As a Mormon I would have thought this child was justly charged with 1st degree murder.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/9-year-old-charged-with-murder-in-5-illinois-fire-deaths/ar-AAItNBx?ocid=spartandhp

As an ex-Mormon I believe it is heinous to add the insult of charging a child with murder to the injury of fiery deaths.

Their brain hasn't even begun the process of pruning back all the neurons they have as they reach puberty and prune for a decade. Children who commit heinous crimes don't have the dampening down abilities that a mature adult human brain does. We don't like to think about children as capable of these kinds of acts. They are still human beings just immature ones. We would like to wrap childhood into an innocent bubble to be admired as being untainted by "the world."

Mormonism through Joe Smith placed responsibility for human actions at 8. In the state he was murdered in he might be proud of them as they charge this child.

“St. Joseph County Family Division Judge David Tomlinson ruled that, under Michigan law, the boy was presumed incompetent for trial because he's not yet 10.”

That’s why states have legislatures. To keep the courts from doing stupid stuff. Illinois is just behind the curve.

Oh, 10, yeah, whew, lucky he wasn't a year older...

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That’s why states have legislatures. To keep the
> courts from doing stupid stuff.

And vice versa. Checks and balances.

A nine year old is not full grown, but by that age, a child is capable of making some moral decisions. Killing people is something most children know is wrong from a very early age.

""Nine-year-olds don't know that Santa Claus doesn't exist. They don't know people die and don't come back to life," he said.

Well that's not true. I knew these things when I was six or seven.

Kids are baptized at 8, so this murder charge seems reasonable.

At a guess, the child needs hospitalization, extensive testing, a diagnosis, and an appropriate placement that could *possibly* be a secure facility.

What we don’t know is what the motive was. To be charged with first degree murder they have to prove there was an intent to kill. Well, why did he do it? With this missing from the article it’s impossible to say if this was fair or not.

Some people are born evil. You can spot a psychopath in early childhood; they hurt small animals and set fire to things. This child could be psychopathic. Or he might be the victim of abuse and needs treatment. Or something else we don’t know. Why can’t they give these details?!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/10/2019 04:05AM by LJ12.

LJ12 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
You can spot a
> psychopath in early childhood; they hurt small
> animals and set fire to things.

Depends what you mean by this. It is very common for children to play with matches and to pull the wings off flies, or even use a magnifying glass on ants. Kids are brutal.

But I think at age 9, a child killing someone is at a stage where they can make some decisions.

Engram Released Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But I think at age 9, a child killing someone is
> at a stage where they can make some decisions.

With an immature brain that isn't designed for much forethought. Think of the neural pruning in adolescence that leads human beings to gradually develop forward thinking. In the heat of the moment a child which no restraint is a locked and loaded weapon that you seem to think can be held responsible for their childish actions.

Very Mormon.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Engram Released Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > But I think at age 9, a child killing someone
> is
> > at a stage where they can make some decisions.
>
> With an immature brain that isn't designed for
> much forethought. Think of the neural pruning in
> adolescence that leads human beings to gradually
> develop forward thinking. In the heat of the
> moment a child which no restraint is a locked and
> loaded weapon that you seem to think can be held
> responsible for their childish actions.
>
> Very Mormon.

Elder Berry, when you were nine years old, did you think it was okay to murder people?

You probably didn't. But maybe you were "very Mormon".

Anon for the moment Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Elder Berry, when you were nine years old, did you
> think it was okay to murder people?

Why Anon for the moment? If you believe in something why not have what you believe known here?

As to your question, I don't remember what I thought was okay and wasn't. But at age 8 shortly after my baptism and confirmation I stood in my room when none of my many siblings were there and cursed God. Why? I had just stolen some food from our garage and I was taught doing that was a sin.

I had lost my "cleansing" and I was confused and very very angry. I wanted God to strike me dead instead of going on living a life of sins I didn't think I could control.

I remember that incident vividly.

> You probably didn't. But maybe you were "very
> Mormon".

I was.

For a child to do this there has to be something wrong in any case. I’d have thought some time in a psychiatric unit would be more appropriate than being charged with first degree murder. I see EB’s point: this child is being held fully accountable even though he is only nine years old. That is very mormon in attitude given the age of accountability in mormonism. It’s frustrating the article gives no details on the decision making process.

And we know nothing about the case.

Like it would be to expect a child to be able to operate a vehicle adults judge children by their standards.

In the not so distant past parents expected children to work in factories for the family.

Children are thrown into an adult world and if you are Mormon or just backwards you are expected to be accountable and responsible for the rest of your life at age 8 and not 18. At least give them another decade to mature and be at least halfway through their puberty neural pruning process.

What's the age of accountability ?

the kid should fry. unless it was self defense. This will make an example so parents will start parenting again. We grant too much freedom to kids, they are all practically spoiled, It would be better if they all just could go out and get jobs and pull their own weight.

How 19th Century Mormon thinking that is.

What? Children should get jobs? By not working they are spoiled? A child commits murder because he is spoiled? And they should fry? Do you mean capital punishment for a child, regardless of the reasons behind why he did it?
People often kill for a reason, and it’s not always because they are pure evil. Abused people can abuse others. Such people,are treated for mental illness and rehabilitated. And this is a child. We don’t know what this child went through and he might need help. It’s a sad thing.

And if the child has been physically and verbally abused for as long as they can remember?

I've often thought that it was a very good thing that we didn't have firearms in my home of origin. The weapon of choice in our house was a heavily varnished yardstick, which hurt like bloody hell when it was applied to the backside and legs with serious intent, as it was often was to me, by my mother.

This went on from the time I was a toddler until I was a mid-teen and was able to wrestle it away from her and break it across my knee. I handed her the broken pieces and snarled at her not to ever raise a hand to me again. She didn't. And that was a very good thing, because I had so many years of pent-up rage that I could have put her in the hospital with broken bones, and my life would have taken a very different trajectory.

And where was my father? For the most part, he stood by her. Sometimes, he disagreed and spoke up. However, they believed in "standing united against the child." He died about six months before mother and I had that final confrontation with the yardstick.

Yes exactly. I’m very sorry for what you went through. Abuse and trauma create ptsd symptoms, and the responses are often adrenaline based, ie the fight or flight response. If you can’t flee the scene, like when you are a child, eventually a person can snap and fight back. It’s a survival mechanism. And likewise some people will freeze, or they will fawn and over sympathise with their abusers (Stockholm syndrome). Abuse effects people differently, plus often adults get away with the abuse if it’s their own children. Anything can happen.

No wonder the judge was disturbed. I just hope he or she heard all the facts. It sounds like this might not be the case. Why not say why the child did it? If it’s because they don’t know, then it’s more likely a miscarriage of justice.

I just watched When They See Us on Netflix, about the Central Park Five. Five children who went down for murder when they didn’t even commit it. In this case they were set up. But no one asked why they did it either. Sure, children do kill, but as it’s so rare - why do they? Without knowing this they are incarcerated without rehabilitation. Children in prison, being held fully accountable? That’s not always going to be appropriate.

As for the age of accountability, I have a problem with setting an age on it, like the Mormons do. Different children (and adults) have different levels of maturity regardless of age.

Wnen a member I would never have believed a kid this young should face murder charges.

I grew up on a steady diet of killing and/or attempts to do so - Road Runner cartoons. Elmer Fudd and the Cwazy Wabbit, Daffy Duck, etc. Killing by shooting, blowing up and whatever was what one saw a lot of. Actual death when younger was an abstract thing I most likely knew about but really knew nothing about.

Now - supposedly learned and understand reality. We obsess over one death while knowing a few thousand die as I write this - starved, beaten, shot, burned, blown up - whatever. They are in other countries with no food or wars or whatnot, not here - so "they don't really matter"...

WillieBoy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Now - supposedly learned and understand reality.
> We obsess over one death while knowing a few
> thousand die as I write this - starved, beaten,
> shot, burned, blown up - whatever. They are in
> other countries with no food or wars or whatnot,
> not here - so "they don't really matter"...

They matter. But my thread was about the barbarism of eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth here in a so-called developed country.

More info.

“Because at the end of the day, whether he meant to or not, he knew what fire did.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-9-year-old-is-facing-five-counts-of-murder-he-didnt-even-know-what-alleged-meant/ar-AAJ8RAb?ocid=spartandhp

what has to be proved is
MOTIVE
MEANS
OPPORTUNITY

A N D!!! INTENT

Alleged intent.

It's certainly disturbing. There is something terribly wrong, and we have no details to go on.