THROUGH FOREIGN EYES
KILLING CHANGES A CHILD INTO AN ADULT!
In Florida a youngster fourteen years old just received a sentence of twenty-eight years in prison. Nathaniel Brazill was thirteen when he killed his teacher. Again in Florida a fourteen-year-old kid, Lionel Tate, has been sentenced to life. The Judge even refused to allow him permission to seek parole some day in the future.
This kid was only twelve when he beat to death a six-year-old girl. His mother was looking after this young girl when her parents were not home. He always affirmed that he was playing with this child, playing wrestling, like he had seen on TV, like these famous programs, shown day after day. He tried to be one of those champions he admired so much.
Of course TV isn't responsible, but is a kid of twelve years able to distinguish the difference between blood and ketchup on TV screens? Is a kid of twelve years able to understand that the actors aren't really crying? Does he understand that the more "blood" shown, the more violence on the screen, the more dollars will go into the pockets of the producers, actors, etc. The jury concluded this kid was fully responsible for what he did. He was judged like an adult, in front of an adult court! Can a twelve-year-old kid understand that weapons are almost freely accessible to buy and that bullets are real, not like those in a film, and that these wrestling contests are faked most of the time, just made for "fun"?
Does that make any sense to you? It doesn't to me, I am sorry to say. For the jury to be so inhumane and the judge to hand down such a cruel decision shows once again that there is no common sense in Justice! Obviously, the death of this young girl is horrible; obviously the pain of the parents is and will always remain excruciating, and I can only respect that pain; but does that twelve-year-old really require such a sentence?
Okay, the kid was black; okay, it was in Florida. But the color of his skin is not the problem, even if it contributed to a racist judgment. The major problem is this: does a kid stop being a child when he commits a murder? Does he lose his immature status by that act? Does that make him an adult? Has he left the world of children? Has he lost his right to be educated? Has he lost his right to be protected like any child of twelve years? The fact that at twelve you are not mature, the fact that at twelve you are not educated, the fact that at twelve you are still a kid -- isn't that enough of a mitigating circumstance? Why do adults consider that as an "aggravating circumstance"? Is a child able to distinguish between TV violence and violence in life when adults can't even tell the difference between themselves and their children?
I am glad not to be a member of this jury. I am glad not to be a judge in Florida because I would really feel ashamed. Obviously this doesn't concern all society, but some people will carry all their lives this shameful decision that is so abject that it discredits the people who pronounced it. And no matter who pronounced the sentence, it leaves a bitter taste about the orientation of that society. It is for me a source of fear about the future.
To educate children doesn't mean to lean too permissively one way and afterwards to lean too severely another way by judging them as adults. To lean either way isn't walking straight! When Lionel Tate pushed Tiffany down the staircase, was he really trying to kill her, or was he playing, certain that she would stand up still intact, as most victims do in films, after rolling down long stairs? Children are spectators of films; they are also spectators of reality. How can we expect them to respect life when they can see the media frenzy around Karla Tucker's execution, the media frenzy around the legal murder of Timothy McVeigh, and people laughing, singing, applauding the killing of a man or a woman?
Society is responsible for mixing up everything in children's minds. Children aren't all able, children haven't all been educated to make the distinction-to understand the difference between murder and legal killing, to understand adult absurdity. To lock down a child for his whole life is certainly no help -- to take out of his mind any hope of improving, but simply only of living is nonsense. To condemn a child to be imprisoned all his life is not humane; it is legal madness.
-- Docteur Pierre Duterte is Médecin Directeur du Centre de Soins de l'Avre <www.avre.org> <p.duterte@avre.org>.