I remember this school shooting very well. I was growing up abroad but it was featured in the international edition of Newsweek. I was 11 years old at the time I was reading about it.
When I saw the headline of this thread, I thought it was going to be about a school shooting that happened today and the shooter was trying to flee the scene under hot pursuit by cops and crashed his car, or something like that.
10 years incarceration may or may not be appropriate, but it’s hardly a “free pass.”
I don’t know about you, but I place great value on the years I spent out of prison between 11 and 21.
What murderer got a free pass? This boy got 10 years. There’s no guaranty a grown up sees bars that long for murder.
Pointing out that you are redefining the widely and commonly held definition of what “Teenage” is does not constitute 'belaboring a point".
And I don’t believe your assertion that ‘justice was served’ when an innocent person lost their life for your version of justice.
Man when I was eleven I was thinking about cooking corn dogs or chicken nuggets and what cartoons to watch while I did my homework, not plotting murder, some people are very advanced for their age I guess.
Or have a 5 year old’s outlook on ‘bang bang’ games. It varies.
There’s a world of difference between a normal eleven year old and an eleven year old who goes out and commits five premeditated murders.
I have no problem with treating somebody as a juvenile if they’re arrested for something like shoplifting. But I don’t think we should treat multiple murders as an example of poor judgement that a person grows out off with a little maturity.
Why not? It seems he did grow out of it to a great extent. Enough to woo and wed, and become a father. There are much worse people walking around who never see a jail cell.
Legal question about the link in the OP: It says that because these two shooters were charged as juveniles, their records were sealed. Is this standard practice for juveniles? Obviously, anyone can Google anyone’s history, and everyone “knows” what these two individuals did, but does this mean that if an employer had run a background check on these two shooters, it wouldn’t have shown the school shooting on their background?
No, not shitting you at all.
I think the kid should have been executed for it. If he is like that at eleven, what would he be like as an adult?
Prisons are broken failures. Redemption and reintegration is possible for everyone. Criminal behavior and poor choices are a factor of cultural/environmental circumstance and biology and are not indicators in and of themselves of “bad” people. This is doubly true for undeveloped 11 year olds.
I strongly disagree. To the point that I’m amazed to see somebody say this.
Somebody who goes on a shooting spree at any point in their life is not a normal person. Somebody who does it at the age of eleven is even more abnormal. And regardless of what terrible experiences warped him, you don’t return from that kind of crazy. At best a person like that might learn to fake normality.
I won’t say there aren’t any worse people walking around out there. Because there are obviously other crazy people living among us. But this guy is out on the one in a million fringe.
I feel age should be treated as a mitigating factor.
Ahh, yes. I remember my quinceañera party when I turned eleven.
When I was eleven I used to hide in the weeds beside the road and throw rocks at cars with some of my friends. The holy grail was getting a good windshield shot. By the time I was 16 I was horrified at that thought. I don’t know what Golden was like as an adult, but apparently Little Nemo does because:
What are your psych qualifications again? Clearly you’ve studied a nontrivial number of 11 year old delinquents and mapped their behavior well into adulthood. Where can I review your research? I’m open to have my mind changed.
Look, I ain’t in here stating categorically that Golden/Grant overcame his psychotic impulsivity and was wholly reformed by the American penal system. And if he did I don’t think any news agency would dare/bother running a story on how he became a robe-wearing peacenik who had devoted his life to rescuing puppies and kittens all while having a negative carbon footprint and yaddayaddayadda. If they did, a very vocal and bloody-minded chunk of the population would quickly and eagerly demonstrate the inhumanity that persists in the human psyche even well into adulthood. I didn’t know the guy either. And I also don’t want to downplay the grief felt by people at his hands. But to say the actions of anyone at the age of eleven defines them fundamentally for the rest of their lives defies the very concept of learning, introspection, and growth. I will use myself as my cite that those are very real, and often extraordinarily transformative qualities.
Turns out he wasn’t a terrible adult.
This attitude frightens me. Eleven year olds do not know what they are doing.
Exactly. Here we have an actual bonnified case study of what happens to a child murderer who is released at age 21. Unless there is more to his past history that I haven’t seen, it seems the answer is nothing much. His main crime so far seems to have been the poor driving which the OP seemed to suggest was a good thing. For those decrying his not being tried as an adult, what advantage would there have been for keeping him locked up for the last 10 years?
Going from memory here, but I believe the 59 year old dude actually entered Golden’s lane.
I did a lot of stupid shit when I was 11 that I regret now. If you’re the same now as you were at 11, then you have a serious mental disorder, and we generally don’t execute people who are mentally ill.