th birthday.
“The courts ruled based on the idea that those 17 and younger don’t have the
cognitive development to appreciate right from wrong,” Michael Radelet, a
University of Colorado at Boulder sociology professor who often testifies in
death-penalty cases, told USA Today.
“Cases like this that are especially violent and an enigma make some people
think they are more deserving of death,” he added, “but the ruling is about the
development of the juvenile brain.”
The 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama means that he likely cannot be held
without hope of parole, either.
Radelet argued, however, that the accused shooter, if convicted, would still
face justice even though these two most extreme forms of punishment may be off
the table.p
“It’s
wrong to say this young man can’t be held responsible for these crimes,” Radelet
said. “Forty years is a tough row to hoe, and even then a parole board might not
agree he’s not totally damaged or able to make a satisfactory transition into
the community in 2058.”
Capital punishment researcher Victor Streib said that 366 or more juveniles have
been executed in the U.S. since 1642, although no information was provided about
what percentage of those occurred before the Revolutionary War and under
British, Dutch French or Spanish colonial rule.
Texas has executed 551 convicts since 1976, roughly a third of all the
executions performed in the U.S. during that period
A total of 243 prisoners await execution in Texas today, according to Death
Penalty Information Center information cited by USA Today.
The last execution of a prisoner convicted for a crime committed while a minor
was in Oklahoma in 2003, Streib sa
The accused shooter planned his attack on his computer and in a journal before
entering Santa Fe High School in Texas, where he was a student, Friday morning
with a shotgun and a .38 revolver.
Both weapons were reportedly legally owned by the suspect’s father.
President Donald Trump
interrupted a news conference shortly after the shooting occurred to express his
condolences for the victims and their families.