Would you like to have to live the rest of your life according to all of the snap judgments and momentary impulses you felt when you were 12? When you were 12, ,did you ever admire somebody who turned out to be a really bad role model? At age 12, did you ever, even for a moment, feel like it would have been justified to kill someone? Should you be held, now, responsible for all the things you thought were right when you were 12, and judged accoreingly?
Um, we all do. Everything we have done, thought, felt and seen makes up who we are.
Yes, it happens to everyone at any age. very rarely leads to murder, though. Most people know better, even at age 12.
There are times I feel that way now. Never have acted on it, though. See, my feelings don’t hurt anyone other than perhaps me. Heck, I can’t even control my feelings, they just are. My actions, however, certainly may hurt others and those I can control.
No one should be judged by their thoughts, only by their actions.
I have no clue whether this specific girl should have been released from prison, I don’t have the facts, but those arguments don’t hold water.
She murdered her parents! Why are there people apologizing for her?!
I disagree. I judge people by their thoughts. That is what distinguishes the righteous from the evil. If an evil-minded person commits no crime, out of fear of punishment or lack of opportunity, I still judge him evil.
So participating in the murder of your parents and personally slitting the throat of your little brother isn’t evil?
It’s an act of evil, but not necessarily indicative of a person who is fundamentally evil in thought and intent. We live in a world where is it not very difficult to influence and persuade people to do evil things, which left to their own devices may not have wished to do or imagined doing. From the Crusades to Auschwitz to Napalm, it happens all the time.
Total nonsense. The age of accountability has traditionally been set at 7 years old. That’s when most children are fully capable of distinguishing between right and wrong.
I came across an article about this case that sums things up pretty well
12 years old is plenty old enough to understand the gravity of murder. She should have been executed.
And, with that, you lost any possible claim on the moral high ground. Not even death penalty proponents tend to want it for crimes committed by children. You want vengeance, not justice.
I don’t agree with jtur88 that she was not a danger to society. He’s going too far the other way. Someone who kills without punishment may kill again. That’s why we have punishment.
But he has a point in saying she is not a fully formed adult, and the concept of evil really doesn’t work if you don’t require agency and intent. Without it, tornadoes are evil because they kill people.
The only thing the justice system has to be concerned with is whether she will reoffend. If not, then keeping her in jail is a waste of money. There is no mystical justice fairy that you have to appease by making sure someone is punished for the right amount of time, let along sacrifice your criminals to.
We lock people up to protect ourselves and to hopefully rehabilitate. We provide consequences to those who need it, with the hope that it will cause them not to reoffend. For those who support the death penalty, the purpose is deterrence–that fear of being killed keeps you from doing it again.
But we no more kill children than we do adults who have the minds of children.
And how do you know any persons thoughts?
You are free to judge by whatever standard you set, the criminal justice system is not. If you can read minds, more power to you. The justice system can only judge based on committed or attempted actions.
Because she’s an orphan.
Regards,
Shodan
Totally incorrect. My position is based on the highest-possible moral ground in the world: the written Word of God.
God has explicitly commanded the death penalty for murder.
“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” (Genesis 9:6)
The fact that she was 12 is irrelevant; she was old enough to know what she was doing AND to coldly plan a murder. Therefore the only possible correct punishment would be execution.
Except God didn’t write that, some human beings wrote that. Sure, they said that God told them to write it. I don’t happen to believe that their claim is factually accurate. I don’t believe God told them to write that. So now where does that put us?
The other point is, even if I really did believe that God wrote that, why am I obligated to do what God says? I mean, maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong. What if I think God’s commandment is incorrect, and not the best course of action?
What makes it correct? Is it correct because God said it, or does God say it because it’s correct? In other words, is morality what it is because God decrees it so, and he could, if he so willed, change his mind and decree some other moral standard and that standard would now be correct?
Or does God take a look at us humans, figure out some rules that would be good for us, and then tell us the rules? And the rules are good, not because God says so, but because they’re good rules? Like if your mom doesn’t let your eat cookies for breakfast that’s because it’s a bad idea. It isn’t a bad idea just because mom says so, mom says it’s bad because she knows it’s bad.
So in the first case, who cares what God thinks? God’s not the boss of me. I mean, maybe he’ll punish me if I don’t obey him, but that doesn’t make his rules right or wrong, it just means that I’ll be punished if I don’t obey them.
In the second case, why appeal to God? If it’s a cool rule, then it’s a cool rule, and we puny humans should use the rule, not because God told us to, but because it’s a cool rule.
If one of those “snap judgments” was “I think I’ll stab my family”, and then you actually followed through with it, then… Yes. I’ll take that hit.
Here’s the thing. If you’re so fucked up at 12 that you stab your family to death, 10 years later you’re still probably pretty fucked up. Even with lots of sincere people trying to rehabilitate you. Odds are, if she stabs people at 12 she’s going to still be the kind of person who stabs people at 21. You can’t fix psychopaths. Or maybe you can, but if you can we have no idea how. The best we can hope for is that now she knows that if you stab people you’re going to have a long and unpleasant time locked up, so don’t do that.
Ah, most excellent. Nice old-testament bloody retribution you have there. I will use this post when some “Christian” accuses me of having no moral compass.
You simply dress up your vengeance fantasies in the lacy negligee of the bible, and then hump away.
I don’t see the words “execute” or “murder” in there. Just blood being shed. If Joe punches his pastor in the nose and causes a nosebleed, he shed some blood, so clearly the pastor should punch Joe and shed some of his blood.
Which is a really childish way to approach violence. Let’s move on to a more civilized way of life, shall we?
What we really need is some hard stats on how adolescents who commit murder turn out later on as adults. I don’t really know of any, but I gather most kids who kill their parents were abused and didn’t see any other way out. The odds of them killing anyone ever again seem quite low since they will grow up and develop reasoning skills and more options.
Whoa. Trippy.
I have read about her many times, actually. She was manipulated by her boyfriend.