I just read Rachel Aviv's piece No Remorse in the January 2, 2012, edition of The New Yorker. It follows the story of Dakotah Eliason, a fourteen-year-old who contemplated suicide or homicide and decided to go with homicide. He shot his sleeping grandfather in the head (and the grandfather eventually died from the wounds), and promptly began speaking to the police and investigators. He was tried as an adult and found guilty of first-degree homicide, which carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Dakotah was transferred to an adult prison, and he began his life as a convicted felon. Aviv does a wonderful job of tying in the relevant legal cases and explaining the history and development of the American juvenile judicial system. She also points out that life imprisonment for juveniles is forbidden in every country in the world except the United States and Somalia, the two countries that refused to sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is definitely an important article to read.
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