juveniles who kill

Jake Evans, a 17-year-old teenage boy, murdered his mother and sister by firing multiple gunshots at home in Texas (Brown, 2012; Walsh, 2012). After this heinous act, he made a 911 call to inform the dispatcher what he had done with a calm voice. Evans’s cold-blood double homicide case led the media to depict him as an malevolent adolescent, even the judge hearing over Evans’s case refused to drop the capital murder charge against Evans (Winter, 2013). The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that individuals who are under the age of 18 at the time of their offense should not be sentenced to death or life without parole (Miller v. Alabama, 2012; Roper v. Simmons, 2005). Evans’s public defender requested to try the boy with murder instead of capital murder which has only two punitive sentencing outcomes in Texas--- life without parole and death penalty (Douglas, 2013). However, both sentences would be unconstitutional to Evans because he was 17 years old when he committed offense (Winter, 2013). As the judge insisted to charge Evans with the capital offense, once Evans was convicted, the judge, however, will face another issue which is how to deliver a lawful and appropriate verdict. Therefore, to resolve the problem, the Texas District and County Attorneys Association is attempting to revise the law without violating the initial Supreme Court ruling (Winter, 2013). When the public and the media encounter cases like Jake Evans’s, they tend to overemphasize on what the defendants have done and how to punish them rather focus on what happened to the juvenile offenders while growing up and what drove them to their actions. The purpose of this essay is to shift from the unjust emphasis on one portion of cases, the legal process, to how this al...

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Walsh, M. (2012, October 5). Jake Evans, 17, tells 911 he shot and killed mother, sister --- charged with murder. New York Daily News. Retrieved on September 10, 2013, from http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/jake-evans-tells-911-shot-killed-mother-sister-article-1.1176304

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Winter, L. (2013, June 19). Aledo teen accused of killing his mom and sister is in capital murder limbo. Star-Telegram. Retrieved on September 13, 2013, from http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/06/19/4951228/aledo-teen-accused-of-killing.html