Sunday, November 8, 2009

Tragic cases could change juvenile sentencing laws

This article is talking about what multiple people think about teenagers and how they should be sentence when then commit a very strong and violent crime. There are two cases being brought to the Supreme Court shortly. They are going to talk about if juveniles can be sentences to life in prison without parole. There are people in this article that believe in that and there are people who don't. In this article there are two cases being looked at. The first is occurs in Allentown, Pennsylvania where a twelve year old girl was walking home from the park (a block in distance) when she was abducted but a seventeen year old boy. The girl was beaten, raped and strangled. Their was also evidence in his backpack that he had been planning this for a long time. He had a piece of paper that read, "26 things to do to a girl in the woods." The boy was convicted and tried as an adult and sentences to life in prison without parole. There's another case that is talked about in this article, about a boy who participated in a fight with boys that lived across town. A friend had asked him to come with and help him get revenge. They ended up killing the other boy because they beat him so bad with a baseball bat. He was sentenced with third degree murder served 20 years in prison and has just completed his parole. He is now mentoring with kids on the streets about violence. He thinks that juvenile shouldn't get life in prison without parole. The two families cases are soon to be reviewed by the Supreme Court to decide whether or not juveniles should be able to get convicted and possible bring the death penalty back into action.

In my opinion anyone who ever hurts or kills another person should automatically be sent to life in prison. I do understand that some people can change though. So I think that depending on the case and how severe that it gets they should most definitely get life in prison. The question is do they get parole. In the first case about the twelve year old girl, I think that the boy should absolutely get life in prison with parole. That was an act that was planned out and he must be sick in the head to think or want to do that. I don't understand how some people could even think about hurting someone else much less kill someone that's an extreme.

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