8 year old to be tried as "adult"

Children are highly suggestible and require different handling, said "In Session" anchor Lisa Bloom, who represented sexually abused children as an attorney. Children are eager to please, she said, anxious to give adults the answers the child thinks the adult wants to hear.

"Cases are legion where juveniles have been coerced into making false confessions," she said. "All you have to do with an 8-year-old is make it clear what answer you want."

All 15 year olds think they're adults but they're not and neither are you.
I thought I was an adult when I was 15 too.
I respect where you're coming from.

There are physiolocial differences
in the brains of adults and teenagers.

Sadly, the only way to discover the difference is to actually become an adult.

aperson, Should an 8 year old be allowed to vote,
join the army,
buy alcohol,
drive a car,
have sex,
enter into a legal contract?
I think not.
They do not have the judgement to do so.
It's not just a matter of knowing right from wrong,
it's the deeper issue of having the mental judgement to know
how these things will effect your life. An 8 year old does not
understand what the final consequences of shooting someone can be.
This part of brain development is fairly well documented
and it's what will probably lead to him being tried as a minor.

It's not just a matter of knowing right from wrong,
it's the deeper issue of having the mental judgement to know
how these things will effect [sic] your life.

An 8 year old does not understand what the final consequences
of shooting someone can be.

Hmmmmmmmm ok I sumbit.
The reason being that you have made the clear distinction
that teenagers don't have the same capacity
to inhibit behaviour, which is definitely true.
Other people have just said that we're stupider,
or that we don't know right from wrong.

Many many years ago women were tried for murdering abusive husbands.
There was a movie on it that I remember seeing "the Burning Bed"

Seems to me a lot of what is missing in all of this is the boy's
motivation for killing (if he was not cooerced into his 'confession')

I was the only child of TWO alcholoic/drug addicted parents who
fought daily. Stepdad was quite verbally abusive to me and was
verbally and physically absuive to my mother and he quite likely
had a mental illness but that did not stop me from 1) knowing
where the household weapons were and how to use them and 2)
thinking that if I killed my stepdad I would not get the same some
of punishment as my mother would if she had killed him.

I did not kill him, but I wanted to...many many many times.

This little boy needs help, trying him as an adult just says to me
"We've given up on you already...there is no hope of making you
into a functioning member of society. "

Trust me when I say, as a child I saw no other way out of my situation.
If the boy was abused, he may have seen it simiarly and without
any additional support or resources in his household, we as a
society have failed him if we treat him like we would an adult.

If the boy confessed - is that the same thing as pleading guilty?

If so, that circumvents the whole trial (as an adult or otherwise) doesn't it?

I don't think it matters very much what sort of trial he receives.
I agree with David and Gunga that there's something very chilling
(and I believe somewhat innate) about an eight year old who
could erupt into this type of rage at having his wishes thwarted
and visit such violence upon unsuspecting people.

Because his dad and this other guy must have been caught
completely unaware for him to have been able to have killed them both.

That's what's the most scary to me.
Were they asleep when he shot them?

I would not want to live in the same house with this little boy -
even if he were my son. I would forever be afraid of him.

And if I wouldn't want him anywhere near me or my loved ones
(even if I loved him and he belonged to me) why would I think
that anyone else would ever be safe in his presence?

I don't know what the answer is - but I wouldn't count on therapy
or counseling to change this kid and keep anyone around him safe.
Some people are just really, really damaged. I don't know how
or why - and again, I feel there has to be something innate within
this boy. All sorts of children are abused and they don't plan and
carry out executions.

I'd visit him wherever he was put - but I'd be afraid to go to sleep
if he lived in my house. And that fact has some bearing on what
I think should happen to him.

I wouldn't even call it punishment. Punishment is adjunct to
discipline in that you're trying to teach a child than an action is wrong-
I think this kid wasn't worried about being right or wrong -
I think he just did what he felt like doing and so I think he should
be put in a situation in which he'd never be able to do what he
felt like doing to other people - because I definitely think he'd
probably feel like doing something like this again (to the next person who told him no).

Yeah. The latest on this is that the police are coming under fire
for the way this eight-year old was interrogated.
Kids are suggestible. It could still turn out that he didn't do it.

Apropos of interrogation methods, a lot of innocent adults
have gone to prison because investigators put an idea into a
child's head that he/she must have been sexually molested.

Apparently the defendant s name is Christian Romero.
His father was Vincent Romero.
Qua motivation, there was mention of his stepmother having hit him,
at his father 's request, for his failure to bring home some papers
from school. His confession indicated that after he shot his father,
he kicked him to see if he was a little bit alive, then thoughtfully
shot him again, because he did not want him to suffer,
so I guess that blows Gunga 's theory that he was a psychopath.

His confession might be thrown out for failure to give him
the Miranda warnings, but prosecutors will probably argue
that he was only being interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect,
when he blurted out a confession; it remains to be seen how that
goes over. I predict that the court will throw out the confession.


MagicBlackCat, if I were on a jury involving a defendant who
killed an abusive relative, I 'd be inclined to acquit.
U 'd have been safe in front of me, in those circumstances.

David

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Apparently the defendant s name is Christian Romero.
His father was Vincent Romero.
Qua motivation, there was mention of his stepmother having hit him,
at his father 's request, for his failure to bring home some papers
from school. His confession indicated that after he shot his father,
he kicked him to see if he was a little bit alive, then thoughtfully
shot him again, because he did not want him to suffer,
so I guess that blows Gunga 's theory that he was a psychopath.

His confession might be thrown out for failure to give him
the Miranda warnings, but prosecutors will probably argue
that he was only being interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect,
when he blurted out a confession; it remains to be seen how that
goes over. I predict that the court will throw out the confession.


MagicBlackCat, if I were on a jury involving a defendant who
killed an abusive relative, I 'd be inclined to acquit.
U 'd have been safe in front of me, in those circumstances.

David

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Ok, so the only difference I see
is the fact that he followed through with his actions.

He DID; he was not one to just leave a job half done.

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Children often have different ways of processing emotion
and if he had a casual manner
it may simply have been his natural reaction.

Yeah; I think that was Gunga 's thought.

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Verbal absuse leaves no physical scars but long lasting 'disturbing' thoughts
which can lead to mental illness and
I suppose what could appear to be physocpathic behavior.

Yeah; well, Gunga thinks its innate.

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As some posters argue, they would not trust to have a child of his type in their home.
I tend to disagree that because the child did this once,
he would do it again unless he was being treated similarly in a new environment.

Yeah, well u coud try it n see what happens.

Quote:

Again, it's more like society has given up on him, which is very very sad.

Well, I gotta say: when I was growing up,
it never occurred to me to consider whether society had given up on me or not.
I probably woud have preferred that society not be thinking about me.

Quote:

What has our country come to?

Well, u know, self-defense counts for a lot.





David

According to the police records, the boy told a Child Protective Services official that "when he reached one thousand spankings . . . that would be his limit. [The boy] kept a tally of his spankings on a piece of paper."

Despite his age, relatives suspected the boy immediately in the shootings. His grandfather told investigators: "If any 8-year-old was capable of doing this, [the boy] was", and the child's grandmother added: "I knew this was going to happen, they were too hard on [him]."

The boy told police he was smacked the day before the shootings for failing to finish schoolwork.

Police say he gave conflicting accounts about the shootings, initially saying he discovered the bodies when he returned home from school.

He later changed his story, admitting he shot each man twice to end their suffering after they had been shot by an unknown assailant.

In an interview whose contents was later released by police, the boy admitted he been angry with his father after the latter asked his stepmother to smack him for not bringing some schoolwork home.

At the end of the interview, he buried his head in his jacket. Asked by an officer what he was thinking, he replied: "I'm going to go to juvie."