How and why does a state decide to try a juvenile as an adult? What is the age of the youngest juvenile to have been tried as an adult?
It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally the heinousness of the crime, or the level of premeditation, or how close they are to 18 can be a factor.
An example- in San Bernardino County, CA, there are no murders committed by juveniles. Every single one is tried as an adult. I assume they haven’t run into the 12 year old murder thing yet. Hubby was a juvenile prosecutor and that was the standard practice in the late 1990’s.
Here’s a story about a 12 year old murderer in Washington state, and this is the Wikipedia entry for the English girl Mary Bell who was 11 years old when she killed two children.
The Washington article records that the defendant Evan Savoie was ‘among the youngest murder defendants in the state to be tried as an adult’.
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You should really check out this documentary. It is very informative: