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Juvenile Offenders Should Be Tried In Adult Court Cases

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An adolescent is not allowed to drink, smoke, get married, or sign legal contracts because they aren’t capable of making mature decisions. In many poor communities, the only things adolescents see are crimes. Teenagers are like a sponge they absorb everything they see. Throughout many years, kids have committed crimes that have gotten them unreasonable sentences. From looking at many sources I found that teenagers don’t think of the consequences their actions might have on them. How race shouldn’t be a factor in the kid’s sentence. How some of the blame is on the justice system. Finally, I’ll be talking about what we can do as a community about it. Should juvenile offenders be tried in adult courts for crimes they have committed? For racism …show more content…

He committed this malicious crime because of the emotions Christopher had. His brain didn’t let him think rationally of what he was doing. The other case was of Cheri Carlson, author of Defense in Boy’s Killing Seeks Juvenile Justice: Teen, 14, Shouldn't be Tried as Adult, Lawyer, Other Say, did a case of a kid named Brandon. “On April 20, 2008, there was a shooting at a middle school. Before this tragedy occurred Larry said that he liked Brandon. Other students supported Brandon about the statement when he argued that Larry was bullying him” (Carson). This made Brandon mad and started to think with the emotional part of his brain. He didn’t think about the consequences his actions were going to have on him. “This led Brandon to kill Larry King. Larry was a gay student. This caused Brandon to be charged with a first-degree murder and a hate crime. Brandon was tried as an adult just after his 14th birthday. He is now going to prison for 21 years” (Carlson). This makes people mad because of how kids are being tried as adults knowing that they don’t think like adults. Silvia Nguyen, author of Minors Should Never Be Tried As Adults In Criminal Court, did a research suggesting

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Since Richard was only sixteen years when the incident occurred. At this age, adolescents are still developing their cognitive and emotional skills, and charging them as adults may not be appropriate. The justice system should take into account their age and consider the possibility of rehabilitation, rather than punitive measures. Furthermore, Richard had no previous incidents this severe, and it would be unfair to judge him based on one mistake he made as a teenager. Slater further informs us about how when you are young your brain is still developing and during that time your body is

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795 Words | 4 Pages

Also, experts stated that when adolescents are charged with homicides, they usually are set to juvenile courts because everything is simpler and less harsh on the kids. The attorney states in this news article that it only made sense to charge him as an adult because the only other option was to

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1175 Words | 5 Pages

The narrative begins in 1993 with the sickening murder of Shirley Crook by seventeen-year-old Christopher Simmons. The Missourian had plotted to, “… commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up the victim, and throwing that victim off a bridge” (543 US 551, at 556-57). When the disfigured body of Mrs. Crook was located, authorities arrested Simmons who quickly confessed to the killing and was sent to court to be tried as an adult. During the trial, both the prosecutor and defense applied Simmons’ age as a justification for their arguments. The defense stated that Simmons’ age was a mitigating factor, citing several legal limitations on the capabilities of minors and in opposition, the prosecutor argued that it was actually

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1027 Words | 5 Pages

That would meanz that he would be in jail for the rest of his life. But at the same time he would learn a tough lesson in one of the toughest places... jail. But McCrea argues that a kid should not be charged as an adult because, “Adult prisons do more harm then good for the person and it can affect them mentally. McCrea’s argument is meant to protect the kid so that they are not hurt. Murdering a person should be taken very seriously and taken to the highest punishment.

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1532 Words | 7 Pages

Children are still learning and making mistakes every single day. They are in a transition to adulthood but they are not yet adults. Frequently, in juvenile cases it seems as though the prosecutors want to throw the child into an adult world just because they made one adult mistake. Since children are being forced into the adult world, they can be mistreated simply because a child is defenseless and vulnerable. Charlie illustrated this fact to a great extent when he is too terrified to talk to even Bryan, but eventually Bryan got through to Charlie, “‘There were three men who hurt me on the first night.

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974 Words | 4 Pages

Not only did the prosecutors charge the young teenager with second degree murder, they also tried him as an adult. Haberman explains how if this had happened 20 years previous, the media would have seized in how America was to soon be taken over by “super-predators.” In the so called ‘super-predator era’, children incarceration rates were expected to rise drastically and people across the country were expecting panic and bloodbath to conquer the land. Although, Haberman is quick to debunk this hypothesis and argues that instead “murders committed by those ages 10 to 17 fell by roughly two-thirds from 1994 to 2011, according to statistics kept by the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention” (Haberman). Although, data doesn’t stop states from issuing children life sentences and trying teenagers as young as 13-years-old as adults.

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805 Words | 4 Pages

As he faced justice through the court system, advocates unnecessarily argued that he was only a child and too young to serve as an adult. To show that an individual’s age should not be used as an excuse to justify their actions, Weir states “Some juveniles commit crimes so serious, so heinous, that public safety mandates — and justice demands — full accountability in our criminal justice system. There are those who argue this is unfair and unjust. They say the juvenile brain is not fully developed until well into the

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1029 Words | 5 Pages

Within another case Stevenson says, “I decided to take on the case. We got Charlie’s case transferred to juvenile offense. That meant that Charlie wouldn’t be sent to an adult prison, and he would likely get out before he turned eighteen” (103), this may not seem like the biggest win to some, but this allowed for a child who had been thrown a lot to have a life away from what he had done as well as what happened to

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1266 Words | 6 Pages

In her essay, “The Irrationality of Life Sentences”, Jennifer Lackey shares that there are biological factors that contribute to a child’s differing thought processes. She says that “the prefrontal cortex of the brains of adolescents is still developing, and so they are more likely than adults to act on impulse, engage in dangerous or risky behavior, and misread social cues and emotions” (Lackey 1089). These biological differences, and the childhood lack of brain development, are causes for children to commit crime. Though they do not excuse the behavior, they should be taken into account empathetically. If these aspects were to be taken into further consideration in the future,

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1250 Words | 5 Pages

“I, personally, am not willing to send anyone but the worst criminals to jail, because I do not believe in judicial rape. The punishment does not fit the crime”- Ian Welsh (Cognitive Dissonance). Everyday teens are being tried as adults and are going to adult prison with life sentences. Teens who haven't even lived a third of their life yet, are about to spend the rest of their life in prison getting rapped on the daily, are suffering from mental trauma, and being brutally beaten by prison gang members. All this can be avoided if it wasn't so easy for teens to be tried as adults.

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1247 Words | 5 Pages

Juveniles Should Not Be Tried as Adults In February of 2009, police found the body of “twenty-six year old Kenzie Houk... with a bullet in her head” (Chen). The murder suspect: eleven year old Jordan Brown, her future step-son. At the time, Jordan was an energetic, little fifth-grader. He was just like any other boy. He loved riding his bike, reading Harry Potter, playing football, and spending the weekends hunting with his dad.

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506 Words | 3 Pages

We have seen today in society of how crime rates have been rampant and how statistics show that most of the crimes were being made by minors. I believe that when most of them look at the bottom of these young offenders come disproportionately from impoverished single-parent homes that are located in the neighbourhoods desinvertido and have high rates of learning disabilities, mental health, and substance abuse and problems with the help of the system of juvenile justice that can make a great return on a successful transition to adulthood. Their ages ranged from 20 and under, most are under fifteen years of age. Juveniles tried as adults must assume the same consequences as any other criminal and are subject to state prisons with inmates much higher and that have probably committed crimes much more tortuous then you could ever have. These minors between the ages of nine to twenty according to the offence committed or of the number of times that are prosecuted and believe that it is immutable.

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1160 Words | 5 Pages

Therefore, when a person argues that a juvenile was not aware of their crime is a discrediting claim. In 1990 in the city of Chicago, a couple expecting their first child were murdered in cold blood in the hands of a juvenile teen. The teen shot both the husband and the wife who pleaded for their lives and the life of their unborn child. Author of “Juvenile Justice Information Exchange”, Jennifer Jenkins states, “He reported to a friend, who testified at his trial, about his ‘thrill kill’ that he just wanted to ‘see what it would feel like to shoot someone’”. This killer was aware of his crime and was aware of who his victims were due to planning the murders months before.

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1979 Words | 8 Pages

In today’s world there are countless crimes committed every single day. “In 2015, there were 1.42 million total arrests, at a rate of 3,641 arrests per 100,000 residents” (State of California, Department of Justice). Grown adults are not the only people being arrested every year, there are also juveniles, children, being arrested every day. One topic of controversy today is whether or not juveniles who commit these crimes should be tried as adults in criminal court. There are many differences between the justice system for adults and the justice system for juveniles.

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1291 Words | 6 Pages

Even children have the capability to act and think the way as an adult would. Juveniles need to be held accountable for their actions because it was their actions that caused for them to be put in such a situation. 13 year old Derek King and his 12 year old brother, Alex, were being charged of bludgeoning their father, Terry King, to death. In the book, “Angels of Death,” by Gary C. King stated, “I hit him once and then I heard him moan and then I was afraid that he might wake up and see us, so I just kept on hitting him... I threw the bat on the bed, lit the bed on fire because I was scared of the [evidence] and everything.

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