This is a trifle off-topic, but a pair of posts by Amanda Butler highlight some intriguing issues about the way the law treats children, an issue I touched on briefly in a previous post on voting ages. Here is one post on Patrick Kennedy, sentenced to death for raping a child, and here is another, about a decision by the Missouri Supreme Court that it is unconstitutional to execute murderers under the age of 18.

Of course, these decisions don’t contradict one another at all, but they do betray an interesting theme in the law’s treatment of children. The Kennedy case is interesting because the Supreme Court has already held (in Coker v. Georgia) that the death penalty cannot constitutionally be applied for the rape of an adult woman. The Louisiana decision, if it stands, will mark a decision that children need more protection from the law than adults do.
Similarly, the Missouri case, if it becomes the law of the land, will do for juveniles what Atkins v. Virginia did for the mentally retarded. This, too, is based on a decision that juveniles are less culpable for their actions.
What’s intriguing about this trend (if these two examples do mark a trend) is that it doesn’t seem to be tracking some shift in public opinion or understanding. So far as I know, most people don’t think kids today are less culpable, less able to defend themselves, or less autonomous than kids of previous generations were. If anything, the perception is the reverse. This will be a path of the law worth watching.
UPDATE: The New York Times continues to handle the controversy.

CORRECTION: The crime involved in Coker v. Georgia was incorrectly stated in the original version of this post. We’ve corrected it.

Filed under: family law, Louisiana, Missouri