Weekly Crime Poll: Life Sentences for Juveniles
Friday November 13, 2009
This week D.C. Sniper Muhammad was executed, however his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, was also convicted for murder in Virginia and Maryland. Because he was a juvenile at the time of the shootings, he was not eligible for the death penalty and instead received a life sentence. Now the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether or not life sentences for juveniles are cruel and unusual punishments.
Poll: Do you think life sentences for juveniles should be unconstitutional?
See Also: Photo: BigStockPhoto.com
Comments
The Government does nothing but send mixed signals on all there laws. Here is a very good example… 15, 16 and 17 year olds do not according to the law have the mental capacity to enter into a sexual relationship (can not give consent till 18 years of age.) in most states but yet in those same states they have the mental capacity to be held accountable and give life sentences for crimes. MAKES NO SENSE if they have the mental capacity to be held accountable for crimes then they have the mental capacity to make decisions.
Mental capacity is a way for a person to play crazy and keep from going to hail. Personally, if a child commits an adult crime, he or she needs to be given adult time. If they can kill, rape and steal, they need to go to places made just for people that do those crimes, prison. If you want crazy when you did it, you want be crazy when I send you to prison.
My dad was beaten to death in 1994 by four youths, ages 14, 16, 17 and 21 when they tried to mug him and he didn’t just merrily hand over his wallet. The four had been conning people and stealing for weeks.
Did their age make him any less dead? No! Did their age factor in one bit for him to even look human enough to have a viewing at his funeral? No! An axe handle breaking every bone in his face/skull meant that everyone but my husband and I said goodbye to a picture of my dad instead of his remains.
After beating him to death, they took his wallet and his truck, used his license to give them his home address and went to his house, stealing everything that they could carry. They were old enough to plan the whole thing out, having weapons on hand “in case” and had discussed what would happen if they killed someone (how to dispose of the body). If they were old enough to figure all of that out, they were old enough to pay for their adult crimes with adult sentences, but of course, all but the 21-year-old were pled down due to their age. Today, only one remains in prison. My dad is still dead. That isn’t much in the way of justice.