11-year-old boy to stand trial for mother's murder, motive suspected to be VR headset
3 years ago by deconstruct to c/news
An 11-year-old Wisconsin boy accused of murdering his mother has been ordered to stand trial.
The boy is charged with first-degree intentional homicide. The district attorney's office is seeking to try him as an adult. The court has ordered that the boy's name not be revealed because he may still be tried as a child.
In July, the court found the boy competent, according to court records.
Milwaukee Detective Timothy Keller testified in court on Tuesday about speaking with the boy about his mother's death.
The detective said he questioned the boy the next day and the then 10-year-old boy admitted shooting her but called it an accident, according to WISN.
"[The boy] stated that he took up a shooting stance and was pointing the gun at her as she was walking towards him and asking him to put it down. And that's when he indicated that he fired the gun with his intent to scare her by shooting the wall behind her," Keller testified.
"He had made a purchase on his mother's Amazon account for some virtual reality goggles the morning after this homicide occurred. And [family] were concerned because he had had an argument with her about whether he could have these prior to the homicide," Keller said.
American political culture has a strong vein of demanding everyone be "tough on crime", in the entirely mistaken belief that crime comes from not being harsh enough in sentencing. We also know that eleven year olds aren't fully competent adults and we have carve outs in juvenile law that reflect that obvious truth. The intersection of these two facts means that charging decisions on cases like the above depend as much on what the actual right way to charge is as they do on how much what the kid did frightens the general public. What that tends to end in is laws that say you can only charge a minor as an adult in exceptional cases and then a push to make every minor charged with a violent crime the exception.
Alright I can see how culturally you end up going in that direction.
Still, though, I can't fathom someone being smart enough to go through all that education to become a state prosecutor, then seeing a terrible story about a kid have access to a gun when they clearly shouldn't and killing their own mother through sheer childish stupidity and then coming to the conclusion that "you know what would reestablish justice in this situation? Injecting poison into that kid and watching him die."
Who's that person? What happened in their life to make them think like that?
It makes sense in obvious cases where a 16 or 17 year old commits an "adult" crime, but having it pushed to under 14 year olds is clearly misuse IMO
It doesn't matter, he still killed his mother and that is the reason why he's being tried.
The fact that he's a kid and did that makes the case more ironclad in the eyes of most: he's clearly a bad seed so he must be gotten rid of now to protect the lives and rights of everybody else.
Wow, you guys must have a very shallow understanding of what "childhood" and "justice" mean if the culprit being less responsible for their actions make the case more ironclad.
Edit: nvm I've looked at your profile after seeing some of your unhinged comments here ; I now fully believe you are eleven yourself and under the delusion that you are, in fact, an adult.
A bad seed? Trim the bad ones for the sake of the future?
Would you put the neurodiverse into a gas chamber for being a burden on society, too?
My lord, you need some help.
This is a kid, it's an accident, a tragic one. He's going to need a psychiatrist his entire life. The punishment is he will live with it.
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I don't understand the US thing about trying children as adults. The whole thing about children is that they're not adults, what's the point of having specific laws to protect children if you're just going to ignore them? What possible argument could there be that a 11 year old is an adult?
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