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Comment by sippingabonedry | Hacker News Reader

I interpreted it as an implication that it should be viewed as a lesser crime due to the perpetrator's age. At 18 you can:

• Vote

• Fight in the military

• Act in pornography

• Rent a car in MI, NY, QC

• Many other adult things

The crime perpetrated was premeditated and particularly demonic. It's a far cry from shoplifting a Snickers bar.

> is kind of upsetting

Bringing a chunk of the victim's skull to school to show your friends how good you are at murdering was probably pretty upsetting to a few people, like the victim's family and friends.

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The voting age being 18 was changed in the 70s, primarily so they could more easily justify sending 18 year olds to fight in Vietnam. Prior to 1971 it was kind of agreed that 18 year olds were still basically children.

Even now, though, in every state in the US, you're not a full adult when you're eighteen. You're not allowed to buy alcohol until you're 21. In a lot of states you're not allowed to buy cigarettes. We've decided that, despite being "grown ups", they're still not grown up enough to be trusted with these things.

To be clear, I'm perfectly fine throwing her in prison for the rest of her life without parole, like she would be had she committed the crime in a state without capital punishment like NY. I'm just particularly turned off by the death penalty. I can sit here and wax philosophical as to why but I'm sure you've heard the arguments and it would be a tangent.

Where do you get this "Prior to 1971 it was kind of agreed"? Agreed by whom? Go read the biography of David Farragut

I extrapolated from the fact that 18 year olds couldn’t vote prior to 1971. I will admit that “agreed” might have been a bit too strong of a word, but it seems like the United States didn’t think that 18 year olds were “full” adults yet.

The state-administered judicial violence of locking someone in a cage until they die of old age strikes me as pretty similar to the state-administered judicial violence of executing someone, in terms of severity.

I don’t love the way American prisons work either, but I guess we have to agree to disagree on that particular point.

The problem with this argument is that being a few months older or younger would decide between life and death for the very same crime. Her boyfriend who was just a couple of months younger got a lighter sentence with the option of parole, partly because he was 17.

You don’t suddenly become a different person on your 18th birthday.

Execution is a weird thing for a civilized society to do and the bizarre people that fetishize it say weird shit like “It makes sense to murder somebody if they made other people upset” to avoid talking about how it doesn’t solve any problems that aren’t already solved by life imprisonment. The justification for execution is always “I want the state to kill people because I enjoy that sort of thing”

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