US Death Penalty Tested before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

The petitioners, James Terry Roach and Jay Pinkerton, were sentenced to death and executedin the United States for crimes which they were adjudged to have committed and which they perpetrated before their eighteenth birthdays. The petitioners alleged that the United States had violated Article I (the right to life), Article VII (special protection of children) and Article XXVI (prohibition against cruel, infamous and unusual punishment) of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man by executing persons for crimes committed before theii:eighteenth birthday. They alleged a violation of the right to life guaranteed by the American Declaration, as informed by customary international law, which prohibits the execution of persons who committed crimes under the age of eighteen. The facts in the case were not in dispute between the parties. The petition for Roach was filed on 4 December 1985. The Commission cabled the US Secretary of State and the Governor of the state of South caroline to request a stay of execution pending the Commission's examination of the case. The requests were denied and the Supreme Court denied certiorari in this case. Roach was executed on 10 January 1986. The petition for