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Link: https://www.koco.com/article/stillwater-jesse-butler-case-dismissed/73337476

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right and wrong.

Authorize the courts to take into account the age of the defendant, but there is no reason to treat a 17 year old as if they are 4 years old. Charge every defendant in accordance with evidence, try them on those charges, and sentence them with age taken into account.

Not that there aren't a ton of disorderly, dangerous juvenile detention centers, but we shouldn't be putting kids in with adults in prison. Believe me.

It goes without saying that I'm disgusted that this gelatinous gob of excrement is skating right out of this. If I'm reading this correctly, we once again had a DA offering a plea deal and a judge made a call on how he should be tried. Unfortunately, people don't show up to vote in local elections.

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Excerpts:

To start with the first set of cases: Roper and Graham establish that children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing. Because juveniles have diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform, we explained, “they are less deserving of the most severe punishments.” Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17). Those cases relied on three significant gaps between juveniles and adults. First, children have a “ ‘lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility,’ ” leading to recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk-taking. Roper, 543 U. S., at 569. Second, children “are more vulner- able . . . to negative influences and outside pressures,” including from their family and peers; they have limited “contro[l] over their own environment” and lack the ability to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings. Ibid. And third, a child’s character is not as “well formed” as an adult’s; his traits are “less fixed” and his actions less likely to be “evidence of irretrievabl[e] deprav[ity].” Id., at 570.

Our decisions rested not only on common sense—on what “any parent knows”—but on science and social science as well. Id., at 569. In Roper, we cited studies showing that “ ‘[o]nly a relatively small proportion of adolescents’ ” who engage in illegal activity “ ‘develop entrenched patterns of problem behavior.’ ” Id., at 570 (quoting Steinberg & Scott, Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence: Developmental Immaturity, Diminished Responsibility, and the Juvenile Death Penalty, 58 Am. Psychologist 1009, 1014 (2003)). And in Graham, we noted that “developments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds”—for example, in “parts of the brain involved in behavior control.” 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17).[5] We reasoned that those findings—of transient rashness, proclivity for risk, and inability to assess consequences—both lessened a child’s “moral culpability” and enhanced the prospect that, as the years go by and neurological development occurs, his “ ‘deficiencies will be reformed.’ ” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 18) (quoting Roper, 543 U. S., at 570).

Roper and Graham emphasized that the distinctive at- tributes of youth diminish the penological justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes. Because “ ‘[t]he heart of the retribution rationale’ ” relates to an offender’s blameworthiness, “ ‘the case for retribution is not as strong with a minor as with an adult.’ ” Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20–21) (quoting Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137, 149 (1987); Roper, 543 U. S., at 571). Nor can deterrence do the work in this context, because “ ‘the same characteristics that render juveniles less culpable than adults’ ”—their immaturity, recklessness, and impetuosity—make them less likely to consider potential punishment. Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 21) (quoting Roper, 543 U. S., at 571).


Link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/460/

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I have a major problem putting someone away for life for something they did at, say, 14.

So my idea is this, a concept I call "life again." At whatever age a juvenile commits a capital crime, they have to spend that many years out of society but getting educated, rehabilitated and psychological screenings and counseling.

Because if you commit the crime at age 14, by age 28 the crime literally happened a lifetime ago.

The research is pretty dismal when it comes to sociopathic children who demonstrate serious violence at young ages. The interventions need to happen quite early and intensely.

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Gangs recruit juvies to do their dirty work because they know they’ll get a slap on the wrist for many felonies.