DOVER - Supporters of a bill to outlaw the executions of criminals who were juveniles at the time of their crime are gearing up to convince lawmakers that the measure deserves a vote before the legislature ends it session July 1.

Senate Bill 70, filed last year, would make Delaware the 32nd state to prohibit the death penalty for defendants who committed a capital crime before they turned 18. The United States Supreme Court has banned the death penalty for criminals who were younger than 16 when they committed their offense.

"It is most important to have a law on the books that abolishes the death penalty for juveniles," said Janet Leban, executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice.

"We do not think juveniles should face that ultimate sanction. Youth should have the opportunity to turn their lives around while serving a lengthy sentence."

Ms. Leban and other members of the Delaware Collaboration Youth (a group of child-protection advocates and organizations) formed Stop the Execution of Youth in Delaware to support SB 70. They plan to lobby lawmakers on the bill next week at Legislative Hall.

Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, D-Wilmington, the bill's sponsor, said she filed the measure because juveniles need rehabilitation. SB 70 has languished in the Senate Adult and Juvenile Corrections Committee, where chairman Sen. James T. Vaughn, D-Clayton, has not scheduled a vote on the proposal.

"We need to be helping our children, not executing them," she said.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Delaware is one of 14 states that executes juveniles as young as 16. Five states execute as young as 17, and 19 states do not execute anyone younger than 18.

Since 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized capital punishment, 22 individuals who committed crimes as juveniles have been executed, according to the DIC, the most recently in April 2003 in Texas. States have at least 73 juvenile offenders on death row.

Delaware has never executed someone who was younger than 18 when their crime was committed, but that could change.

Michael Jones, of Wilmington, is being charged in a double murder that took place when he was 17 years and 8 months of age. The trial is expected to start in the summer.

Steven P. Wood, the top prosecutor in the attorney general's office, said the death penalty should remain an option for the most horrendous cases. He said a terrorist attack would qualify, as would the Washington-area sniper shootings, in which a teenager pulled the trigger in at least some of the killings.

"The attorney general's office is opposed to SB 70 because we believe that recent events have proven one can conceive of horrific crimes where only the death penalty would be the only appropriate punishment," Mr. Wood said.

"Can we really say that someone who is 18 years and 1 month old is materially different from someone who is 17 years and 8 months old? "Isn't life more important than that?"

In Delaware, a jury recommends to a judge whether a defendant should be executed. The judge makes the final decision, but by law must give "great weight" to the jury's findings.

"Delaware's death penalty statute requires a jury and ultimately a judge consider fact and about the case before imposing a sentence," Mr. Wood said.

"If someone was a juvenile at the time of the crime, that fact would be heavily considered. To draw a bright-line prohibition against the death penalty for juveniles instills a sense that no matter how horrific or how heinous the crime, in cased should a juvenile be executed. Sadly, we can conceive of cases where that is not true."