Man, you've got some real issues. Why is it you feel the need
to personally attack someone with a different view than
yours? You criticized my profession, my intelligence, and
imply that I'm biased. Then you have the audacity to tell
me you won't discuss it anymore.

That alone speaks volumes about the kind of person you
are Yankee.

Dennis, I'm sorry I got off track. Let's get after it again.
You pose some good questions and I don't think any
of us have a good answer. What we see today is a
society searching for answers on how to punish kids
who commit these awful crimes. It seems the only
answer is to treat them as adults. I know it's misguided,
you know it's misguided. But what's the alternative? A
sentence to some juvenile school where they are released
upon adulthood, or what the state says is adulthood?

 

Trapper,

For once you and I agree on something. Is the sky falling? LOL.

It just seems to me that something's wrong with what's happening in Florida.

I wish I had the answer to what to do with juveniles who kill. We seem to be lowering the bar with no end in sight. I think it's wrong to try a 17 year old as a juvenile for murder, convicting the 17 year old, then releasing the 18 year old. I also think it's wrong to try, convict, and imprison for life a kid, who may not know any better because some adult failed to teach the kid properly.

In regards to a previous statement you made, I also agree that imprisonment and the death penalty are not the deterents they are cracked up to be. If they were, we wouldn't be building more prisons and dealing with prison overcrowding every day.

Times are tough and tough decisions must be made, but something about the situation in Florida just rubs me the wrong way.

 

I don't know the laws from state to state, but maybe we should put these kids in juvenile detention when convicted with an automatic parole when they hit 18? If they are not rehabilitated, they get sent to prison as an adult. Maybe that's the way it works already? I really don't know.

I still have a problem, though, with the fitness of a child to stand trial as an adult.

What ya think?

 

I know that in the past there were bad kids that did very bad things. It seems that we never tried those kids as adults until the mid 80's when the whole crack and gang violence thing got out of control and every day it seemed there was new crime wave being committed by younger and youger crimanals.

I think that our government officials caught on to this and instead of forming a plan to treat the problem or the cause of the problem they found it very easy to treat the results by holding children to the same standards as adults. This didn't really solve anything but it made them seem to be doing something and for the most part we as a public bought into this.

The fact is, that children have a sense of what is right and wrong but they can not expect to make the same decisions that an adult would make under similar circumstances. A lot of these kids have a poor sense of judgment and a warped sense of justice.

The one thing I can say in defense of this is that even as young adults we can be counted on to make horrible choices from time to time. I myself cringe at the the thought of some of the stupid things I did when I was 17, 18 and 19. The fact that knowledge based on life experience has a lot more to do with a persons choices than does one's intelligence and children under the age of 14 can not possibly be held to the same standard as an adult.

We can't say that kids make bad choices and so they can't be trusted to drive a vehicle unsupervised until they are 18 but then say they should be able to only make right choices when it comes to other things.

I think when we start holding children to the same standards as a dults in a criminal justice sysytem as imperfect as ours has proven to be we are truley sliding down a slippery slope....

 

unless you are involved in something like this you are just a spectator with an opion. Would you adopt a kid who beat his dad to death wiith a baseball bat, even a 9 year old, talk about sleeping with one eye open.

my wifes 81 year old grandmother was brutally beaten (on going investigation so i cant say, trust me it was brutal), house cleaned out and burned by a 15 and a 16 year old. they spent hours going thru the house after they killed, this is totally screwed. my motherlaw lost her mother, best friend and all family pictures and belongings,my 5 year old lost his memaw, hardest thing in my life to tell him memaw went to heaven. the thing that sits in the pit of my stomach is the way she died and everything she had ***** on. the reason the kids gave was they needed a car!
I dare anyone to tell me these "kids" could be reabilitated or deserve a second chance on life. i am a christen and i am sure in time i will get over this but i hope these 2 never get a chance to do this to another.

the preacher said it best when he said is it really a bad thing for "thou shall not kill" to be on a wall at school.

it was a recent very brutal crime so dont ask me details, i could talk about it all night but i dont want to hurt the case.

this was a quickly planned out crime, not just a heat of the moment thing

 

I'm not a big believer in any rehabilitation thats available
with our current prison system. I can say this, I'm not a
spectator with an opinion, as you put it. A very close friend
of my family was murdered by a young boy about 6 years ago.
The brutality was unbelievable. She was beaten and had an
umbrella shoved into her ear. That part took place after she
was down and incapacitated. The boy was eventually found
innocent for reasons I don't really care to go into. The
prosecutor in the case said it was only a matter of time
before this kid killed someone else. Guess what, about two
years ago (he was a senior in school by now) abducted two
texas runaways, raping and beating the girl with a baseball
bat before turning his attention to the boy. The boy was
begging for his life in front of the girl while he was being
beaten around the head. The girl lived, but the boy did not.
This little SOB was finally convicted a few months back. It's
stories like this that cause society to react the way it does.
Such brutality needs to be punished, but how do you punish
kids? Right now we sentence them to prison, just like adults.
Right or wrong, that's how it is. I'm not saying I like it, but at
the same time, I sure as hell don't want someone like this
running around my city.

 

Hey Dennis, You have struck a nerve with me since I have to live in Florida with all of this insanity.

The two boys confessed on tape exactly how they killed their father. They went in to exact detail without remorse. They also tried to burn the house down to cover up the murder. They beat him to death with a baseball bat while he was sleeping. They then accused the other man who was having sex with the 12 year old who was tried and aquitted of the murder. The verdict of that case was sealed until the trial was complete on the boys.

This was planned murder by a couple of little a$$hole kids that clearly knew the difference between wrong and right. Maybe in some other cases they wouldn't know wrong and right but in this case they did. If you heard the confession tape you would kill them yourself.

This whole liberal, too easy on the kids crap has to stop. It is this very thinking that created out of control kids in the first place. You say that these kids did not know the consequences of what they did. Bull*****, everyone knows you should not beat your parents with a baseball bat while they are sleeping. IF they were 18 or over and did this they still would not know the consequences or they would not have done it at all. If murderers knew the consequences of murder they would not do it at any age. Sure there are things that 12-13 year old boys do not know the consequences of, beating their fathers with baseball bats is not one of them.

I say let them go to the chamber before age 18. No more menance to society. And perhaps other little SOB children will think twice about it. They should also convict and execute the adult that was having sex with the 12 year old.

I say make the death penalty the standard for gang crimes, drug dealing, any crime involving a gun, sex crimes, home invasions, car jackings and any other violent crimes. Enough is enough.

Parents need to start beating their kids asses again. The entire country is on Xanex and their kids are on Redalin (sp?) because their kids have ADHD. This is one of the biggest disgraces our country has ever known. Everyone is on a pill.

Dennis, the prosecutors in Florida have had enough. A few years ago no child was prosecuted as an adult that I recall. After hundreds of cases of child murderers they have no choice but to get tough. I think they would prosecute their parents if they could for raising such heathens, that is if the child in question hasn't already killed the parents.

If liberals put as much effort in to more pressing issues such as these as they do in the good ole "DON'T SMOKE IN RESTAURANTS CAUSE IT MAKES ME CHOKE AND I CAN'T TASTE MY FOOD" hogwash, the world would be a slightly better place.

 

Remember one thing also, both of these boys killed the father at the same time. They took turns with the bat, certainly they knew it was wrong as they were crushing the guys scull.

It's not like one kid got in to a scuffle with his father and accidentally killed him. The father was asleep, BOTH boys took part in the mutilation, and then they set the house on fire and pointed to another to take the fall. If these two boys can handle doing that then a trial would be no sweat.

I am sure there is much more than anyone will ever know about this story. It is very very sad. Nonetheless, the boys acted as adults and should be tried as such. They will probably be sentenced to life in prison and paroled in 10 or 15 years. As someone else mentioned, I don't want them running around my city any time soon.

 

Thanks for filling in the details. Do you know what the minimum
age for the death penalty is in Florida. Just curious, seems like
it is about the same as in Mississippi.

 

This is not so hard. Why some of you have this "I am not sure what we should do" either your liberal or just don't have much knowledge. It is very simple if a kid say around the age of 13. ( I would set the limit to 13 for the present time) If they do an adult crime like KILL then they get tried like an adult. If convicted they get the adult time or death what ever the jurys gives them.

What is so hard about that. Most things are black and white, right and wrong etc. very little has gray area unless your liberal or a moderate. To liberals everything has gray area, to moderates they wait to see the polls on how everone else feels about something before the weigh in.

Kids at age 13 KNOW what is right and wrong. If they don't then the kids parents should be called to answer for what their kid did, since the parents was not bright enough to teach their kid right from wrong. Either way you have someone from the same family answering for the crime commited.

See its called responsibility, you either have it or you dont. If you dont then good luck because people like me will continue to push to punish you for being stupid.

 

I'm not the person I was 2 years ago, and with luck, I'll be a differrent, better person two years from now. I'm definitely not the same person I was when I was 13, and I think same holds true for most of you. Time alone did not make me change, of course, and time alone should not be expected to change these two kids either.

I can't speak for Florida, but in Georgia, when a juvenile (under 17) is charged with a serious felony, prosecutor can petition the court for a SB440 hearing. There are several statutory factors the prosecutor must present to support his petition and the juvenile is entitled to legal representation. The judge can then decide whether the superior court will take jurisdiction over the case.

Florida may have similar procedures. As a legal professional, I find it shocking that a single prosecutor would have that much discretion.

 

I find it absolutely appauling that there are people in this country who would put a 13 year old to death. It's such a sick concept. I'm not a liberal or a conservative, but some of you need to stop living by the guidelines of your 'party'. If you'd honestly put a 13 year old to death, you need to seek some help, or maybe find a job in the Cambodian government...I hear they're looking to fill Pol Pot's position.

 

01 xlt sport,

Just curious about how you come up with the age of 13?
why is it that 13 year olds know right from wrong. Is
there something special about that age?

Also, are you saying a kids parents should be responsible for
all of his actions, including murder if the child is under 13?

Who would choose which parent? Who would choose the age
at which a child is no longer responsible and the parent
becomes responsible?

 

Who said anything about time changing these two kids. Personally thats not what the time is about, it is about punishment. Prison/jail are suppose to be for punishment first and foremost. When the kids go before a board to see if they are released if they have not changed then hold them longer.

I am not the same person as I was at 13. But I did know right from wrong when I was 13 so that hasn't changed and that is what is important to remember. Its not the age so much, though I would set a limit of maybe 13. What is important is at 13 you do KNOW what is right and wrong. Prison and jail are deterants PERIOD those of you that don't believe that have serious problems.

When some people get divorced they would really love to just kill there spouse. Most don't because they don't want to go to jail. I usally try not to speed because of the deterant of fines and my insurance going up.

We have to stop acting like when someone, be it a kid or who ever does something that it is not their fault, that it must be something else that caused them to do it. That is BS it's their fault don't matter if they had a bad life or not. Its to bad, so sad but now you do the time.

Trust me I am sure there are some of us here that have at one time or another would really have loved to just kill someone for something they did to us. For instance my daughters step-dad molested her. I sure would like to just kill him. Most would say they would, including myself before it happen. The reason I don't kill him is because there is a deterant holding me back. It's called prison time and bending over for big baba that stops from doing so. It there was no law that would have me going to prison for killing him I would have done so by now. So please dont repeat what the liberals say (prison is not a deterant, the death sentence is not a deternant) it is to people that already follow the law and have responsibility.

 

And what drastic change takes effect between the ages of 12 and 13 that you suddenly realize the difference between right and wrong? Maybe, being that this is your first year as a 'teenager', you discover that sticking your hand on a hot stove will burn you? I don't understand your logic whatsoever.