One lawmaker is pushing for harsher penalties for teens convicted of rape in Tennessee.
The new legislation comes after two then-13-year-old boys were convicted of holding down a Clarksville girl, raping her and filming it. Just when the girl’s family thought they would get justice, a judge handed down a sentence of only six months in juvenile detention for one boy and six months probation at home for the other. Neither boy was added to the state’s sex offender registry. Full Article
So are you saying the registry is punishment?
Also, you either try all minors as adults or non. Why is that some crimes are “they’re just children!” and others are “they should’ve known better!”. It’s one or the other, you can’t have both.
It appears another case of “making a law based upon emotion”.
Now, this ability to arbitrarily state when a minor is someone who doesn’t possess knowledge or when a minor is someone who can now be charged as an adult because they have knowledge reveals the inequality of laws.
The best way to expose a bad law is to execute it to its fullest. Put all children on the registry if there exists this arbitrary choice of when a minor is a minor or when a minor is an adult.
Couple of thoughts here:
1. Isn’t there already a provision to try minors as adults when circumstances warrant it? Why wouldn’t it apply to rape? Guessing the DA down there didn’t want any possible political blowback, considering he probably tows the (idiotic) state line that 13-year-olds who deal dope or commit armed robbery are perfectly capable of thinking for themselves and mature enough to appreciate the consequences of their actions, yet too stupid to decide if they want to have sex or not. Come to think of it, if kids are to stupid to make their own choices regarding sex, wouldn’t that include whether or not to rape? Good luck getting a straight answer there.
2. ANY law written in response to an isolated incident is ALWAYS BAD, particularly when there are provisions in the law that could/would have adequately addressed it already. Most of the time (if not all), the new law wouldn’t have done anything to prevent or alleviate the incident that inspired it in the first place.
3. All this law does is grant the DA the discretion to charge minors accused of sex offenses as adults, something he probably already had. If the victim/family or the idiot legislator who wrote this bill have a problem with how it was prosecuted, they need to pick it up with the DA.
4. So they finally acknowledge that putting a juvenile on the registry would ruin his life. Don’t know how registering juveniles ruins their lives, yet registering adults is merely regulatory. Again, good luck getting straight answers.