Pretty simple.
If DA’s can try 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 year olds as adults in trials saying “They know damn well what they were doing,”
… why are there still “age of consent” laws barring 15, 16, 17 year olds (in many states) from choosing to have sex with older partners?
In general, when a DA has been successful in transfering a case to adult court, they have to demonstrate that the person in question “is” acting as an adult. In other words, the presumption is that the child is a child and the DA has to prove otherwise by the evidence.
On a practical basis, there seem to be several ways to demonstrate this via the courts. Courts have taken the unusual stance that “some children” act as adults “some times”. So, for example, McCauley Caulkin, IIRC, was able to legally discharge his parents from being his managers/guardians because of their outrageous behavior. It is not uncommon for children who have great quantities of $$ to effect this change. I believe there was a gymnast who did the same thing.
as far as criminal behavior, the DA’s in question show “adultness” if you will, often by the heinious aspect of the crime or the past criminal behavior.
I think it would be interesting if, such a young person was then raped if the charge would be “child molesting”, although I suspect that it would be since the laws regarding same are written using “age”, vs. maturity.
Good question jrishaw.
The way I see it, kids know the fundamental differences between right and wrong before they hit their teens. If they choose to commit a crime then they know what they’re doing is immoral and illegal.
However when they are aged 13 or 14, and sex is relatively new to them so it would probably be easier to take advantage of them. Hence the age of consent laws.
I don’t see how you can compare them.
The way I see it, we have age of consent laws to:
and especially:
Case in point: the teacher who seduced her 14 yr old pupil. The two are (well, should be) at wildly different points in their development. She would be effectively stunting his growth. Bottom line, there are a whole lot of things a kid has got to go through before he’s ready for a baby producing relationship.
That being said, I won’t fuss over a 17 and 19 yr old having sex. But say a 20yr old and a 15yr old? Something is not right there. (I always leave room for an exception or 2)
As for trying a youth in adult court, I think having it depend on the nature of the crime and the history of the youth is a good idea.
A 14yr old who stabs an older woman 47 times (as happened here, recently) deserves no less harsh consequences than an adult convicted of the same crime. I mean, sheesh. It’s not like you can say, “Oh, he’s just a kid. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
I personally don’t think there should be one set of laws for teens and another for adults. Crime is crime. Youth is not an excuse for destructive or malicious behaviour.
What I meant by ‘nature of the crime’ is that all learning includes making a few mistakes. This I can understand and concede. Killing someone, mugging, vandalism, serious theft are not ‘mistakes’ made by an otherwise good child.
“Now Jimmy, you know it’s not nice to kill people.”
The gymnast wring was referring to is Dominique Moceanu, a member of our Magnificent Seven who won the Gold in the last Summer Games.
The simplest answer to the question is that there is a false dichotomy set up between the status of adult and child. There is no magical boundary crossed at any age or by any person where you morph into an adult and suddenly become responsible enough to handle issue A or consequence B. There are obviously very mature and responsible children just as there are some adults I wouldn’t trust with a burnt out match.
We can reasonably expect that a 15 year old is generally not mature enough to handle themselves in an interpersonal relationship with someone much older than they. Of course there will be exceptions. The cunning Lolita myth/fantasy that shows up in literature and film probably does happen on rare occasions. And it’s not for me to pronounce with certainty that Mary Kay Laturno (sp?) and her pubescent beau were not in the very midst of True Love, whatever private doubts I have about that particular situation. However, society does reserve the right to say “In order to protect the vast majority of adolescents who will be harmed by these relationships, no adult can have relationships with a child under the age of X.” Whether you agree with the position, it is not an inherently unreasonable one.
In a similar vein, we can reasonably expect that a teenager understands the gravity and severity of blowing someone’s brains out. Surely there are exceptions here too, although very few I should think. When courts say that children sometimes “act as adults,” it conveys the belief that the child understood that the murder was wrong, understood how seriously society views such a crime, and understood the possible penalty for such a crime. That also is not an unreasonable position to take.
you are applying concepts of truth and reason to what can more aptly be understood in terms of desire and emotion. We will be satisfied. The terms are fluid.
I personally do not believe we should be treating children as adults, regardless of their behavior. In most cases, even those that involve violent crime committed by a juvenile there is some adult in the background who has not done their job. In many instances there are several adults or an entire system run by adults who have somehow failed the child. People don’t just go out and commit crimes for no reason, there is always motive. Someone besides the child is there in the picture culpable for the fact that we have 15 year old career criminals. Let’s give them a little responsiblity for a change instead of doing the easy thing and blaming the child. As for sex laws we have them but they are so arbitrarily and loosely applied in most states as to be largely ineffectual. The average sexual offender spends less than 10 years in prison for his crime and when it is against a child it actually goes down to less than 5. Statutory rape laws are a judicial joke. In my state there is no statutory law for a child 16 and up. If under 16 then the offender must be at least 3 years older. That means that a grown man can get away with violating your 16 year old daughter provided he can talk her into it.
We need to start making some decisions that are right in regards to the children in our society. We need to stop blaming them for our failure as adults. We have failed them somehow when violent crime has gone down 10% overall but juvenile crime, especially gun related crime, has gone up. It is hypocritical and irresponsible of us to make them the scapegoats for our failing them as adults in a society that they didn’t create.
Needs2know
There is a book which discusses this subject called “the death of childhood.”
The answer to the OP is that we are making these child vs adult rules up as we go along, and we have been for about 400 years.
sorry wrong title
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679751661/ref=sim_books/002-9369029-2644819
The Disappearance of Childhood
the biggest conflict i see here is the old ‘i’m old enough to vote, to go to war, but not drink’ issue. this seems to go along the same lines, ‘i’m old enough to be tried for murder, but can’t vote.’ i would almost go as far to say that individuals not legally ‘adults’ should not pay sales tax, or have their paychecks deducted (i.e. 16 year olds who work at taco bell). taxation without representation, you know.
hopefully this is not too far off topic :-)…
It is only through an incredibly twisted definition of “responsibility” that you can manage to turn a child murderer into a child martyr. When a kid blows another kid away because he was wearing the wrong color in the wrong place, assuredly there is a warped sense of values at play. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the kid’s finger is the one pulling the trigger. This kid knows that death is going to result, is in fact is actively seeking that result. He knows that it is judged wrong in our society whether he feels justified personally or not. He knows that society may toss him in jail or fry him. Yet he pulls the trigger anyway. The short way of saying this is that he is responsible. No amount of “My daddy beat me,” or, “My education was bad,” or, “I was never really disciplined,” or “I was sexually abused by my stepfather,” or, “I saw it in Natural Born Killers and gee it looked cool,” is sufficient to erase the reality that when the gun was in his hand, he chose to kill. He may be a victim of all those things above, and we may sympathize with him for those things, but they are not sufficient to remove responsibility. Being victimized in one situation does not absolve you of guilt in another. To claim this, you must claim that he had no choices to make, and could not act in a manner other than he did, which is patently untrue. If a person has no respect for life, you might very well argue that it is the fault of his parents, society, and whatever else you care to throw into the mix. Nevertheless, he knows full well what the rest of society feels is the case. He knows full well what the penalties might include. If he pulls the trigger anyway, he assumes the risks that go along with it, including being judged every bit as harshly as any adult would be.
Let me give you some food for thougth on the taxation issue. no sales tax for youngsters? cool, I’ll send my kid in to buy everything. (see, it’d be a little hard to regulate…)
no paycheck deduction for my kid? well, see, ** I ** pay taxes on my income which goes to pay the bills for myself and my child, as part of my household. He’s earning a paycheck now. I had a choice -I could count him as a dependant, and he’d pay taxes on his income, or I’d NOT count him as a dependant and he’d end up not owing the $200 bucks he paid in income taxes. Since the difference to our household income was significant, guess he’ll pay income taxes. and, it allows him to say to his teachers : “hey, I’m a tax payer” 
Hence the “almost”. Regulation/Enforcement is a whole other story.
“Killing someone, mugging, vandalism, serious theft are not ‘mistakes’ made by an otherwise good child.”
Vandalism?! Vandalism is EXACTLY the sort of “youthful mistake” that the juvenile courts were created for! Why do people have the feeling that vandalism is an invention of the last twenty years and a result of “kids gone amok nowadays”? Throwing rocks through windows and at passing trains, and scratching one’s initials in wooden or even stone public furniture (benches, poles, etc.) are two examples of the sort of nonsense that teen and preteen boys in groups have been susceptible to committing for thousands of years.
And how do you define “serious theft”? A lot of states haven’t updated the value threshhold between felony and misdemeanor theft since Roosevelt or Truman was president! Picking a wallet with $250 in it – not uncommon – could give a kid an automatic felony adult conviction in some states. And a joyride in an automobile can enter serious felony territory if you have a hardass prosecutor who insists on theft charges instead of “unlawful deprivation” type offenses because the kids were caught in the car.
Nobody’s talking about giving these kids a free ride. The alternatives aren’t adult prison or walking away scot free. Every state has a juvenile justice system.
Juvenile courts were created over 100 years ago (1899 here in Chicago) on the philosophy that just because a kid commits a crime doesn’t mean they are incorrigible. Indeed, quite the opposite, that the commission of a crime by a youth is an opportunity to intervene before its too late. The danger – then and now – is putting someone who committed a petty crime out of immaturity, who otherwise would have gone past their act as they became older and more responsible, in adult prison where they become either a victim, hardened, or both.
Don’t we ALL remember doing things as teenagers that were clearly WRONG? Things we would NEVER do now as adults? Things that would have gotten us in legal trouble if we did them as adults and got caught?? But our parents, or teacher, or the sergeant at the local police station instead read us the riot act, made us pay for what we had done with money or work, made us apologize to the victim if there was one, convinced that victim not to press charges, and left us with the understanding that we were LUCKY nothing worse happened. Nothing marred our records when we applied for jobs, or military service, or whatever. We learned our lesson and moved on.
Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is the philosophy behind juvenile justice. Formalized in statute and vested in special courts, but the same idea nevertheless.
Are there youth offenders who are incorrigible? Are there crimes so horrible that they inherently show the offender to be incorrigible? OF COURSE! The problem in the last few years, especially since Columbine, is that the state legislatures at nearly every session have made more and more offenses AUTOMATICALLY triable in adult criminal court and punishable in adult prison. No room for the application of discretion or common sense by the judges, attorneys, and counselors of the juvenile system. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, collect your “lifetime criminal” card. All this at a time that nearly every study shows that violent crime, crime in general, and drug use by teenagers in the U.S. are all DOWN significantly!
I have no problem sending a 16-year-old who kills in cold blood to adult court straight away. And I have no problem with a juvenile court judge DECIDING that a kid who has been arrested ten times for pickpocketing is incorrigible and appropriate for regular criminal court. But I have a problem with the legislature responding to pleas from within and outside its membership to “do something, anything!” with a statute that any violent crime – sounds heinous, but punching someone in the nose is a violent crime – by a person over 14 is ipso facto a matter for the adult criminal justice system. At that rate, we should just close down the juvenile court system as redundant.
It’s simple. Kids can’t vote.
Therefore, they are subject to the whims of the voting populace which is simultaneously trying to punish and protect them. There’s no real logic to it. Laws are passed at different times with different constituents in mind.
I think it’s fair enough to say that a 14 year old understands that sex can lead to babies/disease/etc… at least as well as they understand that shooting a gun can kill somebody.
Also the kids aren’t directly punished by the judicial system, the people they had sex with are. It is probably upsetting to see your wife go to jail (as happened in a recent case) but the courts aren’t sentencing the kids.
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I still don’t see how you can logically have those statements in the same sentance.
Your lack of compassion for children astounds.
I feel strongly about this situation, since I was one of those kids who liked to blow things up, steal signs, and do other things like that for fun. I realize how precarious a position today’s youth are really in. And I realize that at some point as a nation, we have to realize that you can NOT simply apply some formula and see whether or not a child should be tried as an adult or if his crime was “bad” enough - (well he’s only 11, but he shot her twice, so if you multiply by Planck’s constant then you get 13.64 which is higher than 11.5, which means try him as an adult under the death penalty.) We’ve let a couple of REALLY BAD KIDS (Columbine) dictate how we deal with kids who are typically just being kids. It really bothers me -
BTW John Bredin - your post was the most coherent and straight view on the subject I’ve ever heard. Cheers.
Im gonna put this as bluntly as possible and i’ll know it will enrage some people (cough kneeds2know cough) but…FUCK THE KIDS. Seriously. I think we hurt them with all these crazy laws more than we protect them. I hate saying anything bad about anyone but I’ve noticed more than a few posts from Kneeds2Know that i found strongly objectionable. Most people dont notice it but the ‘South Park’ movie is actually much more than dick and fart jokes, it has a strong political message, and Kneeds2Know reminds me of ‘Kyle’s Mom’, the character who inadvertantly brings on Armaggedon because she didnt want her kids hearing naughty language and she blamed everybody but the kids.
Dearest Cisco…(sneeze) I do wish I knew what you were talking about but since I’ve never seen one episode of Southpark, let alone the movie, I have no idea. You see, I’m an adult now and don’t watch cartoons. Not even the type that are produced for so called adults. If you can make a coherent reply to any of my remarks then I’d be happy to address them. As it is I just don’t really understand what it is about my views that cause you to take such issue.
Needs2know