Emphassis is mine.
Perhaps this is the correct approach, let the judge/jury pass judgement. I wonder how many "Guilty" kids escaped justice, because the jury didn't want the "manditory" portion. Whenever you do something like "manditory" - it gets abused. Just like the "Zero tolerance" issue in schools, it removes any common sense at all - where kids are kicked out of school for taking Asperin to school, or a Boy Scout pocketknife is deemed a lethan weapon.
You need to allow the judge/jury some 'wiggle' room, in order for justice to be tailored to the crime. I'm not saying that juveniles shouldn't get life without parole; I am saying that this shouldn't be an "automatic" sentence. It depends upon the individual case.
“Just like the “Zero tolerance” issue in schools, it removes any common sense at all - where kids are kicked out of school for taking Asperin to school, or a Boy Scout pocketknife is deemed a lethal weapon.”
If you think zero tolerance policies have anything to do with these fiascoes, you have a seriously misguided view of the public school establishment.
All that zero tolerance does is give teachers and administrators the tools they need to step on whitey (i.e., ever notice that it’s always the whites that are the victims)...where before, whitey could come back after them with a lawsuit.
Put another way, if one brought aspirin to school and a teacher saw it...couldn’t the teacher just ignore it...if she didn’t feel like making a spectacle of it. Same with a boy scout pocket knife. No, the people that run these schools in work in these schools LOVE zero tolerance - to them it’s the great ‘equalizer’, about to destroy the future of a Harvard-bound white girl, so that a more-deserving person can take her place.
Agreed