Boy, 15, who fatally stabbed teenager he did not know in Birmingham is jailed for life
theguardian.com
Summary
A 15-year-old boy was sentenced to life in prison for fatally stabbing a stranger, Muhammad Hassam Ali, after a brief conversation in Birmingham city center. The second boy, who stood by, was sentenced to five years in secure accommodation. Ali’s family expressed their grief, describing him as a budding engineer whose life was tragically cut short.
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What basis do you have for presuming his incompetence?
The fact that he was unsupervised in public tells me he should be assumed to understand the concepts of right and wrong.
Now I don't know where you're from but around here four year olds are unsupervised in public. It's also not about the concept, but about what is considered right and what's wrong, and the self-control to not act on an overwhelming impulse from the unconscious. May I remind you that the frontal cortex, that which gives us the ability to pause and reconsider, is not fully developed at his age.
You have no idea what his psychology looks like, yet you're condemning him, and thousands more, by your principles. Unseen, unheard, and yep that -- unseen, unheard -- is one of the possible depth-psychological reasons why kids lash out like that. Not only do you, self-righteously, condemn him, you also might have created him by the habitual way in which you regard -- or rather don't regard -- people.
I suspect you misspoke. 4-year-olds require 24/7 supervision from a parent, guardian, or other caregiver in public or private. Failure to continuously supervise a 4-year-old you are responsible for is a chargeable offense.
It is about the capacity to understand right and wrong about a given act. Children much younger than 15 are expected to understand the general legal and moral implications of murder.
Untrue. I know he was subjected to numerous hearings and evaluations to determine his competency. He was found to not have sufficiently diminished capacity to excuse or mitigate his actions.
I'm sorry you're living under fascism.
Which does not mean that he is responsible for being the way that he is. Criminal insanity is a rare thing and, as a verdict, not actually that preferable. Doubly so criminal insanity as a juvenile, who are, yes, judged by different standards because their brains aren't there, yet.
I suggest you learn something about developmental psychology.
Ad hominem.
"The way he is" is "responsible for his own actions". He has been found to have the mental capacity necessary to comprehend the difference between the "rightness" and "wrongness" of jamming a knife into another human.
Some people should just never see the light of day again. This kid is one of them.
I'm not attacking your person, I'm attacking whatever backwater government you're living under for having such inane laws.
He has been found to have the capacity necessary to stand trial in juvenile court. Those standards are different than for adults because, and I'll say this again: Juveniles are not fully developed. They don't have the same mental capacity.
If, at the ripe age of 90, he's still messed up then I'd agree with you. But there's quite a couple of decades until then.
As said: You're out for blood, plain and simple. You know nothing of understanding, of forgiveness, or you would be more lenient, you know nothing about justice or you would take into account that he's a kid, and you certainly know nothing about developmental psychology.
You should be kept as far away from the justice system as possible. I don't consider you unredeemable, but by the way you dig in your heels and refuse to listen to arguments it's going to be a while before that restriction can be lifted.
You just "othered" me. You just called for me to be undemocratically removed from the political process, entirely because you don't agree with my opinions. I have not been tried or convicted in any crime, or otherwise been the subject of any sort of due process that would strip me of any rights or privileges.
Your position is therefore undemocratic.
I do, indeed, understand that children slowly bear more and more responsibility for their own actions as their cognition and experience increases. What you don't seem to understand is that the cognitive abilities and experiences necessary to comprehend the rightness and wrongness of murder are typically developed well before age 10. You further fail to understand that this kid possessed them. He knew what he was doing. This wasn't some youthful indiscretion, or a simple failure to control his impulses. This was a deliberate act. He specifically went looking to kill someone, and succeeded.
You asked me several comments up to consider my own behavior at age 15. I never murdered anyone, and I knew that murdering people was wrong before 15. Long before 15. The overwhelming majority of kids are sufficiently responsible to use deadly weapons for hunting and sport before reaching their teens.
Murder stops being tolerable as soon as the individual is capable of deliberately causing it. This kid was capable of such deliberation. He is irredeemable.
If your position was to kill all people of a particular skin color then my position would be the same. Democracy cannot work if fundamental rights are not protected from onslaught by people who, ultimately, would abolish democracy itself. Because that's where your path leads: Towards a failure to regard other people as people.
You still fail to acknowledge that that's not what it's about. It's about executive control. If an adult has an intrusive thought they have a very good grasp on blocking it, youth doesn't. If everything works well then they're simply exploration happy, like stupid bands, invent new makeup styles and re-invent the shopping cart race. If society messed them up at a fundamental level then things like murder can bubble up, and might not be stopped by the weak frontal cortex. That does not mean that they'll regret it, though: They're already perfectly capable of rationalising, and will do so to maintain a consistent self-image of themselves.
Did you understand anything of what I just wrote. Please rephrase it in your own words ("So you're saying that...") so I know we won't continue to talk past each other, there.
More generally speaking, there's an African saying: If a kid does not feel the warmth of the village they will find the warmth they deserve by setting it ablaze.
No. Life, liberty, rights, and privileges can - and should - be deprived upon conviction of a crime. The appropriate deprivation of rights and privileges as a sentence for murder is life imprisonment. Nothing of my opinion disregards any person as a person.
Your position, however, disregards the victim's rights as a person. Further, you have advocated for stripping me of my rights to participate in governance based solely on your dislike for my opinion.
You have justified fascism.
I summarily reject your suggestion that a 15-year-old is so lacking in their capacity for executive control that they can be excused of murder.
This wasn't an intrusive thought. This was a deliberate act.
By all means, be warm to the kid. Until he starts setting people on fire.
Life can and should be deprived? That's barbaric. Every civilised country has abolished the death penalty. Heck even parts of the US managed to abolish it.
So you reject reality. Which explains a lot.
And what if noone was warm to him, who is at fault when the village burns? I'd say the adults are. Punishing the kid is just them trying to cover up their own failures. A convenient scapegoat for their own failure to foster wholesome interactions.
Him.
It's a pretty simple concept. He is the one who performed the act. He is responsible.
Unless you can show the adults deliberately taught him to murder, I'd say no. If you can show they did that, they can join him in prison forever. But he doesn't get a pass.
I'm perfectly happy to blame the adults for a kid becoming a little shithead asshole. Not so much when the kid deliberately decides to murder someone.
You argued that 4-year-olds don't need supervision. Now you're arguing that 15-year-olds are incapable of being responsible for their own, deliberate actions; that their parents, guardians, or other individuals charged with supervising their behavior are responsible.
So if someone calls up an assassin to murder another person, the one who ordered the kill gets off scott-free?
Adults have a duty to raise kids well, just as they have a duty to file their taxes. If they cannot do so on their own, they have the right to be helped along by the rest of society. And, really, even if not there's that other (more famous) African saying: It takes a village to raise a kid.
Consider the alternative, or, rather, that really seems to be what you're implying: That children are responsible for their own upbringing. Next up: Babies are expected to grow their own food. Your potted petunia is responsible for its own watering.
If they have shown signs of being violent to their peers, yes of course they need supervision. And so does our 15yold. But that doesn't mean that we pre-emptively supervise every kid that way they'd never learn independence, and thus never truly become adults, they'd just spinelessly bow to the next random person who passes as an authority figure.
His upbringing isn't relevant to the issue. His deliberate actions are. He is generally responsible for his deliberate actions, regardless of how shitty a hand he was dealt.
We can give him some leniency on issues like contract law: He might not have the cognitive ability to understand an important legal document. He might not understand the value of money. He might not have the capacity for complex abstract thought, and should be protected from those who would exploit that and defraud him.
But Murder isn't an abstract concept. It's pretty simple. He isn't owed any societal protections for deciding to kill someone.