Brandon McInerney: No 14-year-old deserves the threat of life in prison

[Natasha]

Brandon McInerney: No 14-year-old deserves the threat of life in prison

The moderate voice
Joe Windish
7/27/2008

Last week a California judge ruled that trying a 14-year-old boy accused of murder in an adult court does not violate the constitution.

[Purple Pimp]

Good grief.  I just can't follow the writer's reasoning.  At what age does life in prison become appropriate, then?

Sure, no one is fully "cooked" at age 14.  The same can be said of being 18, 21, 25, etc.

Lia

[NicholeW.]

I'm not sure that "life in prison" makes a lot of sense at all. In most cases, less for murder than for something like paedophiliac acts. Most murders are committed as "one time" acts. When the victim is dead the person no longer has a cause to murder any one. Yet, such murders are more liley to get death-penalty and life imprisonment than "gang murders" are. Go figure.

OTh you might be able to make a much better case for keeping a paedophile locked up forever as they are never "cured" with methods we are currently employing.

Should a fourteen-year old be tried with a sentence if convicted of "life in prison." I don't think so. Instead of going up with age why not go down? How about a 12 year old, or a ten-year old. An eight-year old?

Nichole

[tekla]

It seems to compound a tragic event rather than bringing any sense of justice to it.

[Purple Pimp]

I'm not sure that "life in prison" makes a lot of sense at all.

Well, in a sense, I agree with you.  However, if we, as a society, are going to be doing it at all, then we need to be doing it uniformly if we are to speak of a "justice" system.  Yes, people change; a person who has spent ten years in jail is not the same person who committed the initial crime.  But is our system about to stop imprisoning people?  I think, perhaps unfortunately, not.

I just really disagree with the idea that McInerney is not responsible for murder in the same way an adult is.  I came out as a gay male at the age of 13.  I was Lawrence King.  And if any of the hateful people who made my school life a living hell, day in, day out, had taken the step of murdering me, he or she would have needed to spend life in prison.  Someone who can murder at the age of 14 based on a person's identity, someone who needs to wipe another human being off the face of the earth simply for existing, needs to be separated from society.  For good.  I'll admit that I thought about pulling a Columbine on my tormentors, but you know what?  I didn't.  My sense of death and right versus wrong had already been established, like it is for "normal" kids, long before 14.

Again, I understand that as a society we are all guilty for producing children like McInerney.  They learn from the homophobia/transphobia present in the culture.  But it's too slippery a slope to argue that we're all guilty.  At that point, no one would be responsible for any of their actions.

I just cringe to think that a premeditated murder would be allowed to go free after a handful of years.

Lia

[tekla]

I'm not advocating he be set free or anything, but I'm not sure that treating a 14 year old like a 24 year old is in the best interests of justice.

[Mnemosyne]

Premeditated murder with full understanding of his actions. Do big boy crime, do big boy time. Maybe not life but at least 10-15.

[Kaitlyn]

I can't see how anyone thinks that throwing this kid into the dungeons is going to make things better.  Incarceration is a method of burning the humanity out of a person, not making them more empathetic and humane.  It's one of those barbarous relics that moderns, in their arrogance and conceit, think can be turned to the service of "good" - like the standing army and the government police.

It's nearly moot anyway - with the U.S. recidivism rate, odds are 50/50 that he'll come out a bitter and angry adult, perpetrate some other crimes, and be back in prison within 3 years.