News & Commentary

By Jane Henegar, Executive Director, ACLU of Indiana

The youngest person ever put on death row was Paula Cooper of Gary, Ind. She was 15 when the crime was committed. At the time she was sentenced, Indiana law permitted executions for those as young as 10. Her sentence, death in the electric chair for fatally stabbing a 78 year-old woman in a burglary, attracted international attention. Even Pope John Paul II condemned the sentence and urged clemency. In 1987, the Indiana legislature passed a bill raising the minimum age for a defendant in a death penalty case from 10 to 16 years old. However, since the bill was not retroactive, Cooper's status was not affected.

Any student at Winamac Community Middle School who wanted to join the football team was allowed to play „ unless that student was a girl. So when "C.B.," a seventh grader at the school, and her Dad asked the principal and the athletic director if she could join the previously all-male football team, she was turned away.