Condemned Woman: Born-again Karla Faye Tucker

The death penalty is typically regarded as the last resort of justice. We expect men and women on death row to be men and women--career criminals with hardened hearts and calloused souls, past adolescence and beyond redemption, with long rap sheets and a slimy-slug trail of inflicted suffering. But that's not always the case. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that executes juvenile offenders: criminals whose alleged offenses were committed when they were under the age of 18. There are only six countries in the world that are known to have executed juvenile offenders in the '90s: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen--and the U.S. "We should be embarrassed to find ourselves in that company," says Hawkins. "Every one of those other countries is known for human-rights violations. Even China and Russia have banned the use of the death penalty against children."

NO QUARTER: Jordan, right, was the lead prosecutor and Berry his assistant at Cousin's first murder trial. They asked for the ultimate penalty and got it John Chiasson for TIME

The U.S. has executed six juvenile offenders this decade--more than any other country. A 1988 Supreme Court ruling (Thompson v. Oklahoma) is widely interpreted as prohibiting the execution of offenders who committed crimes when under the age of 16, but individual states can set higher minimum ages. Of the 38 states that allow the death penalty, 13 set the age at 18, four set it at age 17, and 21 have a minimum of 16 years of age or no minimum at all.

Some argue that children mature enough to murder are mature enough to be punished for it. "I think when my kids were 15 or 16 they knew better than to kill someone," says Miriam Shehane, president of Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL), a victims'-rights group based in Montgomery, Ala. "If someone does adult crime, they are acting as adults, and they have to take responsibility." Shehane contends that capital punishment is not only for those with long legacies of criminality but also for anyone, teens included, who commits singularly horrific crimes.

She has company. Increasingly, law-enforcement officials are looking to prosecute juvenile offenders as adults. Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California has suggested that 14-year-olds should be eligible for the death penalty. Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh says the Governor was not proposing any new legislation, merely advancing an idea. Walsh says gangs in California often use underage triggermen because the gangs know that, if the triggermen are caught, they will not be subject to capital punishment. Lowering the minimum age, he argues, would change that practice. "We have people who are literally assassins, and although they may be under the age of 18, they know what they are doing," says Walsh. "We need, as a society, to see if there is some action that can be taken. And, by God, the death penalty is a deterrent."

But in addition to the racial imbalance of the death-row population that Hawkins cites, experts say juvenile offenders on death row are often the victims of recent, horrible child abuse. The case of Robert Anthony Carter, a child of abuse who was put on death row in Texas 15 years ago for crimes he allegedly committed when he was 17 years old, is not atypical. Carter, who is black, grew up in a Houston housing project and was routinely taunted and beaten by other children because his clothes were ragged and dirty. His mother and stepfather would thrash Robert and his five siblings with wooden sticks and electric cords. At age five, he was hit in the head with a brick. At 10, one of his brothers hit him so hard on the head with a baseball bat that the bat broke. Another time, his mother smashed a dinner plate on his head. None of these injuries was ever treated. His IQ has been measured at 74, which is considered semiretarded. None of this information was presented at Carter's original trial for the robbery and murder of a gas-station clerk. The jury found him guilty in 10 minutes. His case is now before the Supreme Court.

A 1988 study by Georgetown University neurologist Dr. Jonathan Pincus and New York University psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis of 14 condemned juvenile offenders, one of whom was Carter, found that all 14 had suffered serious head injuries as children, all had serious psychiatric problems, all but two had been severely beaten or physically abused as children, and five had been sexually abused by relatives. Only two had IQ scores above 90.

Many adult offenders, of course, also had rough childhoods. But as Victor Streib, dean of Ohio Northern University's law school and an expert on condemned teens, points out, "The 30-year-old criminal has been out of the house for 10 years. He's had time to form a new life. Almost all teenage offenders are still living at home. The damage done to them emotionally and mentally is not so far removed. The abuse was last night." Counters VOCAL's Shehane: "We have to go beyond rationalizing violent, heinous crime by fluffing it off to 'Oh, he had a bad upbringing.'"

To be sure, almost every inmate, particularly the ones on death row, has a tall tale to tell, of being railroaded by overly aggressive prosecutors, of being set up by enemies or let down by friends, of crucial evidence that was supposedly lost or airtight alibis that supposedly went unheard. Cousin, for his part, has maintained his innocence since he was arrested and charged with murder more than two years ago. What makes his claim of innocence so compelling is that there is a good deal of evidence that suggests he may be telling the truth.

His case raises the question: Should teens, guilty or not, ever be put in a situation where they are forced to fight for their lives? "Knowing I'm on death row for something I didn't do is pretty hard," says Cousin. "You picture yourself being executed. You think about what your next life will be like. It's like a fantasy, something you never dreamed could happen. I feel like I'm in the middle of reality in a fantasy. What did I do to be treated like this?"