[HostileTerritory]

We aren't talking about 10-year olds, but rather 16 and 17 year old teens.

If these teens have such a broad grasp on the full consequences of their actions, why shouldn't they be allowed to vote, have sex with adults, and abort their own kids without telling their parents?

Age of consent laws exist for a reason. There are always some mature 16 year olds who are equivalent to adults and iimmature 23 year olds who aren't. The law can't distinguish on that subjective basis, so it draws a line at 18. That line crosses all levels of jurisprudence that separate adults from kids. Before 18, a kid is an imperfect, under-mentalized human being, and should be treated as such.

Life in prison is nothing to sneeze at.

[AmishDude]

Your argument, then, also precludes prison.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Here's one of your precious babies:

Made his 2 elderly neighbors (the wife was so frail she walked with a cane) kneel on their floor and then shot them execution style. Shot her in the side of the head and blew her teeth out all over her kitchen floor.

But hey, some say he was just a moody kid, so I guess we should cut him some slack. Was just 17, so obviously he must not have grasp the reality of death, yet somehow he was able to grasp how to make it more excrutiating and humiliating for his victims to go through an execution ritual. So I guess if one of those hooded terrorists in Iraq that executed those people on tape turns out to be under 18, we should give him a lighter sentence?

[newzjunkey]

There's a flaw to your logic. The age of consent varies state-by-state. In some states it's as low as 16. I think it is for our English cousins. They can drive a vehicle at that age, a ton of aluminum and steel, that can maim and kill.

Thus we believe you're capable of (perhaps) deciding to have sex, to kill your unborn child (no matter how young you are), but if you murder one or fifteen people SCOTUS believes you're not eligible for the death penalty.

SCOTUS got it wrong. They allowed their Leftist sensibilities to, once again, author decisions out of whole cloth.

[Luke21]

The problem with all or nothing rulings like this takes the individual case and discretion away from judges, juries, communities, and states.

A seventeen year old who murders deserves to die in MANY circumstances. Now they won't in any. That gives a license to kill to teenagers. It's no different than when the Supremes abolished the death penalty in 1972, and the rest of the decade became one of the most lawless periods in the nation's history.

I doubt many of us would want an eleven year old to face the death penalty. But there aren't a lot of eleven year old murderers either.

And by the way, what is the age of the perp the Supremes have spared? What did he do? Why don't we argue the merits of the EXACT case, rather than this theoretical crap?

And for those of you defending these teenaged monsters, I'll say the same thing I say to liberals. You'll only defend them until they butcher one of YOUR relatives.