"that "afro-american" is 15??? he should do time as an adult for life with no parole. Set an example, a hard example by putting him on the chain-gang."
I don't disagree. But another element at play here is, I don't believe that type of consequence would be any sort of "deterrent" to any other soul-dead 15-year-old, no matter what his race is. Kids who are this far gone never had the moral, humanistic underpinnings in their lives anyway--and the kind of sociopathy that sets in never lets them see other examples as "object lessons." If it did, we wouldn't have ghastly incidents like this on a tragically regular basis.
Jeesh, if I just sounded like a liberal, I'm entering a 12-step program.
The only proven deterrent is the death penalty. For one thing, it "deters" the original criminal himself, and murderers have been shown by studies to go on to murder again. It could be a guard or another prisoner, or somebody they kill when they get out, but it is obvious that a murderer is like a chicken-killing dog: they just don't stop until you shoot them.
I have also read that in the past in cases where the death penalty was a certainty - murder in the course of a kidnapping or rape, for example - the criminals actually tried to avoid incurring the ultimate penalty. They're dumb, but not too dumb to know what "dead" means.
Of course, now it's no longer a certainty, and if it occurs, probably won't occur until some 20+ years after the crime (unless you live in Texas or Florida, where we are very speedy), so the deterrent effect is somewhat muted. And of course because this kid is a minor, he doesn't even have to worry about it, thanks to the SC and international law.