By Erica Randall
Staff Writer
Children are growing up so fast these days. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Fourteen-year-old Michael Hernandez confessed to killing an eighth-grade classmate in a school bathroom earlier this month in his Florida hometown. According to CNN, he used a knife, which was later found in his backpack, to slash Jaime Rodrigo Gough’s neck.
Hernandez has already signed a confession admitting he killed Gough and Chief Pete Cuccaro of the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department said the two boys “knew each other very well.”
Because juveniles charged with first-degree murder in Florida are charged as adults, Hernandez will be tried as an adult and faces adult penalties.
While school shootings and slashings by minors, unfortunately, are beginning to seem commonplace, we have to wonder if these juveniles know the full extent of their actions and should be tried as adults.
There is no doubt that 14-year-old Hernandez committed an adult crime. He killed a classmate, perhaps even a friend, in the school bathroom. But did Hernandez know the full degree of his actions? What state of mind was he in when he pulled the knife out to kill his classmate?
According to USA TODAY, 23 states have no minimum age for the death penalty.
Kansas and Vermont can try 10-year-old children as adults, and between 1992 and 1999, every state except Nebraska passed laws making it easier for juveniles to be tried as adults. At least seven juveniles have already been executed since 1973, according the National Mental Health Association.
When the United States legislative bodies set 18 as the adult age, they set it with the idea fully in mind that those reaching 18 years of age no longer function as children and are capable of making responsible adult choices. Anyone under the age of 18, however, was considered a minor and therefore a child who still requires the discipline necessary to function someday, as an adult, and still needs instruction to realize every action has a consequence.
Perhaps Hernandez knew he was about to kill a classmate, but perhaps he could not fathom the consequences. He might be sentenced as an adult, his life never returning to normal because he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Yet, if Hernandez was tried as a juvenile and sentenced to a juvenile prison, he could be released into society as an adult, and we could only hope that he would have changed his ways and become a fully responsible and law-abiding citizen.
Studies by the Harvard Medical School, the National Institute of Mental Health and UCLA’s Department of Neuroscience find that the frontal and pre-frontal lobes of the brain, which regulate impulse control and judgment, are not fully developed in adolescents.
Mental development is not completed until somewhere between 18 and 22 years of age. These findings confirm that adolescents such as Hernandez generally have a greater tendency toward impulsivity, making unsound judgments or reasoning and are less aware of the consequences of their actions.
However, this does not help Hernandez’s victim, Jaime Rodrigo Gough. Sadly, victims don’t have to be at least 18 years old. It seems as if there’s no way to help both the victim and the suspect without doubt, confusion and hostility arising.
Each individual is different, and there’s no way to know for certain what was going through Hernandez’s head when he pulled out the knife to slash his classmate’s throat. The only thing that is certain is that he needs serious help in order to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else again.
And Hernandez may have a long time to think about his consequences as he could spend his life in prison. Maybe by then he will have realized the error of his ways. Maybe by then regret and sadness will overcome his thoughts as his adulthood passes behind bars.
Or maybe he would have realized this without spending the rest of his life behind bars. Only time will tell. Time is always against every human, as it was for 14-year-old Jamie Rodrigo Gough.
February 26, 2004