Immaturity, Normative Competence, and Juvenile Transfer: How (Not) to Punish Minors for Major Crimes
2004; Texas Law Review Association; Volume: 82; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1942-857X
Autores Tópico(s)Education Discipline and Inequality
ResumoI. Introduction In response to perceived increases in violent youth crime, the last two decades have witnessed a national trend toward getting tough on youth crime and holding youthful offenders more accountable. A central element in this national trend is the transfer of juveniles to adult criminal court, where the consequences of conviction are in various ways much more severe than they are in juvenile court. Prosecutors have long had discretion to prosecute older, mature juveniles who are repeat offenders as adults, and judges in juvenile court have long had the power to issue waivers or transfers that reassign these kinds of juveniles to adult court after a hearing in juvenile court. But in the attempt to get tough on violent juvenile crime, both the judicial waiver and prosecutorial discretion have expanded with the result that more juveniles are being transferred to adult court at younger ages for a broader variety of crimes.1 Many states have gone so far as enacting legislation requiring mandatory transfer of juveniles to adult criminal court based on age, offense, or both. For example, California (the state in which I reside) recently enacted Proposition 21, which requires the transfer to adult criminal court of all juveniles over the age of 14 charged with certain serious criminal offenses, including murder and various sexual offenses.2 Emblematic of the transfer trend is the notorious case of Lionel Tate.3 In Florida in 1999, when he was twelve years old, Lionel Tate brutally killed six-year-old family friend Tiffany Eunick in his home. Lionel alleged that they were wrestling and that he was imitating body slams and other tactics employed by professional wrestlers that he watched on television. Tiffany suffered a fractured skull, a lacerated liver, and many other injuries from being kicked, punched, and thrown about the room-injuries that proved fatal. The prosecutor decided to try Lionel as an adult, apparently in response to the sensational nature of his crime. Lionel was offered a chance to plead to second-degree murder and a reduced sentence, but his mother refused the plea bargain on the ground that Lionel had not intended to kill Tiffany.4 Lionel was convicted of first-degree murder, which in Florida carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.5 In response to public outcry over Lionel's sentence, he was recently granted a retrial and subsequently accepted substantially the same plea bargain that he had earlier refused.6 Lionel's brutal crime was shocking and tragic. But even more shocking was his prosecution and sentencing as an adult. Twelve-year-olds are immature cognitively and emotionally in ways that render them not fully responsible, and to sentence someone to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole at that age is to give up on someone as incorrigible before his character has even been formed.7 Permanent injustice was averted in Lionel's case by virtue of his retrial and subsequent plea agreement. This might be reassuring if Lionel's first trial was aberrational. Sadly, it is not. The national trend to try juveniles accused of serious crimes as adults is unmistakable.8 The transfer trend is deeply flawed. Juvenile crime deserves punishment, and serious juvenile crime deserves serious punishment. Moreover, some juveniles-especially older, more mature juveniles who are repeat offenders-may deserve to be tried and punished in adult criminal court. But the trend to try ever younger juveniles as adults based solely on the gravity of their crimes is mistaken and unjust. One reason the trend is mistaken depends on a retributive conception of punishment, according to which the guilty deserve punishment and should be punished in proportion to the magnitude of their guilt, where guilt is a function not only of the wrong one commits or the harm one causes but also of the culpability or responsibility one bears for the wrong or harm. …
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