Many years ago I worked at a state juvenile prison (called a ‘youth center’. Had two kids who murdered at 13. Due to the laws at the time, they could not be held after their 18th birthdays. The day they turned 18 they were released with spotless records.
If you remember the case in Arkansas where two 13-year-olds shot up their school, killing several. Same thing happened, when they reached adulthood, they were released. The state gave them new identities and clean records. I mention this because one ended up living within 10 miles of me. Applied for a concealed carry permit. But somehow, even though it wasn’t supposed to know, the local sheriff’s office did know who the kid was and what he had done and worked to deny the permit. All this came out when he died in a car wreck last year.
New York laws, of course will apply. But most states don’t send 13-year-olds away for life no matter what they did.
A life sentence would be expensive unless it were a Short Life sentence that ends on the eighteenth birthday.