The United States has declared it will not be bound by an international treaty it has signed and ratified outlawing the execution of persons who were under 18 years at the time of their crime. On the basis of a caveat the US attached to the treaty, the US Supreme Court this week rejected an appeal by a man who was sentenced to death for two murders committed when he was 16.
The US currently appears to be the only country in the world executing people who were minors at the time of their crimes.
Lawyers for Michael Domingues, who was convicted of the murder in Las Vegas of a woman and her son in 1993, argued for the setting aside of the death penalty on the grounds that the US had ratified the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which has a clause barring execution for a crime committed by a juvenile.
The Nevada Supreme Court ruled that, because of the US reservation, the treaty does not bar the execution of Domingues, who is now 22. The case was then brought to the US Supreme Court in Washington which allowed the Nevada ruling to stand without comment. In previous rulings, the court has barred the execution of anyone who was under 16 at the time of their crime.
The treaty was signed by President Carter in 1977, but it was President Bush who attached the reservation before sending it to the Senate for ratification in 1992. Lawyers for the Clinton administration argued in favour of the Bush reservation when the Domingues case came before the Supreme Court.
The decision of the court has been condemned by Amnesty International. Mr Sam Jordan of the human rights group said: "The court's action will undermine international respect for the United States."
In the past two years, the US has been the only country which has executed people who were juveniles at the time of their crimes. In the course of the decade, countries which have done likewise are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria and Pakistan.
The UN General Assembly is expected to examine this issue when it debates capital punishment during its current session.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has agreed to review for the first time whether electrocution violates the ban in the US Constitution on "cruel and unusual punishment". This follows appeals by two murderers who were due to die in Florida's electric chair last week.
Lawyers for the men have cited a number of botched executions in Florida where flames have shot out from the condemned when the current was switched on. In the most recent case witnesses saw blood streaming from Allen Lee Davis as he was executed last July. Photographs of his body were posted on the Internet by a Florida judge who argued that electrocution was unconstitutional, but he was overruled by his colleagues, who said that death had been instantaneous and Mr Davis had suffered a nose-bleed.
Lethal injection is the method of execution in 34 of the 38 states which have the death penalty in the US. There have also been cases of malfunctions with the lethal injection method.