Murder, love and life after 32 years in prison
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
In medieval times, depending on who you are and who you killed, the punishment would be quick to painful death or nothing at all.
Unprovoked, knowingly and intentionally bludgeoning another to death. The only mitigating circumstance reported in the article was he knew and accepted his actions as wrong (immediately calling police on himself).
And, as the article mentions, "life" means first chance of parole after 10 years.
14 year old, life in prison. It IS medieval -- in the metaphorical sense of the word. What you did was a straight-up historical correction on the "medieval" thing, which was totally uncalled for.
That said, I wouldn't be so smug if I was in the States either. From what I've read 14 years old (or 15), even get the death penalty in some states.
Roper v. Simmons [1] in 2005 raised the minimum age to 18. Before that, Stanford v. Kentucky [2] in 1989 set it at 16.
I hit someone with a golf club once. In the right circumstances this could have been any one of us.
FWIW the US scale for this slides between 6 and 12 according to wikipedia