20 year old gets sentenced to 161 years

He shot at the dog, but didn't actually hit it. Not a single living entity was physically harmed.

What if he stepped on a plant?

When I believe it is possible he could be reformed and make up for his mistakes.

Well I lost faith in the supposed justice of the USA, the second they sentenced a mentally ill woman to death.


Utterly barbaric.

I very much doubt this (assuming his released before old age). This kid has most likely known criminality for his whole life and will be subjected to a even more criminality in prison. Education won't help him with much because he'll be too old to take any real advantage of it. And his job prospects is very, very, very low especially considering the nature of his crime. I can only see religion helping him out of it.

What do you think is likely to happen to him after he comes back to that same environment with minimal job prospects?

Well, we would have to start a moral argument about what constitutes 'harm'.

How **** must his lawyer of been

I very much doubt this (assuming his released before old age). This kid has most likely known criminality for his whole life and will be subjected to a even more criminality in prison. Education won't help him with much because he'll be too old to take any real advantage of it. And his job prospects is very, very, very low especially considering the nature of his crime. I can only see religion helping him out of it.

What do you think is likely to happen to him after he comes back to that same environment with minimal job prospects?

He is a school drop-out, has a learning disability and mental illness. He does not sound the brightest when he speaks.

He's never going to be reformed into a high flying academic individual.

But he probably could be taught to paint, fix cars, etc/ have some sort of job that he takes pride in.

In this country (UK), his mental health issues would mean that:
- He had a case worker who could support him and help him to sort out his life.
- He could attend day sessions to give him structure, and some non-criminal friends.
- He could probably attend sessions to talk about his behaviour and how he can adjust it.

(Even if those problems aren't a direct result of his mental health disorder, the mental health team would work to sort out his life).

In an ideal world (and honestly I think this should happen) - someone like him should be shipped out of the city, away from their bad influences and "adopted" by an employer and a social care team in a quiet low-crime area who would help them to lead a functional life, probably working in something menial.

For a few young criminals, training schemes like these do sort of exist in the UK.

I can say pretty confidently that if something like that could happen to him, he would probably never offend again.

It's just a shame that prison is the "solution" offered to this situation, when really it's a very sad outcome for both this young man, and the society he could be part of instead of just being an expense to.

So his whole life is merely a downward spiral from childhood and there is nothing anybody can do to save him?

Being convicted of any sort of felony will (rightly) make anyone's life an awful lot more difficult, but the idea that such people are totally beyond recall from such a low age is difficult to stomach. It absolutely stinks actually.

If capital punishment won't be making a reappearance, sentences like this will have to do.

You'd sentence someone who committed armed robbery to death?

Did I say that?

I was referring to the deterrence argument associated with capital punishment.

Another case of American racism against Black people, just like Travon Martin who was killed. Shameful.

lol bite idiots

The problem here is the bad influences (friends and their criminal activities) > good influences (social care worker) so I don't think they could do much for him if he was still in that negative environment.

I agree with you, something like that sounds good but it's a little unrealistic. There needs to be something done to tackle youth crime which is fueled by income inequality, lack of education, poor parenting etc but this is long-term solutions and generally. I don't think, realistically, something can be done to help this one case.