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> then it's telling for the attorney to argue for the former, since it indirectly implies that their client will likely be found culpable

I think this is a very, very dangerous way of reasoning. It is the duty of your attorney to try to provide you with all the legal protections you are entitled to, regardless of whether you are guilty or not. That's why those protections were put in place to begin with.

> Furthermore, if the defendant is found guilty there is a likelihood that their punishment will not be appropriate for their current age

People (at least on civil law countries) are judged using the state of affairs of when the crime was committed, not when the case is heard. There are very many reasons for this: it might have been legal back then and not now, it's the defendant's fault to not have been put on trial when still a minor, etc.

> It's a fun problem to reason about mathematically, but it's totally irrelevant to the case in my opinion.

I absolutely understand your feeling. However technicalities are not less important in law as they are in computer code. If we had a way to establish fairly, without bias whether someone is "adult enough" other than with this arbitrary 18.00 limit we would have used it. But we don't, and even you say "a couple of days are not going to have a considerable impact" but then only apply that one way (towards a harsher sentencing) but the other (maybe she is still not an adult?)

If there was an election on the 28th of Feb 2018, would this girl have been able to vote?

How about buy alcohol?

If we agree there has to be some arbitrary line, then we probably ought to apply that sharply.

> it indirectly implies that their client will likely be found culpable.

I don't think that's fair at all. We don't know the specifics of the case.

> if the defendant is found guilty there is a likelihood that their punishment

This assumes that punishment, as dealt out by the courts, is an appropriate way of going about healing society after a crime has occurred.

> This assumes that punishment, as dealt out by the courts, is an appropriate way of going about healing society after a crime has occurred.

Yes, goodness gracious, how has this of all things become the sacrosanct, canonical representation of justice?

More humane societies will follow ours, and they'll look back with astonishment about our obsession with punishment to the exclusion of actual restoration.

I'm pretty extremely compassionate, understanding, etc. I'm finding that once someone wrongs you, most people won't voluntarily make amends and it becomes absolutely necessary to play hardball. Nor can you force them to make reparations. But you can punish people.

I would like to see more focus on crime prevention by helping everyone get their needs met, not criminalizing things where no one is victimized, etc.

But once the deed is done, I don't know that it really works to not have some element of consequences, unfortunately.

All I can say in response to this is: this certainly is tricky!

Punishing crime has a disproportionate negative consequence on those who have already been traumatised by the circumstances of their lives.

So I agree with your point about everyone's needs being met, but we can't have that until we, collectively / globally, make some significantly different choices.

So we'll probably have to continue getting by with an obviously suboptimal crime and punishment system.

Edit: fixed a word

Punishing crime has a disproportionate negative consequence on those who have already been traumatised by the circumstances of their lives.

Assuming this is actually true, it would be so only because we disproportionately let rich people off with a slap on the wrist, not because poor people commit more crimes. (rich and poor being imperfect proxies for whose lives suck more or less)

Plenty of people are just selfish and don't care that other people got hurt, like the Theranos debacle. That hurt many people and was perpetrated by very privileged individuals, not poor schmucks whose lives sucked from the get go.

> If it were up to me to decide, I would treat them as an adult for the purposes of the trial, but take into account their young age as an extenuating circumstance when sentencing.

And how would you treat other cases that are 17.9, 17.75, 17.5, 17, 16.99, 16, 15, 14, 12?

Obviously we could have a sliding scale, but that's a different hypothetical. What's your binary verdict?