Yeah, I warned you… 
But yeah, I’m a big believer in forgiveness but some people truly do horrible things. I can’t condemn them too much in a way since I think we are ultimately slaves to our biology and experiences, but at the same time you almost do kinda wish some people stopped existing.
Good riddance. Wild animals should be put down.
My family has had to put down young dogs that were dangerous at an equivalent age, even though we had spent a considerable amount of money to breed & raise them. But it just was not safe for the public in general to have these untameable beasts around.
You say he’s human, not an animal?
Couldn’t tell that from his actions!
I’m rather unforgiving at this time, because 80 days ago, my 2-year-old step-granddaughter Sophia was stomped to death by her mothers latest boyfriend, a 17-year-old criminal druggie, and the county has still not decided if [he] is going to be tried as an adult.
What would this 15 year old have to do to get full privileges as an adult? Is there a way to determine whether a 15 year old deserves to sign contracts as an adult? Get a full drivers license as an adult? Go into an adult movie theatre as an adult?
Why is it that the only time we wish to treat children as adults is when we wish to punish them?
Because society has rules.
Some of the rules are so clear-cut (i.e “no murdering allowed”) that we expect teenagers to have learned the rules well, obey them completely, and pay a heavy price for violations.
Other rules are less clear-cut , more complex, and take longer to learn. So we allow teenagers to obey them partially, with limitations and supervision (ex: driving with a learner’s permit and a parent in the car; having a parent co-sign a bank account.)
In general the default should be to treat them as juveniles, I only really agree with seeing them charged as adults when they are “near” legal majority and the crime is particularly heinous.
Incidentally both of those are right there for this case. The brutal rape and murder of an 8 year old girl is among the worst of crimes that can be committed, and I’m intrinsically not interested in giving second chances or rehabilitation to people that commit those crimes. So the only mitigation is 15, which is 3 years from legal majority. It makes it a tough one, but I lean towards this particular juvenile being charged as an adult. “Brain development” is a tough one, because I’ve seen studies that say that is ongoing until 25 or so. Yet from a practicality stand point I don’t think we can treat anyone 25 and under as juveniles.
Extreme cases where a juvenile commits a frankly, horrific crime like this are so very rare because it’s rare for someone to be both a rapist and murderer of little children. I feel strongly such people are intrinsically not okay being in society, and should not be.
Due to recent SCOTUS cases he’s only eligible for life, it’s not automatic. The legal system could sentence him to life with parole, for example.
Yeah, to me this is fundamentally different than a kid who is 15 and gets in with a bad crowd or a gang and kills someone in that kind of violence, or in a robbery gone wrong. Part of what we know about brain development is impulse control is not fully formed until older, and robbery-homicides or gang homicides are very often heat of the moment things, born of making quick, bad decisions in an environment with a different set of rules than that of mainstream society.
This crime actually doesn’t show a weakness of impulse control. Instead it shows deliberate planning (malice aforethought), with immense mens rea and extreme depravity of heart, not at all like many juvenile homicides where I find it easier to map the crime to the juvenile brain.
Do you think death would be appropriate? I’m uncomfortable with capital punishment in general, and TBH giving it to a minor seems especially cruel. But then again like I said a part of me finds it hard to feel too much pity for the criminal in this case. Aside from war crimes and genocide what he did is pretty much the worst it gets.
I generally oppose the death penalty on practical grounds. Philosophically I’m okay with it as a concept, and actually have an ethical view that much as a responsible farmer must put down some of his animals from time to time government has a similar responsibility at times to some of its citizens. But I think in modern society it’s largely incompatible with the criminal justice system we’ve set up and functionally not able to be applied equitably or appropriately.
On an emotional level, if I were on a jury, I would have a hard time convicting the parents of this little girl if they sought their own vengeance.
The “responsible farmer” analogy does not work here. When a farmer puts down an animal, he does it to protect his other stock - never for punishment or revenge. I contend that most of those, who are calling for the strictest possible punishment here, *are *motivated first and foremost by revenge. It is understandable. A crime like that makes you feel sick. But still, shaping your justice system by sentiments of revenge and then rationalizing what you *want *to be true leads down a dark path.
I am not buying the logic of “If he planned it, that means he acted like an adult.” or “He can tell that murder is bad, so we may treat him as an adult.” In no other part of life would a young man be allowed to be treated as an adult by demonstrating the ability to plan. Why here? The idea of letting that man walk free again some day is not pleasant. It might still be the right thing to do.
On an emotional level I would not either. But if i were on a jury, I would try very hard to make a rational decision, not an emotional one.
Having a juvenile justice system is kind of pointless if you can take kids out of it whenever their actions pass some arbitrary boundary of wrongness. Trying the kid as an adult is not the answer; allowing juvenile offenders to be sentenced beyond the age of 18 for serious crimes is.
I would argue that is precisely why governments utilize the death penalty. Pretending that revenge has nothing to do with the criminal justice system is stupid, but government itself isn’t really vindictive. Governments promulgate criminal justice systems because they want a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This is because a chief concern of governments is societal stability.
If government leaves people to settle disputes on the streets, this leads to government not having a monopoly on the use of force, and a less stable society. It leads to duels, vendettas, family feuds, blood in the streets etc. That’s at least part of why government punishes people who wrong other people. Absolutely. But even in that calculus, government is not acting out of vengeance, it’s acting out of its chief concern domestically–internal stability and its own legitimacy.
To go back to the farmer, let’s say I have a herd of animals, one is violently and dangerous and constantly attacks the other animals. Any farmer worth his salt is going to deal with that. Is it out of “vengeance” for the other animals? Nah, the farmer doesn’t care about or even consider that its herd animals are going to get vengeance. The farmer just doesn’t want his animals fighting. And the animal causing the problems is the one that’s gotta go. Government likewise doesn’t care about “avenging” this girl. But they do care about “stopping problems”, and for humans at least part of that is the concern that there will be vengeance sought in the streets otherwise. I’d argue in the 21st century that’s less of a concern than in the past. In the 19th though, when many people still died of duels, or further back when families would essentially wage private wars against one another that was a chief and paramount concern. But just like the farmer and his herd, government doesn’t really have an emotional investment in the outcome, and thus isn’t 'acting out of vengeance.
Of course, farmers know that for most animals you can’t have multiple males together in the first place (something governments have to just accept) so they typically avoid most problems by having one male and a lot of females of a given species.
But government can’t segregate us all into fields and pastures, they have to deal with the “troublemaking” animal after it makes itself known. Prison works, sure. But so does the death penalty in many societies–as I said, as a practical matter it doesn’t in America. But in times when it didn’t make sense to house people for their natural lives in cages, and when life in general was cheap, execution was a pretty obvious and natural solution for dealing with troublemakers. It’s not about seeking vengeance for the wronged, it’s about removing defective animals from the herd. And for a highly evolved, intelligent, social animal like humans, people that are prone to raping and murdering for essentially no reason are essentially “bad stock.” I’d argue for many of the most maladjusted, incapable of living among their fellow man, who are destined only for a lifetime in a small cell, that execution is probably a more humane punishment. Humans are not meant to be caged up for 30+ years.
Call me cold, but I don’t buy into the emotional sensationalism involved with crimes that don’t personally affect me. I’m not totally immune from feeling a little bad that a little girl was raped and murdered. But honestly, it doesn’t impact me emotionally. It’s a terrible thing, but I’m not losing sleep over it. I didn’t know the girl, I have no attachment to her. I’m a genuine big picture, top down strategist. There are probably reasons unique to my education and life that cause me to very easily turn people into aggregates and remove much of the human element. But whatever most people’s motivation, mine is a big picture societal one.
I largely believe there are criminals of circumstance and upbringing, who can be set right, and there are criminals who are criminal by nature due to differences in their brain chemistry, brain physiology or etc. While not well understood, many habitual violent offenders are found to have mental defects of some kind, not what we’d call insanity or mental illness…but abnormalities in some structures of the brain have been observed in some. Most? I don’t think most are looked at post-mortem, and I think many of the things about the brain are so subtle as to not show up on any test we can run at present. But for whatever reason, there are those who simply are not capable of functioning in human society. They will be prone to violence, they will be prone to other criminality, and no form of rehabilitative work will fix them. I think a good proxy for who these people are and who they aren’t, in an imperfect world in which we cannot know for certain, is to assume those who commit the most heinous acts are in this category. I mean, Ted Bundy’s first conviction was after he had killed at least 30 people. Would you argue the system should’ve tried to rehabilitate him?
I also still believe that it is important that the legal system try to balance things between aggrieved parties and aggressor parties. No one dismisses the concept of making a drunk doctor pay for the physical disability and emotional harm he inflicts on a patient through civil court. No one says “that’s just vengeance.” No, it’s understood the court is creating an equitable result. The criminal justice system should not be seen first and foremost as a proxy for the parenting system or as a group home management system, it should be seen as a way to promulgate the sort of justice necessary when an aggressor has committed a crime and not a civil tort.
Eh, actually young men can be treated as adults in a variety of ways. For one, they can get legally emancipated. For two they can join the military at 17, used to be 16 and even younger. Legal majority isn’t even that clear cut a concept, people all say it’s 18, but you know that’s pretty new? At one point in time it was common to be married in your teens, but you couldn’t enter into contracts without parental signing off until 21. You were able to join the military before 21 since basically forever. So we’ve long felt that even for very serious things–like going and dying in war or getting married, you could make the decision to do so as a teenager, but other things you couldn’t.
Like I said, there’s good evidence youthful impulse control problems are not fully resolved by brain development until the mid-20s. Would you argue no one should be held accountable for crimes in the adult system until 25+? The criminal justice system is actually pretty good (when not constrained by stupid mandatory minimums) at dealing with cases on a case by case basis. That’s why I said the default, and overwhelming norm, should be to treat legal minors as juveniles and deal with them in the juvenile justice system we have set up. But in some cases, I think it’s warranted to treat them as adults. The criminal justice system works best without absolutes, but where juries and judges get to make decisions on individual cases.
The biggest reasons for not holding juveniles to the same standard is at a certain age of development, they do not know right from wrong, they do not know the consequences of their actions, and they lack the impulse control to avoid making bad decisions. In this case, I think at at 15 you know right from wrong, and you know the broad legal consequences of serious crimes. We live in a culture that is enmeshed with its criminal justice system. It features in an enormous percentage of our movies and television shows. So that really leaves lack of impulse control, something I do think 15 year olds have–poor ability to control impulses. But this wasn’t an impulse. This was a crime that took time to commit, resulted in luring a child to a place where you could rape, assault, and murder said child over a period of time. Further, the teen in this case is reported to have done so “to see what sort of reaction would come from people when the girl was killed.” This shows a grave social dysfunction, and shows a pre-meditation and a motivation that is at odds with human norms to such a degree that I think it very doubtful this kid can ever be a safe, productive member of society.
They already can be, I’ve not yet bothered to correct the fact most people don’t actually know how the juvenile justice system works. “Blended” sentencing powers have been the norm of the juvenile justice system for at least 20 years in most States. The old cut off of 18/21 is long gone.
That being said, a juvenile justice system actually exists to deal with juvenile delinquency. Not all criminal acts by juveniles should be categorized as such. Since literally the beginning of the juvenile system in the United States, there have been legal situations in which the courts treat some juveniles as adults and subject them to the harshest of adult punishments (including execution.) The shift that started in the late 70s and largely continues on into the modern day is the massive uptick in charging juveniles as adults. A crime like this likely would’ve been tried in adult court in many jurisdictions, at any point in American history you point to in the past 200 years. In some jurisdictions it may not have been, but most it would have been. But with the media sensationalism of the past and the stupidity about “super predators” a policy shift occurred and you started seeing pretty much “any crime that would be a felony if an adult did it” resulting in a juvenile being charged as an adult.
I remember bringing this up in the thread bashing Mark Wahlberg for his teenage crimes (he was charged as an adult and convicted of a felony at 15), his assault, while serious, would never have been treated as an adult crime in the past. But again, the default position in many jurisdictions became “treat all felonies as adult crimes”, whereas in the past “only extraordinary crimes and only for older juveniles” did you send them to adult court.
Correction: I mis-remembered this case. It didn’t touch LWOP for murder.
It’s still allowed for murder, but it can’t be mandatory.
Blended sentencing powers simply mean juveniles can be sentenced to both juvenile and adult penalties. They still can’t be sentenced beyond 18 (or 21) for offenses that are treated as delinquency, which is my point.
Yes, they should. Either the kid is fully responsible for his actions or he isn’t.
Either he is a kid or he isn’t.
You are right. One of the purposes of any criminal justice system is punishment. The punishment of misdeeds is necessary to satisfy society’s perception of justice. And since punishment is in its essence nothing other than revenge, I will not say that criminal justice does not (or should not) have an element of revenge.
If I am reading this right, you are of the opinion that rehabilitation should be attempted, when there is a reasonably good chance of success. In this we agree. Where we differ is that I am not convinced that the vileness of the crime is a good measure of that. It would probably take an expert psychologist to assess, whether an offender was mature enough to realize the wrongfulness of their conduct and was also capable of acting accordingly. That psychologist would have to look at the person, not so much at the crime. If such an expertise would come to the conclusion that the offender truly possesses the level of maturity of an adult, then I agree that a trial as an adult would be permissible.
I am aware of that. But then, there is a reason that all those restrictions have been put up. We have come to believe that young people due to their lack of maturity require special protection from others and themselves. That is why we deny them certain rights and privileges. I am arguing that that special protection should extend into criminal justice, unless it can be shown with reasonable certainty that it does not apply. As I said, I do not rule out the possibility that this can be shown - but the simple conclusion that a particularly despicable act is evidence of maturity is not good enough for me.
I believe we are not really far apart here. Judges need a certain leeway when they factor in the particulars of a given case. On the other hand there need to be hard boundaries as well or else the “tastes” of an individual judge may easily undermine the principle of equality in the justice system.
You have described yourself as immune to the emotional aspect of a criminal case. I suppose most judges and many jurors would see themselves in the same way. And yet we are often confronted with statistics that point to less than objective factors having a considerable impact on the harshness of sentences handed out by the system.
It is understandable that the public is crying out for harsh punishment after a crime such as this one. I have a feeling that the cries would be less loud, if the victim had not been a little white girl but a 30 year old black prostitute. Public emotion is not always fair, but that lack of fairness should not be allowed into the courtroom.
Youthful bad judgement is not limited to a lack of impulse control. It is not untypical for teenagers to harbor stupid ideas for a very long time, often giving them long thought and meticulous planning. I remember a student I knew, who planned to blow up the rabbit hutch of a teacher he hated with a self built mini-bomb. That ended with the bomb going up in his cellar costing him three fingers. Did he know that what he had planned was wrong? I guess so. Would you try him as an adult over this? I wouldn’t. The boy had invested a lot of time and planning in his deed, but still he obviously had failed to really think this through. I have lost sight of him since, but I do not think he ever built a bomb again.