Two years ago federal prosecutors won a delinquency finding against a boy accused of engaging in sex acts when he was 10 years old with other young boys on an Army base in Arizona—one of the youngest defendants ever pursued by the U.S. Justice Department.
The case, now being reviewed by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, could open a new front in a long-running debate about how to handle juvenile sex offenders, whose cases generally have been tried in state, not federal, courts. The records are sealed because the defendant was tried as a juvenile, but the case came to light in September at an appellate hearing in San Francisco that was open to the public.
The boy’s appeal involves a thorny legal question: Should children be prosecuted for sex acts with other children under a federal law that the boy’s lawyers say was designed to target adult predators? The fight also highlights a broader debate over tagging juveniles as criminal sex offenders, a label that can land them a spot on registries that track offenders and limit where they can live. Article from the Wall Street Journal (pdf)
thats just crazy,doesn’t culpability mean something, the feds just do as they please. There is not an adult among us that didn’t as children “play” dr.with other consenting though nieve play mates as children to children.. thank you greg scott