TEENAGERS - Jailed for LIFE - is it RIGHT or WRONG?

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Should teens get LIFE SENTENCES?? I say NO. Pediatricians will tell you that a kids brain is not fully developed until they are at least 18/19 years old.. some EVEN LONGER... They do not have the "mental capacity" to fully understand the consequences of their actions... hence their conclusion "I'm invincible... THAT won't happen to me.." How many times have YOU heard a teenager SAY THAT??: "Brain research shows that the frontal lobe, the part of the brain that controls reason, develops last. Researchers at David Geffin School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Mental Health and elsewhere have conducted a series of studies in recent years that "map" the development of the brain from childhood to adulthood. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers have been able to scan the brains of children in different age groups to compile three-dimensional images that track the brain's development. They found that the amygdala, the more primitive part of the brain responsible for impulse and emotion, controls decision-making into early adulthood. The researchers found that a small area in the frontal lobe of the brain -- known as the prefrontal cortex -- controls the most advanced functions of the brain and is the last part to develop. The prefrontal cortex is located just behind the forehead and is known as the "CEO" of the body, because it allows humans to plan, anticipate consequences, control impulses, prioritize thoughts and think in the abstract. This part of the brain continues to develop for individuals into their 20s." Jailed for Life After Crimes as Teenagers By ADAM LIPTAK Published: October 3, 2005 OCALA, Fla. - About 9,700 American prisoners are serving life sentences for crimes they committed before they could vote, serve on a jury or gamble in a casino - in short, before they turned 18. More than a fifth have no chance for parole. Rebecca Falcon is one of them. Ms. Falcon, now 23, is living out her days at the Lowell Correctional Institution here. But eight years ago, she was a reckless teenager and running with a thuggish crowd when one night she got drunk on bourbon and ruined her life. Ms. Falcon faults her choice of friends. "I tried cheerleaders, heavy metal people, a little bit of country and, you know, it never felt right," Ms. Falcon said. "I started listening to rap music and wearing my pants baggy. I was like a magnet for the wrong crowd." In November 1997 she hailed a cab with an 18-year-old friend named Clifton Gilchrist. He had a gun, and within minutes, the cab driver was shot in the head. The driver, Richard Todd Phillips, 25, took several days to die. Each of the teenagers later said the other had done the shooting. Ms. Falcon's jury found her guilty of murder, though it never did sort out precisely what happened that night, its foreman said. It was enough that she was there. "It broke my heart," said Steven Sharp, the foreman. "As tough as it is, based on the crime, I think it's appropriate. It's terrible to put a 15-year-old behind bars forever." The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does that. Life without parole, the most severe form of life sentence, is theoretically available for juvenile criminals in about a dozen countries. But a report to be issued on Oct. 12 by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found juveniles serving such sentences in only three others. Israel has seven, South Africa has four and Tanzania has one. By contrast, the report counted some 2,200 people in the United States serving life without parole for crimes they committed before turning 18. More than 350 of them were 15 or younger, according to the report. The Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to ban the juvenile death penalty, which took into account international attitudes about crime and punishment, has convinced prosecutors and activists that the next legal battleground in the United States will be over life in prison for juveniles. Society has long maintained age distinctions for things like drinking alcohol and signing contracts, and the highest court has ruled that youths under 18 who commit terrible crimes are less blameworthy than adults. Defense lawyers and human rights advocates say that logic should extend to sentences of life without parole. Prosecutors and representatives of crime victims say that a sentence of natural life is the minimum fit punishment for a heinous crime, adding that some people are too dangerous ever to walk the streets. In the Supreme Court's decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said teenagers were different, at least for purposes of the ultimate punishment. They are immature and irresponsible. They are more susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure. And teenagers' personalities are unformed. "Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile," Justice Kennedy concluded, is not "evidence of irretrievably depraved character." Most of those qualities were evident in Ms. Falcon, who had trouble fitting in at her Kansas high school and had been sent by her mother to live with her grandmother in Florida, where she received little supervision. She liked to smoke marijuana, and ran with a series of cliques. "I was looking for identity," she said. Like many other lifers, Ms. Falcon is in prison for felony murder, meaning she participated in a serious crime that led to a killing but was not proved to have killed anyone. In their report, the human rights groups estimate that 26 percent of juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole for murder were found guilty of felony murder. A separate Human Rights Watch report on Colorado found that a third of juveniles serving sentences of life without parole there had been convicted of felony murder. The larger question, advocates for juveniles say, is whether any youths should be locked away forever. At the argument in the juvenile death penalty case, Justice Antonin Scalia said the reasons offered against execution apply just as forcefully to life without parole. Justice Scalia voted, in dissent, to retain the juvenile death penalty. "I don't see where there's a logical line," he said at the argument last October. When it comes to Ms. Falcon, the prosecutor in her case said she does not ever deserve to be free. Indeed, she is lucky to be alive. The prosecutor, Jim Appleman, is convinced that she shot Mr. Phillips. "If she were a 29-year-old or a 22-year-old," he said, "I have no doubt she would have gotten the death penalty."