Fourteen Can Get You Twenty

CJA302 – Criminal Justice System

Young and Dumb

The objective of this paper is to present an opinion on the consideration that a juvenile is treated as an adult for the purpose of administering justice, the level of consistency throughout the criminal justice system, and if there is, a determination on punishment based on the crime committed.

In addressing these issues, one must first examine how juvenile rights have happened. As with most criminal and civil cases, one case will set a standard for all other cases to follow. These landmark cases help to shape the judicial system as prosecutors and defenders reference them to support their client’s guilt or innocence. When establishing a position on the question of when can children be considered an adult for the purposes of administering justice, we must first review the landmark case of In Re Gault, 387 U. S. 1 (1967), which is an Arizona appeals case that established juvenile rights. The case presented that the fourteenth amendment protected and allowed children under the accused of crimes in a delinquency proceeding must be given many of the same due process rights as adults such as the right to timely notification of charges, the right to confront witnesses, the right against self-incrimination, and the right to counsel. (Kita, 2010)

A second case that helped to give structure to juvenile justice administration was Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005). In this case, the United States Supreme Court rendered a decision that provided support of the unconstitutionality of imposing capital punishment for offenders who were under the age of 18. (Findlaw, 2010) However, many states have elected to try juveniles based on the severity of them crime that they have committed. Take, for example, the state of Colorado. They have structured their juvenile justice system with the following criteria. Juveniles have a criterion that their crimes must violate before they can be tried and punished as...