The kid should be executed for this.
The humane method of execution is infinitely kinder than the slow death he gave his victim.
Agreed. Maybe there is a chance for redemption, so that when 25-30 years from now, when the debt to soceity is paid (and there is a debt to be paid that cannot be satisfied in 4 years time, and it would be a true miscarriage of justice if a 14 y.o. thrill-killer was released at 18), you might have a 40-45 year old capable of becoming a productive citizen.
IMO, it’s a waste of resources. There are many teetering on the edge that a 14 y.o. thrill-killer has already gone far over and probably never even saw on his way over. Help them first.
Are the two related? If not, why are they hanging out? I’ve never known someone around 18 to want to associate with anyone that much younger that wasn’t a relative, like a cousin.
Bosda: And BTW–isn’t it essential to demonstrate that you cannot murder our poorest & most vulnerable citizens & get away with it?
You know–the Homeless?
Wouldn’t a slap on the wrist encourage copycat killers?
Too late. Violence against the homeless, sometimes called “bum bashing” or “troll-busting”, is already a form of urban sport, and there have been many incidents where minors or adults assault homeless people. Violence against the homeless has been rising for a while. In 1999, a New York Times article reported,
The reality is, you can generally attack and even murder our poorest and most vulnerable citizens and get away with it. I don’t in any way excuse these kids for the horrific crime that they committed, but abusing and assaulting homeless people just “for fun” and “for something to do” is quite a bit more common than you might think. It’s frequently seen as a joke or as something “they’ve got coming to them” for being “bums”, and often tacitly or facetiously condoned in our society. Bernice Powell Jackson noted in 2003:
As many people’s economic situations become more precarious, and housing and health care for the non-affluent, particularly the mentally ill, become less accessible, more people become homeless. Resentful communities object to having them “cluttering up the streets” and “bumming around”, and they become targets of public abuse and humiliation (witness the recent trend in “bum videos” where homeless people are tormented and mocked on camera). Treating them as punching bags is the natural next step.
Violence against the homeless is indeed a serious problem, but charging one adolescent as an adult isn’t really going to accomplish anything in combating it. What we really need is a general shift in municipal policy towards the homeless, including better access to shelter and medical care. If we foster the attitude that homeless people are basically nothing more than a nuisance, a menace, and disposable, we can’t be surprised when packs of aggressive kids looking for kicks decide it would be fun to dispose of them.
That’s a loaded question.
Here’s one I’ll answer:
“Do you think that someone who’s been diagnosed as a sociopath can learn how to appropriately function in society in four years time?”
Yes, sometimes.
And another:
“Do you think that a child, who’s brain is still developing and who has exhibitted antisocial traits is capable of changing for the better?”
Yes, sometimes.
Is it just me or is the “National Coalition Against the Homeless” an oddly named group?
I’m sorry. I didn’t make myself clear-- I was referring to kids who kill, not both offenders in this story.
And how would this help matters? It’s certainly not a deterrent, and it puts an unecessary financial burden on the court system. The only thing that it does is provide another grieving family.
I’m against the death penalty, but particularly opposed to it when the condemned is a child. Christ Jesus, that’s barbaric. Yes, what he did was heinous, but does that give us the excuse to do something that’s almost equally distasteful?
People are appalled that he killed a man just for fun . . . . why aren’t they appalled at the idea of killing one for revenge?
I don’t see how this possibly makes it any better. That we don’t quite sink to his level?
And here is where I quickly break ranks with my liberal brethren.
You can continue to hug the Earth and sing kumbaya thinking that a child who committed such a heinous act can be rehabilitated and will spend the rest of his life atoning for his crime.
It could happen. Sure, the world is more likely to see the President giving me a lapdance, but it could happen.
It isn’t the deterrent factor that is required. Cleaning the gene pool of this vicious anomaly and making sure he has NO CHANCE to create a further generation that could follow in his footsteps.
Humanely executing this sociopathic kid isn’t going to any level of what he has done. If tried and convicted and then sentenced to death, this kid will have due process and many appeals before he could be executed(which it has been made clear in previous posts that he can’t be in that state).
That he would be a lifetime drain on the prison system and taxpayer dollars is repulsive. That he has even the slightest shard of a chance to see freedom via parole is obscene.
Not at all.
Everything I’ve ever heard, and all the 'net cites I looked at in the last 24 hours have said that sociopathy isn’t, in general, something that can just be cured. As such, I think it’s a very valid question. If the boy is a sociopath, can he be ‘taught’ morality in four years?
Do you have a cite for this?
Because, from what I’ve read, if he’s a sociopath it may very well be physically impossible to ‘teach’ him a damn thing about morals. (All caps heading in the original)
Moreoever, what method can be used to treat this child in four years? In addition, if he’s not cured and gets out, what is the risk of him taking another life?
Thems some mighty strong antisocial traits…
But, again, do you have a cite that a young sociopath can be reformed any more easily than an older one?
Not revenge, protection.
You put down mad dogs, too.
This isn’t tree-hugging hippie crap. I know what the outcome is most likely to be. My husband works in a prison-- I’ve seen indescribable evil. I’m not naive.
And here I thought eugenics died out in the late '40s.
Would you then release him if he were sterilized? I don’t think so.
It’s not about his genetic makeup.
Yes, it is. A human being will be killed. That we do it in a “nice” way does not lessen that.
So, an action is moral as long as a government-sanctioned process exists which lays out the steps in which to do it?
It’d be a hell of a larger drain if he was executed.
To me, not nearly as obscene as the idea of killing a child.
Most people think that David Berkowitz is genuinely rehabilitated. Who here wants him released from prison? Anyone? I bet not many of you will answer yes on that.
Society has to get just compensation for the victim here, that’s part of the justice system. People all too often like to say the justice system isn’t about revenge. Well, no, it isn’t about revenge. But human beings and society in general have developed the idea of criminal punishment for more than just the ideals of deterrence and rehabilitation. There is an idea that when you horribly wrong someone you need to be punished for it in a manner that fits the terrible wrong you have committed. Society has deemed that in general that means for murder you go to prison for a very long time if not for the rest of your life.
To me it is immaterial if the person can be a productive citizen later, or can atone for their crimes. They still have done a horrible wrong and I don’t feel that the victim will have gotten justice unless the murderer is forced to give up their very freedom for the remainder of their natural life.
This kid lost his right to the chance at becoming a productive member of society when he brutally murdered a member of society.
Why do we try juveniles differently from adults? It isn’t because the crimes they commit are less serious; it’s because we presume that they are not fully formed and we should therefore take a different approach to punishment than we would for an adult. So the heinousness of the crime should not have any bearing on whether or not he is tried as an adult.
I would leave it to the experts to decide how to divine someone’s motivations, but if his motivations for jaywalking were those of an adult, he should be tried for it as an adult, and if his motivations for multiple axe murders were those of a juvenile, he should be tried as a juvenile.
That isn’t to say he should get a slap on the wrist; he should certainly be locked up for the foreseeable future. If he “matures out of” whatever psychopathology has hold of him, he should then be let out. I’d leave it up to the experts to determine whether that is possible, or how likely it is, or how certain we can be of it. If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t ever be let out. There are options other than “slap on the wrist” and “locked up forever”.
Yeah, this is tree hugging.
I said nothing about eugenics. Don’t put such words in my mouth again.
It isn’t his genetic make up, it is the large potential for him to pass on through his behavior the type of ‘thinking’ that led him to kill with no remorse but extreme sadism.
Yes, you are naive. You probably also think Terri Schaivo should still be “alive”.
You cannot kill away a lack of empathy. This is a social problem which can’t be “weeded out” by brute force.
You do realize that it’s not only teenage murderers who have this problem with a lack of empathy, don’t you? It’s shared by theives and rapists, people who will be released back into society and have the potential to inflict great harm. (Their recidivism rates are greater than that of murderers.)
Simply shoving them into a cage hasn’t had much effect thus far, and despite the advocacy for it by those whose knowledge of the criminal justice system is mostly confined to sensationalist crime reports, it never will.
Sadly, what is needed to help correct this problem will never be supported by the public. Not only would it be astronomically expensive, but the public would be hostile to it because of the “tree-hugging” nature: therapy, and lots of it.
The 14 year old boy from the OP may have done something reprehensible, but he is still a human being, and he needs help. Simply throwing him into prison without it endangers the prison staff and other inmates. We would not leave an inmate with cancer untreated, nor should we ignore a mental illness.
This is not “hug-a-thug”. This is simple common sense. Most likely, this kid will be released at some point. (I’d imagine that, like the Flordia boy who got life in prison at age 14, his sentance would be reduced once the furor has died down.) Would you rather he be released resentful of a system he does not understand, or having recieved some therapy which might go a ways in teaching him empathy and at least a basic understanding of society’s rules?
If I may be so bold to say so, I might point out that I’m probably a bit more familiar with the correctional system than you are. I’ve seen the results of the hard-ass approach, and I haven’t been much impressed.
Actually, I don’t, but that’s an entirely different issue.
I would have to say that the question of whether a juvenile should be tried as an adult for particularly heinous crimes would depend on the maturity level of the juvenile.
Some years back, there was the case of a twelve-year-old boy who was convicted of murder after beating a six-year-old playmate to death while imitating pro wrestling moves- he was recently released from juvie prison and has now been arrested for robbing a pizza delivery guy, I think. I attempted a search, and got a lot of results with “twelve” and “boy” and “beats” and “playmate” and “death”, but I couldn’t actually find a link to any of the news stories on the case, sorry. He claimed he didn’t intend to hurt the little girl, he was just playing and imitating what he saw on TV.
A lot of people thought he should have been tried as an adult, but from what I could gather by reading and listening to news accounts, I disagreed. I got the distinct impression that he had a mental age of considerably less than twelve. I mean, what’s he doing with a six-year-old playmate, anyway? I thought it entirely plausible that he could watch pro wrestling, see the wrestlers walk out of the ring seemingly unharmed, and think that he could try out the same moves with his little friend and not hurt her, and possibly not realize that he was hurting her. Probably most twelve-year-olds know pro wrestling is fake, but from what I could piece together from the news accounts, I thought this boy was something of a dim bulb.
The boy in the OP was fourteen, but he might be considerably less mature on a psychological level than your average fourteen-year-old, have below average intelligence, be easily manipulated by someone older who he looks up to (the 18 year-old), possibly not quite have a fully-formed concept of what death really means. If this is the case, he should be tried as a juvenile.
If on the other hand, psychological evaluations find that he is of average to above average intelligence, have a pretty good sense of himself, and understands that dead is dead, then he should be tried as an adult.
I’d like to see more stories as the case develops to find out if we can get an idea of what the 14-year-old’s mental state was/is.
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Source: Newsday, 31 May 2005 @ 8:14 pm EDT
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She may only be nine years old, but she had the presence of mind to grab a steak knife from the party and kill her playmate friend.
I would just like to second **DoctorJ’s **opinion. Either you believe that juveniles should be tried differently because they’re not yet fully morally culpable, or you don’t. Why should the severity of the crime be part of the evaluation?
Nope.
A human life that has had his brain twisted into such a way that his ability to maintain anything like morality or compassion doesn’t strike me as being a human in anything except visual appearance. Even if we did succeed to make it docile and able to behave at a minimum level of acceptability–the death of his victim will still not be paid off, nor would I have any faith that the thing would enjoy its life any more after being “fixed” than it had enjoyed it previous.
So I mean lock him up until he dies or execute him–I don’t see that it makes much of a difference. But I fail to see that the world would not be the better for his non-existence, nor do I doubt that the person will not be happier dead than if it had to continue its life.
As I understand it, the injuries suffered by the little girl were not especially probable with the story the boy gave. That is, the wrestling story was complete hooey designed to blame a murder on someone else. I happen to watch wrestling, so I was paying attention at the time.
This strikes me as a dangerous way of thinking-- that a person’s status as fully human can be denied based on his or her behavior. Although I realize it’s not what you mean, it doesn’t seem that far removed from the concept that a person’s religious practices, ethnicity or skin color determines whether or not they’re “human.”
In my husband’s time working for the correctional system, I have seen the most indescribable evils-- things that my innocent mind would shirk from believing that any human is capable of doing. I have seen the depths of hell.
Yet I have never lost sight of the fact that these are human beings, accorded the same human rights as I. You don’t earn human rights/status by being a good citizen, nor can it be stripped from you as a punishment.
Our reaction to this 14 year old boy’s actions says more about us, the law-abiding, as people, than it does about his crime. I don’t think it speaks highly of us as a people to scream for a child’s blood.
THING??? “It?”
How do you know how much he values his life, anyway? Just because you don’t value it, doesn’t mean that the boy doesn’t. He may cherish his life every bit as much as you cherish yours.
Be very careful in assigning a “value” to other people’s lives. It’s a very dangerous path of thought. I don’t think I need to remind you where it’s led us in the past.
There is no way to “pay off” the death of another human being. Even if we put the boy through Inquisition-style tortures and burned him alive at the stake, there would be no “pay off” that would cancel the death of the beaten man. All it would do is reduce us to the level of barbarians.
I do. Do you want his blood on your hands? Do you want the state to make you culpable for the death of a human being?
He’s not a diseased dog to be “put out of his misery.” He is a little boy for the love of Christ! Two months ago, he was probably playing with action figures and wondering if the cute girl in his class would “go” with him.
I doubt very much that he would be grateful to be “put down.” Dear God, man, he isn’t a mindless zombie thinking of nothing but death and destruction! He’s a little boy! He’s a sentient human being!