Sentenced to Die; Under Suspicion
ANNOUNCER: CNN & TIME. Tonight, Sentenced to Die. It is a lethal dilemma.</s>GLEN MCGINNIS, SENTENCED TO DIE: I don't think nobody should be given the death penalty. Especially ain't nobody that don't know nothing about nothing should be given the death penalty.</s>ANNOUNCER: Boys growing into men under the specter of execution.</s>JUSTICE FOR ALL: Someone of the age of eight knows that it's wrong to kill.</s>ANNOUNCER: American justice and the debate over teens on death row. Mr. Maverick. He has a reputation for being brutally honest.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There are times in my life that I have not succeeded in living up to my expectations.</s>ANNOUNCER: And Senator John McCain knows he's still a longshot to win the Republican presidential nomination.</s>MCCAIN: I'm not unwilling to take on the issues or challenges that I believe that the chances are that I'll fail.</s>ANNOUNCER: A campaign portrait of the freewheeling candidate who's got George W. Bush looking over his shoulder. Under Suspicion. Wen Ho Lee's children remember their father as the man who taught them to play soccer. Now Lee is charged with mishandling nuclear secrets, and his children are left groping for answers.</s>DAUGHTER OF WEN HO LEE: He's not a spy, and he wasn't sloppy. He was simply doing his job.</s>ANNOUNCER: An all-American family suddenly under suspicion.</s>SON OF WEN HO LEE: You wonder how can this be happening to us, how can the justice system treat us like this.</s>ANNOUNCER: CNN & TIME, with Jeff Greenfield and Bernard Shaw.</s>BERNARD SHAW, CO-HOST: Good evening, and welcome to CNN & TIME. In 1990, Douglas Christopher Thomas killed his girlfriend's parents in Middlesex County, Virginia. On Monday, Thomas is supposed to be executed for his crimes. If he is, his will be the first of three executions planned in the United States for this month involving inmates sentenced to die for crimes they committed before the age of 18.</s>JEFF GREENFIELD, CO-HOST: Even though America stands virtually alone in the world when it comes to condemning juveniles to death, the executions of Douglas Thomas, Steve Roach, and Glen McGinnis would be a chilling rarity. Not since 1941 has the United States executed three juveniles in such a short period of time. More now from Linda Pattillo.</s>LINDA PATTILLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Glen McGinnis is scheduled to be executed in two weeks for a murder he committed when he was 17.</s>MCGINNIS: I was just a young, dumb -- doing things without thinking of them, doing things without thinking of consequences, and moving my life and, at the same time, not living it. LEO LITTLE (ph),</s>SENTENCED TO DIE: I just barely started shaving when I came to jail. I mean, my mind is still not developed. I mean, I still don't know a lot of stuff.</s>PATTILLO: Leo Little was convicted of kidnapping and murder of a San Antonio accountant. The jury deliberated only 35 minutes before sentencing him to death.</s>LITTLE: Mostly I think about the past. I mean, not much of a future left for me to think about. RANDY ARROYO (ph),</s>SENTENCED TO DIE: Well, they call me Jerry Lewis. Little Baby Jerry Lewis.</s>PATTILLO: Randy Arroyo was still in high school when he was convicted of participating in the murder of a U.S. Air Force captain during a carjacking. Arroyo was sentenced to death even though he did not pull the trigger.</s>ARROYO: I'm still learning now, you know. I'm still -- I believe I'm still a kid now because there's lots to learn in life. NAPOLEON BEASLEY (ph),</s>SENTENCED TO DIE: I was 18 when I got here, and they called me Youngster because I was the youngest guy here.</s>PATTILLO: Napoleon Beasley, a football star and president of his high school class, was sentenced to death for shooting a 63-year-old man in the head during a carjacking.</s>BEASLEY: My parents, especially, they blame themselves a lot. I can see it in their eyes. A lot of times, they look -- when they come in and visit me every week, and -- they want to blame their selves for me being here, and I try to let them know that, you know, it's not their fault, that I made the decision in my life that got me here.</s>PATTILLO: They are inmates on death row in Texas, sentenced to die for murders committed when they were 17 years old. They spend most of their days inside the six-by-10-foot cells of the state prison in Huntsville. There are more than 460 inmates here waiting to be executed. There is no distinction between juvenile and adult offenders here. They are all treated the same. The United States is the only country in the world known to have executed its juvenile offenders in the last two years. There are an estimated 75 inmates on death rows across the country who were sentenced to die for murders committed when they were 16 or 17. More than a third, 28 of them, are in Texas.</s>SHARP: The United States stands alone on a lot of issues. That doesn't make us wrong.</s>PATTILLO: Dudley Sharp is a member of Justice for All, a Texas crime victims' rights group that supports the execution of juvenile offenders. In Texas, public opinion polls overwhelmingly support the death penalty even for teenagers.</s>SHARP: Someone of the age of 8 knows that it's wrong to kill.</s>PATTILLO (on camera): What do you say to those who say that juveniles, especially given their young age, should be given a shot at rehabilitation as opposed to being executed?</s>SHARP: I say that, once you've murdered an individual, you have given away that right to be rehabilitated. The most important thing at that point becomes a just punishment for that individual, and secondarily and also equally as important is protection of society. The United States criminal-justice system overwhelmingly makes mistakes in their judgments about people that we release early or people that we try and rehabilitate.</s>PATTILLO (voice-over): Sam Jordan (ph) heads Amnesty International's campaign against the death penalty.</s>SAM JORDAN, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: We have a criminal-justice system based solely on revenge and punishment. Revenge and punishment is not concerned with maturity, immaturity, development, the need for rehabilitation, chances for reform. What we'd like to do is discuss the footage.</s>PATTILLO (voice-over): Jordan and other death penalty opponents argue that juveniles, because of their immaturity, deserve a chance at rehabilitation.</s>DEATH PENALTY OPPONENT: The first two executions in the world of juveniles...</s>JORDAN: It's ironic that in the United States we don't permit juveniles to vote, to go to war, to sign contracts. We recognize, it seems, that youth are immature and can't be held responsible for decisions made under all circumstances. Yet we do permit youth under the age of 18 to be executed.</s>PATTILLO: Only two nations in the world have refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Somalia and the United States.</s>JORDAN: "Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without the possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below 18 years of age." The entire world now holds as a matter of customary international law the prohibition against the execution of juvenile offenders.</s>UNITED NATIONS REPRESENTATIVE: We shall now take a decision on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.</s>PATTILLO: One hundred forty-four nations adopted another major human rights pact, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans the execution of juveniles. But the United States made one exception when it ratified the pact. It exempted America from the provisions barring youth executions.</s>BAILIFF: We the jury in the above-entitled case find the defendant, Michael Dominges (ph), guilty...</s>PATTILLO: Recently, lawyers for Michael Dominges, a Nevada teenager sentenced to death for a murder committed when he was 16, argued that executing him for a crime committed when he was a child would be a violation of that human rights treaty and of international law. The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices refused to hear it.</s>PRISON SPOKESMAN: Sean Sellers (ph), No. 156641, was pronounced dead at 12:17 a.m.</s>PATTILLO: Despite criticism from Amnesty and other international human rights groups, the pace of executions appears to be accelerating. Thirteen offenders convicted of committing crimes as juveniles have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Seven of them were in Texas. Three more executions are set for this month.</s>MCGINNIS: I don't think nobody should be given the death penalty. Especially ain't nobody that don't know nothing about nothing should be given the death penalty.</s>PATTILLO: Glen McGinnis was sentenced to die for the 1990 murder of Lita Ann Wilkerson (ph), a young mother of two. She was shot in the head and in the back during a robbery at the dry-cleaning store where she worked. LARRY WILKERSON (ph),</s>WIFE WAS MURDERED: I believe in an eye for an eye. Here's the victims of this.</s>PATTILLO: Her husband, Larry Wilkerson, says he will be there to watch Glen McGinnis die.</s>WILKERSON: You're old enough to know what you're doing at 17. He knew the -- the chance he was taking. He knew exactly what he was doing. People forget who the victim is here. Lita was the victim. My oldest daughter was the victim. My youngest daughter -- she's a victim. I'm the victim. Lita's parents were the victims, not Glen Charles McGinnis. He's not a victim here. I had no opinion of the death penalty prior to 19 -- August 1st, 1990. I had no opinion one way or the other on the death penalty. It didn't really involve me. I had no opinion. I couldn't have an honest opinion because I didn't know. You know, if -- if you've had somebody taken from you, then you have an opinion. I think if you've never -- if you've never had that happen to you, really you don't know what your opinion is.</s>PATTILLO: At McGinnis' trial, his lawyers asked the jury to spare his life, arguing that the teenager had been sexually abused and hit in the head with a baseball bat by his stepfather and neglected by his mother, a prostitute and drug addict. DAVID WALKER (ph),</s>PROSECUTOR: This crime was senseless and needlessly violent.</s>PATTILLO: David Walker helped prosecute McGinnis. He argued that the nature of the crime and McGinnis' three convictions for car theft as a juvenile made him a threat to society, despite his age.</s>WALKER: There are some 16-year-olds, there might even be some 15-year-olds that can exhibit such horrible behavior and such violent behavior that it might very well be appropriate to subject that person to capital punishment. I don't know that there's any way to arbitrarily draw a line that would fit every defendant.</s>MCGINNIS: I didn't know a death penalty existed when I was arrested or probably leading up to it. Never thought about it. So what is it going to deter? You're living on the streets. You're living day for day. You're trying to breathe. So the death penalty? If I came across a newspaper or a television program, it just escaped me. We had the death penalty on all the streets out there. I mean, hey, education -- I can give you an education from one side of the street, the next side of the street, 'cross town, downtown. But death penalty? Hey, you see it every day where I grew up in.</s>PATTILLO (on camera): Do you believe in an eye for an eye?</s>MCGINNIS: No. Everybody blind. No. But I believe in punishment.</s>PATTILLO: When people are young, they think they're going to live forever.</s>MCGINNIS: Well,</s>PATTILLO (voice-over): McGinnis has one final appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court. If that fails and Texas Governor George W. Bush does not grant him a last-minute reprieve, the State of Texas will execute Glen McGinnis on January 25th. (on camera): Do you think about the execution?</s>MCGINNIS: All the time. All the time.</s>PATTILLO: What do you think?</s>MCGINNIS: It's imminent, inevitable, so you can beat yourself with it over the head every day or you can live with it. I live with it.</s>PATTILLO: Will you make a final statement?</s>MCGINNIS: I let my life speak for itself.</s>GREENFIELD: Based on Governor Bush's record, Glen McGinnis shouldn't put too much hope in a last-minute reprieve. Bush has overseen the executions of more than 110 death-row inmates, and he has only commuted one sentence. When we return, a 6-year-old ignites passionate protest as patriotism, family values, and politics blend into a highly combustible mix.