J. L. Bell, who writes the Boston 1775 blog, recently wrote a series of posts that breaks down the recent ruling by the Supreme Court on whether a life sentence for a seventeen-year-old convicted of two armed robberies–or for any juvenile offender who hasn’t committed murder–constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In his dissenting opinion on the case, Clarence Thomas contends that the Court should look to sentencing practices at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted for guidance. He claims that since capital punishment could be imposed on people as young as seven years old under British common law in the 18th century, the punishment of the juvenile in question would almost certainly have been deemed acceptable back then and therefore should be deemed acceptable now. Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito both signed on to Thomas’s dissent.

Bell then asks the obvious question: Did the British justice system of the 1700s actually execute young children?

Bell discovers that actual examples of such punishments are exceedingly rare. He finds one case in 1748 where a ten-year-old boy, William York, was accused of killing a five-year-old girl named Susan Mayhew. They both lived in the workhouse at Eyke in England. Even though York was convicted of the crime and was sentenced to execution, the judges kept ordering delays until he reached the age of eighteen or nineteen, when he received a royal pardon and was placed in the Royal Navy.

Bell finds a few cases where children were executed in America, but the details of these cases are certain to give even Justice Thomas some cause for pause.

Here are the links to the complete series in order:

1. “The Moral Commitment Embodied in the Eighth Amendment”
   
2. “Unusual and Excessive Rigour on the Part of the Magistrates”?
3. William York: ten-year-old murderer
4. The Youngest Americans to Be Executed

My brother-in-law recently created a CD-mix of songs about jails, prisons, and crime for me. I enjoyed listening to it so much that I thought I would reproduce it for Early American Crime.

1. “In The Jail House Now” – Soggy Bottom Boys (Listen at YouTube.)
2. “Jailhouse Rock” – Elvis Presley (Listen at Lala.com; Bonus video from Last.fm.)
3. “I Shot the Sheriff” – Bob Marley (Listen at Lala.com.)
4. “Folsom Prison Blues” – Johnny Cash (Listen at Lala.com.)
5. “I Fought the Law” – The Clash (Listen at Lala.com.)
6. “Hurricane” – Bob Dylan (Listen at Lala.com.)
7. “I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail (Live)” – Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band (Listen at YouTube.)
8. “Big Railroad Blues” – The Grateful Dead (Listen at Lala.com.)
9. “Jailhouse Blues” – Lightnin’ Hopkins (Listen at Blip.fm Note: the “Play” link is a little hard to find.)
10. “Sing Sing Prison Blues” – Bessie Smith (Listen at Lala.com.)
11. “Jailbreak” – AC/DC (Listen at YouTube; Bonus video from YouTube.)
12. “Halloway Jail” – The Kinks (Listen at YouTube.)

Do you have any favorite songs about jails, prisons, or crime? Share them in the Comments!

I was recently interviewed by Leonard Sipes about “Early American Crime in the Media” for D.C. Public Safety Radio, which presents audio programs on crime, criminal offenders, and the criminal justice system.

The program lasts a half hour and covers the criminal justice system in colonial America, how crime was covered in early American newspapers, and the politicization of crime in the eighteenth century.

Listen to the interview by clicking here or by going to the D.C. Public Safety Radio site.

D.C. Public Safety Radio is sponsored by The Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, a federal executive branch entity providing parole, probation and reentry services to Washington D.C.

Read my article on Anthony Lamb, who was perhaps America’s most successful transported convict, in February’s issue of The Readex Report: “‘Human Serpents sent us by our Mother Country’: The Transformation of Anthony Lamb, Transported Convict.”

J. L. Bell posted a follow-up to my recent article about the burglar William Linsey on his Boston 1775 blog: “‘This Day is to be Executed in Worcester . . .’” I highly recommend it.

John Warren has just posted an article on his New York History blog about a new online exhibit by the New York Correction History Society. The exhibit chronicles the last execution to be carried out by hanging in the state of New York.

The hanging of John Greenwall for murder and burglary took place on December 6, 1889 at the Raymond Street Jail in Brooklyn. The online exhibit notes that the hanging of Alexander Jefferson at the same jail five years earlier in 1884–when Jefferson’s neck failed to break at the moment of his execution and resulted in his slow strangulation–prompted authorities to seek a more humane way to execute its capitally convicted criminals.

After Greenwall was executed by hanging, the electric chair became the execution method of choice in New York State.

Early American Crime has appeared in the press once again, this time in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The article, “Crime and punishment: Trip to the Colonies” includes an interview with me about convict transportation, the Early American Crime website, and the release of my new e-book on Convict Transportation from Great Britain to the American Colonies, which brings together all of the blog posts from the series of the same name that appeared on this website.

Read the full article here.

Early American Crime was recently featured in the Westborough News. The article covers the completion of my year-long series on British convict transportation to colonial America and includes a short Q&A with me about the project. Read the full article here.

The MIT Press Journals has just released a podcast titled A Yankee Rebellion? The Regulators, New England, and the New Nation by Robert A. Gross, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. In the podcast, Bill Fowler, Chair of the New England Quarterly‘s Board of Directors, speaks with Prof. Gross about the events leading up to Shays’s Rebellion and how they relate to today’s circumstances.

The podcast coincides with the appearance of Prof. Gross’s article by the same name in the March 2009 issue of The New England Quarterly, which is available as a PDF.