Sentencing and Incarcerating Juveniles for Violent Crimes - Essay Example

In most cases, the defense of the juveniles charged with capital offenses have been using the age limit to defend their clients and various state laws have been supporting this argument. The juveniles might not be in a mature state of mind to face such capital charges. Moreover, the defense has been casting the juveniles’ guilt on several other people including their parents. Indeed, in the De’ Marquise Elkins’s murder case, the defense attempted to cast guilt upon several others, including the child's parents and the laxity in police investigations (“Associated Press” 1). Ideally, the juvenile’s parents are responsible for their children’s actions and hence have a leeway to prevent them from committing capital crimes for the first time. This supports the opposition against sentencing and incarcerating juveniles for violent crimes.

The courts of law should sentence and incarcerate the juveniles as adults for violent crimes because they bear sole responsibility for such crimes, their innocent parents cannot bear that guilt, evidence and facts proves their guilt, and they can serve in youth corrections on the juvenile charges as they wait to join adult prisons upon conviction. Indeed, the courts should rely on concrete evidence and convict the responsible suspects regardless of their age. In De’ Marquise Elkins’s murder case, the Jurors relied on evidence and deliberated for a long time before finding De’ Marquise Elkins guilty of 11 counts, including two counts of felony murder and one count of malice murder in the March 21 killing of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in Brunswick (“Associated Press” 1). The court has a duty to place criminal responsibility on the juveniles if they were on the sober mind and mental health while committing the capital offenses. Although the juvenile’s parents have a responsibility for their children’s actions, the court should not cast the guilt on such parents if they were innocent. In fact, in the case of De’ Marquise Elkins’s murder case, the jurors only convicted the juvenile’s mother of tampering with evidence but did not transfer the charges of committing the crime to her (“Associated Press” 1).

In De’ Marquise Elkins’s murder case, the defense team presented a lot of theories and speculation but that the evidence and facts in the case proved Elkins' guilt (“Associated Press” 1). Indeed, what matters in a court of law is concrete evidence and facts in the case and not the age of the suspect. As such, the police have a duty to do detailed investigations to prove the case against the suspect regardless of their age. In this case, the police conducted detailed investigations where they showed Elkins in specific locations at specific times the day of the shooting, presented the testimony of two young women associated with the juvenile, pulled video from various cameras around town, and went diving in a pond to recover the gun the following week (“Associated Press” 1). With such concrete evidence, it was justified to sentence and incarcerate the juvenile for the first-degree murder case. Moreover, the convicted juveniles can serve in youth corrections on the juvenile charges before attaining the adult age to join adult prisons. Read More