Legal Commentary

No Matter the Alleged Crime, A 14 Year Old Kid Is Still A Kid

By TChris

Kearie Brown is charged with felony murder in Kansas City. She allegedly shot a 16-year-old in the head as he tried to drive away from a carjacking. Kearie was 13 at the time.

Understandably, the victim's father finds it difficult to wrap his head around the accusation that a 13-year-old girl killed his son.

"It's hard to even begin to know how to feel about it. I can't hate a child," said [Scott] Sappington Sr.

At 14, Kearie is indeed a child. But when she goes to court she'll be tried as if she were an adult. It is as if the juvenile justice system hates children. [more ...]

Three or four decades ago, a juvenile justice "reform" philosophy took hold in state legislatures that were increasingly dominated by "tough on crime" politicians. With scant evidence to support their views, legislators loudly proclaimed that the rehabilitative approach to juvenile justice was sending the wrong message by sparing the rod. The "reforms" emphasized punishment over rehabilitation. A particularly popular law allowed (or required) children who committed serious or repeated crimes to be charged, tried, and punished as adults. Juveniles (sometimes as young as 12) were to be waived to adult court if they were "like adults" or committed "adult crimes" or couldn't be adequately punished or rehabilitated in juvenile detention before reaching the age at which state law required their release.

At the time, it was clear to the clear-headed that waiving a child into adult court did not turn the child into an adult. In the years that followed, research into adolescent brain development revealed that

young people’s brains are not fully developed until they reach their early twenties. As a result, children lack the capacity for adult level reasoning or a full realization of the consequences of their actions.

Brain research "confirm[s] what we have always known: kids are different." The research should convince fair-minded people that it is unfair to impute adult culpability to children whose brains have not fully developed the capacity to reason and plan.

Unfortunately, fair-minded reform has not reached the Kansas court that will subject 14-year-old Keaire Brown (who, according to her lawyer, is troubled by mental illness in addition to immaturity) to the risks associated with an adult prosecution.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 30, 2009 (boomark / email).