It is not uncommon to have a minor who commited a crime tried as an adult.
It is quite uncommon - if not impossible (I have not heard of a case, at any rate) - for a minor to have consensual sex, even if it’s with people who are only a couple of years older than the ‘victim’ (or even the same age in some cases) - and have it not be rape.
This seems to be a basic contradiction.
This isn’t a “you can die for your country and not have a beer” non sequitur, I don’t think; this is all about maturity: If a young person is mature enough and aware enough of the consequences of their actions that they can be jailed or even executed for a crime, how come someone of the same age can never be mature enough to enter into a healthy sexual relationship?
This part is untrue. Many states have Romeo and Juliet laws. I don’t know if my home state of Arkansas in particular does, but I was always told there must be at least a two year difference.
When say that a minor can’t consent to sex, we don’t mean they literally can’t say the words “I consent”. What we men is that many adults want to have sex with minors, and most adults are able to manipulate minors into giving consent. That leads to a legal and ethical nightmare of determining true consent. So to keep things simple we say that minors can’t consent. Once again, nobody believes that minors can’t consent. We all know we could have, and most of us did, consent as minors. The problem is one of determining consent versus coercion, and minors have difficulty understanding that concept themselves. So we have a situation of large numbers adults wanting a minor to do something with potentially severe consequences and adults being able to coerce minors
In contrast almost no adults want a minor to kill somebody. Moreover when there is any evidence that an adult played a major role in a murder, the minor can’t be charged as an adult (AFAIK). The minor must be the one who instigated and carried out the murder. That make sit very, very different to sex. With sexual relations the adult must be present, by definition, for a crime to occur, and so the minor cannot have given consent. With murder if the adult is present the child also cannot have given consent. A child committing murder unassisted is more akin to masturbation, a solo act. And nobody has ever suggested that a child can’t consent to masturbation.
Basically it all comes down to the scope for an adult to coerce the minor. In the case of murder that is very slim, and in cases where it can be shown to a reasonable degree that an adult *may * have coerced a child, the child can’t be tried as an adult. Of course when sex is taking place between an adult and a minor, it is pretty much the default that the adult may have coerced the minor.
You use the word “most.” I agree that most young people are not ready for sex.
However, “most” minors who commit crimes do not get tried as adults either. But on a case by case basis, some do.
The same cannot be said with a minor’s ability to consent.
Since some young criminals are charged as adults because they knew what they were doing, it is illogical to assume that all young sexually active people do not.
That’s exactly what i just said. To quote myself “nobody believes that minors can’t consent. We all know we could have, and most of us did, consent as minors. The problem is one of determining consent versus coercion…”
Or to put it in your terms, most minors can consent, and we all know it. The reason that they are legally unable to consent is because of the difficulty of establishing coercion. No such difficult exists with murder.
I think it is a basic contradiction, which ultimately derives from the basic concept of free will and its application to young humans who are developing. Most of us recognize that young humans seem unable of managing the kind of judgement and planning that older humans do. The oversimplification that people are responsible for their choices is clearly not enough. A five year old may be able to say that shooting somebody will kill them, but that ability doesn’t mean giving a loaded gun to a five year old also gives them complete responsibility for what happens. Perhaps some day we will understand how to assign responsibility reasonably to people of all ages, or perhaps we will come to regard responsibility as an impractical abstraction and treat legal questions with other criteria, but as of today we have not developed an internally consistent treatment.
I disagree. It is easier to understand why some crimes are bad than others, and have no problems with people being held fully accountable for such crimes at a younger age. For example, it is not unreasonable to assume a 16 year old should know just as well as an 18 year old that first degree murder is wrong.
Yet it’s totally reasonable to assume that a 16 year old is incapable of making an informed, intelligent decision to have sex? Therein lies the double standard. Are 16 year olds totally ignorant and naive or are they fully capable of making mature decisions for which they must be held personally liable?
First, I’d just like to remind you that many places do have 16 as the age where a teenager can consent to have sex. But apart from that, the possible negative consequences of having sex are rather more insidious than the possible negative consequences of premeditated murder. Sex may lead to an unwanted pregnancy or infection with STDs, or it may be the result of some weirdo manipulating you into giving him what he wants. In comparison, it’s pretty damn obvious that if you’re plotting to kill someone, that someone being dead is a likely result.
It’s not always that clear-cut. To reference the story cited in the Dave Chappelle bit, it’s certainly within the realm of reasonable possibility that any of the kids involved were not fully aware of the consequences nor the seriousness of the danger involved in what they were doing. Yet they were both tried as adults and given life. OTOH, if those same kids were having sex with an 18 year old, they would be completely absolved of any wrongdoing based solely on their age. You really don’t see the double standard?
Then it’s not first degree murder, is it? You should be complaining about him being found guilty of a crime he didn’t commit, not whether he was tried as an adult for that crime.
In case you’ve forgotten, by default having consensual sex isn’t a crime. Statutory rape laws don’t exist to absolve the minor of any wrongdoing because there’s no wrongdoing to absolve - they’re there to assign blame that otherwise does not exist to the other party.
That’s certainly not true in the US. Just to give one example, there is Lee Boyd Malvo, a minor at the time of his involvement in the Beltway Sniper murders, and who was unquestionably manipulated by an adult, but who was nevertheless convicted of murder.
I fail to see the point of this statement. I’m not saying minors should never be tried as adults, what I’m saying is this is an example of the double standard that exists when comparing how adults and the law views violence as opposed to sex.
This is exactly my point. 100% of the wrongdoing is placed on the “adult” as a result of the presumption that the “minor” is incapable of making a sound intelligent decision(about sex).
The law assumes across the board that all minors are ignorant and naive about sex, and any minor participating in sex with an “adult,” who is possibly only 2 or 3 years older than them, has no culpability in any “crime” that was committed, that the “adult” is always taking advantage of the poor silly minor. Yet when it’s a matter of a violent act, minors are just as liable as an “adult.”
That makes sense…but actually makes it more horrifying for me. So we’re ruining people’s reputations, maybe lives, and tearing apart loving couples because it’s too difficult to talk to young people and find out if they’re happy? shudder
So, it’s not really a double standard, because the minor isn’t ever charged with statutory rape, the older person is? Hmm… again, true, but icky.
I have to agree with the OP, there is an apparent contradiction here. I’m not sure if the answer is to do away with age of consent laws or trying minors as adults, but it’s patently ridiculous to claim that a teenager can’t be consenting, or even pursuing, a sexual relationship with an older person (which may not be the same thing as the legal term “consent”) but can consent to or pursue the illegal death of another person.
There are actually more actions minors cannot due due to their age beyond consenting for sex- enter into contracts, vote, buy alcohol, make decisions about their medical care (in general) etc. These actions all presume that minors, in general, do not have the requisite maturity to make these decisions. Being tried for a crime as an adult is an anomaly to this line of reasoning. In general, we prohibit minors from making these decisions.
Then you should pay attention to what prompted my response, because the person I was replying to was:
That’s because if the minor isn’t perceived to be incapable of making a sound intelligent decision, there is no crime! No matter what, the person having consensual sex with an adult cannot be at fault - the only question is whether the adult is at fault.