Sean Sellers
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Sean Sellers (born May 18, 1969, died February 4, 1999) was the last person in the United States executed for a crime committed under the age of 17. On September 8, 1985, the then 16-year-old Sellers killed Robert Bower, a convenience store clerk in Oklahoma City. On March 5, 1986, Sellers killed his mother, Vonda Bellofatto, and his stepfather, Lee Bellofatto, while they were asleep in the bedroom of their Oklahoma City home. He was sentenced to death in 1986. After all appeals were exhausted, Sellers who had become a devout Christian while in prison, was executed by lethal injection shortly after midnight on February 4, 1999[1]. Severals explanations for the crimes have been offered by Sellers himself. He stated he was a practicing satanist at the time. Also, at the time of his trial, his defense argued he was addicted to the game "Dungeons and Dragons". Before his execution, Sellers contended he was suffering from a multiple personality disorder[2]. Sellers was the first person executed for a crime committed under the age of 17 since Leonard Shockley in 1959 and the only one since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. The 2005 Supreme Court ruling in Roper v. Simmons also made him the last person to be executed in [United States]] for a crime committed under the age of 17.[3]
