One such person is Elisa Poncz over at Children's Rights & Laws. She's in her 3rd year at Harvard Law School (so you know she's wicked smart!) and on Friday, she mused about the appropriateness of using, or potentially exploiting, youth rights to achieve desirable social changes.
In this case, there was a murder in Florida involving 3 teens. Two of them were 19 and one was 17, at the time of the crime -- a savage beating of a homeless man resulting in death. The prosecutor declined to seek the death penalty for the 19 year olds, (in the U.S., you can no longer execute people who were under 18 years old at the time of their crime) for reasons of proportionality between the sentences.
Assuming all three are equally guilty, all three should get the same punishment. That's Justice.
Now both Ms. Poncz and I are opposed to capital punishment, but something doesn't sit right with her, it seems, when youth rights are used as a proxy for achieving societal goals, even ones she agrees with. Money quote:
I'm concerned that the unique character of children might be exploited for the political gains of adults seeking rights that cannot be achieved in the broader society, but might be achieved with children (and then hopefully extended).That's a fair point. She goes on to wish that the prosecutor would have not sought the death penalty on moral, rather than age-related, grounds. I understand her concern. I would hate to see youth rights exploited to achieve some end I disagreed with. But in this case, I'm satisfied.
Call me a hypocrite -- ends justifying means in this case. What can I say? I'm not perfect. It's not that I disagree with Ms. Poncz, I'm just not going to get worked up about it in this case.
