Chase, Kristen.

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court found the execution of juvenile offenders to be unconstitutional, based in part on a "national consensus" against the death penalty for juveniles. The purpose of this project was to demonstrate the flaws in existing methods of measuring public opinion and to determine the correlation between the age of an offender and the sentencing recommendation received. It was the hypothesis of my project that there would not be a statistically significant correlation between the offender's age and sentencing recommendation. To test this hypothesis, I asked 156 Florida Atlantic University students. This method of analysis was considered the best way to accurately determine public sentiment towards the juvenile death penalty, after a thorough review of existing methods revealed significant flaws. My results suggest that there is no correlation between the age of an offender and sentencing recommendations.