Arkansas murderers are young, but they know right from wrong

By Jon Black

Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden became monsters in the eyes of many after their schoolyard shooting spree in Jonesbough, Arkansas, left five people dead and 11 wounded.

These two are only children, one 11 years old and the other 13, but many people, including some of the victims’ families and friends, believe these children should be tried as adults. If Johnson and Golden are old enough to plan and carry out this kind of crime, the victims advocates ask, shouldn’t they be old enough to understand the consequences of their actions?

Maybe so — and that’s the problem. Because both kids are under age 14, they will be tried in juvenile instead of adult court. Despite their premeditated crime and their lack of regard for human life, these two children will be released when they reach 18. That works out to mere months served for each of their victims.

At age 13, how many of us erren’t old enough to know right from wrong, or at least legal from illegal? These children may not be responsible for the kinds of people they are, but they should be held responsible for their actions.

The law assumes that because they were under a certain age limit, they didn’t comprehend their actions. Yet this was no accident. Johnson told classmates that he had “a lot of killing to do.” Both children understood that mowing down 15 of their peers wasn’t a harmless childhood prank.

The only aspect of this crime the two didn’t understand was how easily they would be apprehended. Few adult criminals set out to commit a crime when they know that they will be arrested, but this doesn’t (and shouldn’t) prevent them from being prosecuted harshly.

In the eyes of the law these two are young enough that they still could be reformed in only a short time. After all, Johnson and Golden are “only children.” Apparently, the judicial system has such confidence in itself that it believes that these two will come out of whatever juvenile center they end up in remorseful and reformed.

But just as likely these murderers will never feel remorse for their victims — and no amount of remorse can restore the lives of the victims or heal the emotional scars of the entire community.  Even if these children never cause trouble with the law again, the families of their victims will have to live with the knowledge that the two who murdered their family members were free.

There is always the possibility that Johnson and Golden won’t be psychologically fit to be out on the street at 18. Will we be forced to wait until they each commit other crimes before we can put them away again?

Laws that give children immunity if they are under a certain age limit no longer work in a society where six year old boys beat infants to death for fun and where children gun each other down at school and on the street. By placing an age limit on responsibility, the government is almost encouraging younger children to break the law.

These kids may or may not be monsters, but they still don’t deserve to be free at age 18, able to continue their lives after taking the lives of their victims. Age is no excuse for murder.

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