Reggie Bautista wrote:
> Which is exactly the point I was originally trying to make regarding
> execution of "children." If you have a country where executions are legal,
> as they are in the U.S., then you should be able to decide on a case-by-case
> basis, as the U.S. does, if someone who is under the age of 18 is mature
> enough to have made an informed-enough decision, that the punishment for
> that decision could be the death penalty.
>
> In other words, the Amnesty International report referred to execution of
> "children," many of whom were 16 or 17 and were determined to be
> adult-enough in other ways to be punished as an adult. By referring to
> these criminals as "children," AI was using emotionally charged language and
> obfuscating the facts.
Not quite. I think that a decision that some 'children' (persons that are
legally defined as minors below the age of 18, like it or not) are tried as
adults isn't based on assesing whether the person was mature enough to have made
an informed-enough decision, with in mind that the punishment for that decision
could be the death penalty. I think it is more a matter of moral outrage, public
involvement or even public interest that forms such a decision to a large
extent. So I doubt that such a decision can be considered impartial, fair and/or
repeatable. The more the media are involved the larger the chance that a minor
is tried as an adult. I don't think that that is OK, even though the divide is
choosen arbitrarily it is there for a reason. It is designed to protect a minor
and to enforce parental responsabillity. Which at the current level of extreme
individualism in society doesn't seem all that important anymore.
And why only make those exceptions as to the regard of criminal law? Suppose
that a briljant student who is exceptionally gifted and would depend on the
capabillity of getting independantly around at the age of 15 cannot have a
drivers license even if his whole future depends on it?
Sonja
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