http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08/12/jonesboro.shooter/index.html


This is seriously fucked up...little bastard should of never saw daylight again.

Very seriously fucked up....he should have been tried as an adult.

It's rough for the families involved, and in a couple years the other guy gets out.

But let me play Devil's Advocate for a minute. What is the purpose of our juvenile justice system? Revenge? Rehabilitation? Does anyone believe that crimes such as this would be prevented by life imprisonment (Deterrence)? What do we want for our tax dollar? Does society net anything from locking this guy up for life?

Can 13 and 11 year olds -- hardly fully developed, capable of fully controlling their impulses, and certainly not able to assist in their own legal defense -- be held accountable in the same way as adults for their actions? If you'd claim "yes," then how do you mesh this view with other social realities related to youth (e.g., Is there any state where a 13 and 11 year old could be married? Why not?)

Do you/we want more severe punishment (i.e., life/death sentence) because it's just, or because it makes us feel better about the whole thing?

This is a shitty situation all around, but my main problem right now is the lack of a record. This kid could get his name changed, buy firearms, and no one would be the wiser in his new neighborhood. Hell, even EverQuest doesn't allow that!

Eye for an eye imo.

:devil

You look at it case by case.

This wasn't a case of little johnny was playing with his fathers gun and it went off killing his friend. This was pre meditated cold blooded killing.

The crime was substantially higher than the punishment and I believe its all been changed since this case went to trial. They can and will be charged/trialed as adults in situations such as this.

are you really saying a 13 year old should get the death penalty Trikki? That's way to harsh. There definately should be no death penalty for 13 and 11 year olds, come on. Sure they "knew" what they were doing, but I know at 13 I had nowhere near the concept of consequences that I have now or even when i was 18. It's ridiculous to even infer that a 13 and 11 year old should be given the chair.

That's not to say I think he should be getting out of jail now, should they have been tried as adults without the possibilty for a death sentence, probably. Of course it would have just been easier if they took their life after this like all the other school killings, right Trikki?

Your right Taleren the Chair is way to harsh. I say put them in Colorado's super max for the rest of their lives. Nothing like looking at a wall of a 7X11 cell 23 hours and 45 minutes a day 7 days a week with out ever seeing another human being. 11-13 year olds who take the time to gather the guns, go to a public building and pull the fire alarm to give them easy targets...are not your typical 11-13 year old. They simply do not belong in society....EVER.

are you really saying a 13 year old should get the death penalty Trikki? That's way to harsh.

Of course it would have just been easier if they took their life after this like all the other school killings, right Trikki?

You don't hear about too many school shootings in other countries where penalties are alot more harsh then ours. You're right though, killing a 13 year old child is dispicable no matter what that child does....however, let's wait til he hits 18 or 21 then do it. That way they have something to look forward to while they are sitting in "rehabilitation classes in prison."

Suicide after a crime of that magnitude is cowardly, I hope if we have an after life...they get what they deserve.

Even if we rehab this kid and send him on the streets. What kind of a person can he be? He will always have the memory of what he did and the guilt, if he is truly rehabilitated.

Eye for an eye. imo.

:devil

Eye for an eye doesn't make sense. The purpose of the justice system shouldn't be to provide punishment simply because somebody deserves it. While we might feel satisfied in thinking we've done the right thing, we've accomplished nothing. The justice system should be designed to do two things: one, provide punishment in order to deter future crime, and two, cull away the members of our society that cannot cooperate in an acceptable manner. This mindset is very common, simply because it's easier to consult our emotions than our intellect.

If you don't believe me, consider the fact that it generally costs more to execute someone than it does to keep them in jail for life; the death penalty is essentially socially palatable revenge.

While execution is a little extreme, I do believe he should be punished for it. Its true that at 13 he doesnt have the mindset to think about how doing that would affect his life, but he thought enough to actually commit the crime. Its not like he sat around saying "I feel like killing someone today..." HE stole the weapon! If he's given a slap on the wrist, who's to say that it wouldn't happen again? By slap on the wrist I mean his record was cleared. That, to me, is ridiculous. They just let him go, regardless of what he did and how many people it affected.

Not totally true and almost impossible these days to prove when talking about the cost of execution versus life in prison. You do realize prisoners are generally living longer these days and are afforded more comforts of living than say prisoners 20 years ago when people could boldly state...execution flat out no matter what costs more than life in prison.

The bulk of the costs of the death penalty come not from the cases that end in executions, but rather from the many cases which end shy of the death penalty being carried out.

A person who is imprisoned for life has every right and an awful long time to tie up court systems with appeals after appeals while sitting in jail for life. The death penalty to me is a safety factor for our citizens of this country..should not even consider the costs. In this case..I'd say its a safety factor.

Life imprisonment would have been acceptable to me in this case. This guy will need to be watched carefully. If he tries to obtain a weapon, nab him and toss him in the pokey for good.

Is it possible he will never commit a felony again? Sure. Unfortunately, I get the feeling its only a matter of time before he tries to kill someone else.

Life imprisonment would have been acceptable to me in this case. This guy will need to be watched carefully. If he tries to obtain a weapon, nab him and toss him in the pokey for good.

Is it possible he will never commit a felony again? Sure. Unfortunately, I get the feeling its only a matter of time before he tries to kill someone else.

I think it said his record was wiped clean, meaning he can buy and own weapons if he so chooses.

Yeah put him in jail for life. At least that way...we know who we are giving our tax dollars to. Electric chair is expensive as is the needle. Firing squad would only be the price of a bullet and the conscience of the man or woman firing it. Old school like, or even a public hanging to "deter" future crimes as Roliel stated.

Screw rehabbing the kid, there is no rehab for the kids and the teacher that he murdered. Eye for an eye.

:devil

That sounds like a policy right out of the Saddam dictatorship manual. What would Senator John Glenn say if he knew you were supporting the enemy's doctrine, you Jane Fonda?

yeah let's hang a 13 year old, that will proove to the rest of the world how good of a place the US is. Not to mention that type of punishment is completely against any human rights world wide. I like you Trikki, but in this case you are completely talking out your ass.

If we can execute them, I guess at 13 they are smart enough to drink, drive, vote, buy legal handguns, buy smokes, GO NUTS!! You can't execute someone like an adult unless they are afforded the same rights as adults... period. There is a reason the voting age was lowered to 18 in the 20th Century. It wasn't right to send our soldiers into war if they couldn't at least vote. You simply can't punish a kid like an adult if that's the only way you think it's fair to treat them like an adult.

You don't get any rights outside what your parents give you, but if you fuck up badly enough you can be put to death! Come the fuck on, get real.

That sounds like a policy right out of the Saddam dictatorship manual. What would Senator John Glenn say if he knew you were supporting the enemy's doctrine, you Jane Fonda?

She really was a traitor

A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED
KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA

This is for all the kids born in the 70's who do
not remember, and didn't have to bear the
burden that our fathers, mothers and older
brothers and sisters had to bear.

Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the
"100 Women of the Century."

BY BARBRA WALTERS

Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still
countless others have never known how Ms.
Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country,
but specific men who served and sacrificed
during Vietnam.


The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot.

The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat.

In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF
Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison
the "Hanoi Hilton."

Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell,
cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was
ordered to describe for a visiting American
"Peace Activist" the "lenient and humane
treatment" he'd received.

He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was
dragged away.
During the subsequent beating, he fell forward
on to the camp Commandant's feet, which
sent that officer berserk.

In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from
double vision (which permanently ended his
flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied
application of a wooden baton.

From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the
47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the
"Hanoi Hilton",,, the first three of which his
family only knew he was "missing in action".
His wife lived on faith that he was still alive.
His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and
clothed routine in preparation for a
"peace delegation" visit.
They, however, had time and devised a plan to
get word to the world that they were alive
and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny
piece of paper, with his Social Security Number
on it, in the palm of his hand.

When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a
cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each
man's hand and asking little encouraging
snippets like: "Aren't you sorry you bombed
babies?" and "Are you grateful for the humane
treatment from your benevolent captors?"
Believing this HAD to be an act, they each
palmed her their sliver of paper.
She took them all without missing a beat. At the
end of the line and once the camera stopped
rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs,
she turned to the officer in charge and handed
him all the little pieces of paper.

Three men died from the subsequent beatings.
Colonel Carrigan was almost number four
but he survived, which is the only reason we
know of her actions that day.

I was a civilian economic development advisor
in Vietnam, and was captured by the North
Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in
1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.




I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one
year in a cage in Cambodia; and one year
in a "black box" in Hanoi.
My North Vietnamese captors deliberately
poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a
nurse in a leprosarium in Ban me Thuot, South
Vietnam, whom I buried in the jungle near the
Cambodian border.
At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs.
(My normal weight is 170 lbs.)


We were Jane Fonda's "war criminals."

When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi, I was asked by
the camp communist political officer if I would
be willing to meet with her.




I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real
treatment we POWs received... and how
different it was from the treatment purported by
the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as
"humane and lenient."




Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky
floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched
with a large steel weights placed on my hands,
and beaten with a bamboo cane.




I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda
soon after I was released. I asked her
if she would be willing to debate me on TV.
She never did answer me.




These first-hand experiences do not exemplify
someone who should be honored as part
of "100 Years of Great Women."
Lest we forget..." 100 Years of Great Women"
should never include a traitor whose hands are
covered with the blood of so many patriots.






There are few things I have strong visceral

reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in
blatant treason, is one of them.
Please take the time to forward to as many
people as you possibly can.
It will eventually end up on her computer and
she needs to know that we will never forget.
RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt, USAF
716 Maintenance Squadron, Chief of
Maintenance
DSN: 875-6431
COMM: 883-6343

Please do not ever refer to me as that traitorous bitch again. If you think Sadam Hussein's regime was eye for an eye then you are really not as smart as you sometimes appear.

My opinion is what it is. Don't agree with me fine, call me a traitor when I am willing to go to Iraq on September 11th and support our President's decisions....Fuck you. Serously fuck you. enjoy the freedoms you have today from the efforts that Your military provide you. :spade

:devil

And by no means am I excusing these CHILDREN for what they did, it was completely deplorable. There is no way these crimes should be striken from the record. How long should they have remained in prison/juvee? no idea, but 8 years isn't enough. Should they ever get out? I dunno, probably not, they probably aren't going to be able to be rehabilitated.

I didnt say hang a 13 year old Taleren. I said wait til he's 18 or 21 then hang him. :)

:devil

he was a 13year old when he commited the crime, it doesn't change ANYTHING by simply waiting til he's 18-21 to execute him. He would have had to be condemned to death before his 18th birthday to be held that long. Simply delaying the punishment still doesn't rectify the issues i said in my prior posts.

and while you don't like what sanchek is saying, he was simply responding to your obviously barbaric desires to see public executions which are outlawed in the states but were perfectly "legal" under Saddam's regime as a means to "deter" the masses. While his Jane Fonda referance was off base, his comparison to what you desire and Saddam's old regime is perfectly on line.

Well...at least she's cute. :rolleyes:

yes she is

Thank you. :p

:devil

We need one of those cool islands like in "Escape from New York".... That would be fun to watch on PPV.....

I smell a new reality show in the works...

A similar event happened in England recently:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/bulger.asp (http://<font%20color=/)

The article linked has some insight as to why the record was wiped and a new identity was given.

I've read more than once that the male human brain doesn't really stop developing until about the age of 25, and that during the early teenage years a good deal of the formation about who you are is done. I'm not an expert so I'm not going to expound on it at length. Still, if it is true (and it does seem to be) perhaps redirecting this person's development really could enable him to fit into society again.

There are people who clearly can't fit into society. I've stood in the execution chamber at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. It is a sobering place, to be sure. It wasn't until that moment that I could really say that I was for or against the death penalty. As it stands, I'm not opposed to it, but I think our current implementation and system needs a complete overhaul.
(edit: URL fixed)

While I would be happy to share an opinion on this matter, My lunch hour is short today, and so I will just say that whether he deserves to be kept locked up forever or not is something worthy of debate, but there should be no debate that the hollywood prodiucer that tries to buy his story for a made for TV movie should definitely be resoundly thrashed.

Let the punishment fit the crime. At 11 years old I knew not to kill people and I also knew once dead you dont come back. If you believe for one second these kids didn't know what they were doing, then I got ocean side property to sell you in Ariozona.

Death penalty aside...

As far as being 12 and not knowing right from wrong. I sure as hell don't know where you some of you grew up but by age 12 in Wisconsin you can walk in the woods with a powerful rifle and kill an animal ..legally. You can take a class to drive a 120HP snowmobile at 100 mph across a frozen lake..you can take a class and get a license to drive dadys 40k Mastercraft Ski boat wake boarding. I knew exactly what I was doing at 12 years of age. Don't kid yourself.

You don't hear about too many school shootings in other countries where penalties are alot more harsh then ours.

That's more a factor of population density and reporting bias than anything else. By and large the CNN/FOX audience doesn't care when brown people kill each other. One of the few reported cases this year involved multiple armed men executing numerous elementary-school aged children they took as hostages in Thailand, IIRC.

Also, the cost of death sentences cases versus life in prison is not something
intrinsic to killing the inmates, it has to do mostly with our appeals system. I'm not making a value judgement on that, other than to say that while I am all for the execution of violent criminals (which is debatably more humane than indefinite incarceration) I do not trust our current legal system to administer it.

My other thoughts on the issue have already been covered by other posters, but I do think that the current trend of punishment based on intent that our society has been on lately is a really bad idea. We have different laws for minors for a reason, and bumping them into adult status because something they did was particularly reprehensible is prurient at best.

enjoy the freedoms you have today from the efforts that Your military provide you.

That's bullshit. We have the same/more freedom than you guys here in Canada and we got a very shitty military that never *fought for our freedom* anywhere.

one could debate that Canada hasn 't had to fight for those freedoms because the US would fight for them if the need would arise.

That's true, but i think the freedoms that the people in a country has comes more from the decisions inside the country than military wars. A freedom i love to have is not having to worry about owing money for years if i get hit by a car or any big injury one day due to medical costs.

Sorry for hijacking, move along =P

That's true, but i think the freedoms that the people in a country has comes more from the decisions inside the country than military wars. A freedom i love to have is not having to worry about owing money for years if i get hit by a car or any big injury one day due to medical costs.

Sorry for hijacking, move along =P

Yeah...USA would be known as Western France right now. Move along. I can't stand Canookians. :gclub

:devil

This case has a bit of a parallel with A Clockwork Orange - keep in mind that Alex was fifteen at the beginning of the book, seventeen at the time of 'treatment.' Actually, it looks more severe: several counts of first-degree murder, quite premeditated, versus a single felony murder (nonpremeditated, during the commission of a different felony) plus lesser crimes.

It wouldn't be right to fry minors, but a lifetime in prison would probably be just the ticket.

Lets look at the article:

The boys had stolen weapons from Golden's grandfather, pulled the school's fire alarm and then waited in the woods for teachers and students to gather outside before they opened fire.

Brilliantly simple tactics. There would be no need to worry about smuggling in a gun ( in this case a pretty sizable cache of hunting rifles) past whatever security the school had. Use the systems in place to lure out the victims. It required some thought, and thus premeditation. Also the fact tht they waited for them to assemble away from cover, as opposed to just spraying them with bullets as they emerged from the building is pretty damn cold blooded and calculating. At age 13 these kids employed far more cunning than the brazen brute and mindless force the older Columbine shooters exhibited when they walked in the front door and opened fire at whoever.

At least at Columbine, the 2 shooters did the world a favor by doing onto themselves what society is too weak and forgiving to do: put them down. Any law officer who encountered those two Jonesboro boys opening fire on those students and teachers would have done the same, handling the situation just like any law officer would have had he or she encountered any other murderer in the act of taking lives. Long story short is that Trikki is right.

Fry em. 13 years old or not, they are damaged goods and should have been put down.

Then leave it to the experts and shrinks to determine if it was pop culture, poor parenting, ADHD, expired Ritalin prescriptions, or the rifle manufacturers that are the best scapegoat afterwards and try to find a way for those associated with these industries to be seperated from their freedom and their cash.

Instead, they can drive a car, get a pilots license, vote, buy guns, join the military, drink alcohol and enjoy all the freedoms of society after murdering in cold blood FIVE people and serving a light 8 year sentence? They are the luckiest mass murderers alive. I hope they put that on their future job resumes and see how far it gets them in the lives they should not even still have.

Instead, they can drive a car, get a pilots license, vote, buy guns, join the military, drink alcohol and enjoy all the freedoms of society after murdering in cold blood FIVE people and serving a light 8 yet sentence? They are the luckiest mass murderers alive. I hope they put that on their future job resumes and see how far it gets them in the lives they should not even still have.

Quoted for truth. I agree 100%.

Any law officer who encountered those two Jonesboro boys opening fire on those students and teachers would have done the same, handling the situation just like any law officer would have had he or she encountered any other murderer in the act of taking lives.

That's a completely inaccurate parallel. Those police officers would be trying to prevent more deaths; they wouldn't be administering justice or punishment. I can't say whether or not the kid should have gotten the chair, but doing so only because he deserves it is extremely poor judgement.

You know, my country might be a shitty place to live (at least thats my oppinion) but here parents are responsible for their kids actions if the kids are minors.

If a kid pulls something like this here (very rare stuff, I guess for a reason) then the kid goes to correction for a decade and the parents go to jail.

If a kid pulls something like this here (very rare stuff, I guess for a reason) then the kid goes to correction for a decade and the parents go to jail.

Sucks if your kid is a little bastard, but I guess it gives parents extra incentive.

Roliel, you are correct in your remark in that the police would not be dispensing any kind of vigilante justice. They would be taking life to prevent more death. Police can take down a gunman at the very threat of the gunman using deadly force, nevermind actually shooting at victims. My implication is that the age of the perpetrators would be irrelevent and perhaps I should have elaberated more. If they were 13 or thirty, its still a human taking the lives of other humans in a calculated matter and the police would not be judging the situation on "whether or not they diserved it" but instead acting on their training as per the situation dictates. The so called justice part was left up to the courts, and the courts awarded a wrist slap. Those lost lives came cheaply in terms of justice.

Anyway, had their been law officers present, those 2 shooters would have been dead. Had they been tried as adults they would have been dead, either by execution or a lifetime of maximum security walls.