15yo =/ “child”, by any definition
American teenagers are tried & sentenced as adults all the time. Why are you willing to grant clemency to this dangerous terrorist who clearly cannot be rehabilitated?
This boy got lucky. He deserves the death penalty. He deserves to be raped every night of his life until he dies of old age. I shed no tears for his fate.
I still think reading fuzzypickle’s posts in an Eric Cartman voice makes everything so much clearer.
Yoiu’re insulting Eric Cartman. Not easy, but you did it.
Unless you think 15 year olds should vote, drive and be allowed to join the Army you know that you are full of shit.
Regardless, he killed a member of American Forces during a combat situation and doesn’t deserve rape any more than the people who were shooting at him at the time. Simple as that.
I don’t know anything here. I don’t know if the kid was a combatant, or a victim. What I do know, for sure, is that my government and my military have been wrapping themselves in a red, white and blue banner, looking me straight in the eye, and lying through their teeth for almost fifty years now. And that is only how long I’ve known about it.
So don’t you think the proper thing to do would have had him deported to Canada for a treason trial rather than a homicide trial?
OK, that’s yet another complaint.
So we have:
[ul]
[li]Accused too young, per se, to get such a sentence.[/li][li]Accused’s crimes don’t merit such a sentence.[/li][li]Accused was a soldier and should not be criminally culpable.[/li][/ul]
Anything else?
Remember the Maine!
Meant for someone else but I’ll answer - Had he stopped at treason, maybe. Since he didn’t, no. Why would you do otherwise?
A simple question asked earlier - what do you (And others) want to have happen to him? Released for time served; never arrested to begin with; handed over to Canada immediately… what?
I’m really curious.
I think to clarify the first point (or maybe it’s a new point) - The sentence should take into account the fact that he was raised by a batshit insane family who taught him to hate from an early age, and sent him for training at a foreign terrorist camp.
It’s not like it’s very easy for a 14 year old to say “sorry mom and pop, I repudiate everything this family stands for, and will not accompany you overseas at this time.”
I don’t think anyone has said that he should be given a kiss on the forehead and a pass to Disneyworld. But a sentence should reflect more than blind hatred and a desire for revenge. (for example, see post #41)
[ul]
[li]Accused too young, per se, to get such a sentence[/li][li]The sentencing authority failed to properly consider mitigating circumstances such as the family’s influence[/li][li]Accused’s crimes don’t merit such a sentence.[/li][li]Accused was a soldier and should not be criminally culpable.[/li][/ul]
Time served, though that time alone is a travesty. 8 YEARS before a trial? Back to Canada, where hopefully he’ll get some help.
This kid is a child soldier, plain and simple. If my town had just been strafed to shit by an occupying force, my friends and family killed, and I heard the soldiers coming for me next, I’d have thrown that grenade too. And so would have the soldier that got killed.
This is hypocritical bullshit refined to such extents as only the American Government can.
This whole fucking farce is disturbingly hypocritical on so many levels it should be funny. Fuck, I don’t mind if we want to be the bad guys - but could we at least not be such pathetically petty bad guys that we have to pretend that it’s only fair when our idiots are the ones doing the shooting, and invent such fucking nonsense as “unlawful combatants” to justify ourselves.
In wartime? Spare me. If we are calling all unlawful combatants murderers, then why not just shoot them on the field? And hey, we could, right? It’s our standards of “lawful” we’re judging them by.
What this kid was doing was fighting an invasion. You don’t have to be in uniform for that to be justifiable.
Handed over to Canada 7 years ago, after it was clear that he had no actionable information to give interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. The US had no business holding a Canadian Citizen.
Tried in Canada. Sentenced appropriately for his crimes.
Under the 2003 Youth Criminal Justice Act, since he was over the age of 14 he is older than the “age of presumption”, and would likely have been tried in adult court. (before 2003, this age was 16).
If convicted of a lesser offense of manslaughter, he would have likely received 10 years. I would also hope that he would have received counseling while in prison, in order to reverse the damage that his family caused.
I would hope that upon his release in 2013, he would have been at a low risk to re-offend, and may have been relatively OK psychologically . The reputation of the US Justice system would be less tarnished. The Canadian justice system would have treated him just the same as any other young murderer.
As it stands, he’ll spend 1 year in a Canadian prison, and be out in late 2011. Less time than under my scenario. How do you think he’ll be after 8 years in Gitmo?
And by this logic we should have been letting as much of Pakistan as possible drown, then nuking the survivors. Of course he’s going to fight against aggressors!
Deporting him to Canada takes care of the treason part of his life but doesn’t address the actual combat part.
All I’m saying is the kids got a fucked up head.
You can speculate like EP that he deserves a chance at rehab and freedom but I’m a bit of a cynic about the thought that 15 years of mommy and daddy brainwashing will ever be turned around. I think he’s already wasted his life. Spending oodles of time in prison means he’s not inflicting himself on the world.
He’s not the first 15 year old casualty of war and he won’t be the last.
This appears to be a flavor of Accused was a soldier and should not be criminally culpable.
But it seems to me that international law has some reasonably clear guidelines about when someone is a combatant and thus entitled to immunity from criminal liability. And the charges against the accused call him an “unprivileged enemy belligerent.” This is the wording that was created by the Military Commissions Act of 2009, signed by President Obama. It seems clear to me that he fits this definition.
So to be clear, are you arguing that the Military Commissions Act of 2009 is flawed in some way, or that he does not fit within its reach in some way?
Or some other argument I’m still missing?
Agreed, but what we do with 15 year old casualties of war says a lot about us as a society.
And travel half way around the world for the chance to do so!