nited States, juvenile offenders often benefit from court consideration of their youth in deciding on the severity of their treatment. Charles Patrick Ewing (1990) writes, "The stakes are high when a court decides whether a juvenile murder defendant will be tried as a juvenile or as an adult. Generally a youth tried in juvenile court faces a rather limited punishment if found guilty" (p. 151).
Numerous examples illustrate the wide range of penalties the courts have meted out across the country in their attempts to deal with violent juvenile crime. When 5-year-old Eric Morse was thrown out of a window in Chicago in 1995 for refusing to steal candy for two older boys, his murderers, ages 12 and 13, were convicted of the maximum penalty allowed within the juvenile justice system in Illinois: juvenile prison until they reach the age of 21, a maximum of nine years. The 12-year-old is incarcerated in a state juvenile penitentiary, making him the youngest inmate in the United States to be sent to a high-security facility.
By contrast, 13-year-old Eric Smith, convicted of murdering a 4-year-old in 1995, was tried as an adult. The jury deliberated 10 and a half hours before returning a verdict of guilty on the charge of second-degree murder. Sentenced to nine years to life, Smith will be kept under psychiatric care as a juvenile until he turns 21, at which time he will continue his sentence in an adult prison.
Yet, even within the juvenile justice system, penalties can vary widely. Victoria Dalton, 13, was convicted of murder for smothering two young children in her care. A San Antonio juvenile court jury took five days late in 1995 to decide on her sentence: 14 years in custody of the Texas Youth Commission. Yet the 12-year-old girl who fatally stabbed a 13-year-old classmate to death in front of her school in Rochester, New York, in the fall of 1995, was charged only with juvenile delinquency.
Judge Justine Wise ...