TruTV is currently reprising the tragic trial of teenager Tyler Edmonds, in the same month they premiered their intellectually stunning (as in “mind-numbing”) series, Pet Court. Judging from Twitter traffic, Pet Court is a hit. But it seems to me that the trial of a child for murder in an adult court should be far more worrisome to the TV-viewing public than pit-bull antics. Something is going horribly wrong here.

Children Should Never Be Tried As Adults

As crime rates skyrocketed in the decades from the 1960s to the 1990s, states passed legislation to enable prosecutors to charge minors as adults in capital murder cases. At the time, legislators did not understand that the cause in the increase in crimes was testosterone: the percentage of teenage and young-adult males in the population was spiking. The public became increasingly concerned that minors would be able to get away with murder, because in the juvenile justice system crimes are only lightly punished with incarceration, which ends at the age of majority, usually 18. (BTW: The Edmonds trial was all about juveniles getting away with murder.)

However, now we do know what caused the murder rate to increase dramatically, just as we know the murder rate is decreasing because all those Baby Boomer Boys have become mature, less-energetic Baby Boomer men.

One long-standing and fundamental premise of criminal justice is that the defendant must be competent to participate in his own defense. A mentally incompetent person cannot be tried. Unfortunately, the standard of competence is so minimal that people with very low IQs and significant mental-health issues are tried all the time.

But it is unconscionable to think that any person under the age of about 16 has the mental capacity or the life-experience to participate in his own defense. I won’t go into the way or when the human brain matures. Look it up in any developmental psychology textbook for yourself. There’s even an age below which children are held in both law and biology to be incapable of reasoning (somewhere around 7 or 8)—the so-called “age of reason.”

Children simply are incompetent to participate in their own defense below the age of 16 in my opinion. The Supreme Court has wisely concluded that a minor should not be executed. Nonetheless, minors can still be incarcerated for life, even when they have low IQs or mental disorders.

Juvenile Courts Should Conduct Jury Trials

So, how do we resolve this impasse?

First, we need to permit minors to be tried before a jury in juvenile court. A jury is likely to be more merciful than a judge. And should a jury condemn a child for murder, the judge would still have the discretion to overturn the jury verdict, as he can in an adult’s trial (witness the judge’s verdict in Cody Posey’s trial).

The Constitution demands that every person is entitled to a jury trial, not only adult persons. Check out the wording of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, respectively: “The right of the people,” “No person,” and “the accused.”

Juvenile courts would serve justice better if juveniles were afforded all the same rights as adults when “accused” of a crime. And wise legislation—of which there is precious little these days—would fix sentences that suit the age of the perpetrator and the crime. No juvenile should ever be imprisoned with adults. Juvenile offenders should be assumed to be capable of rehabilitation, and the states should be required by federal law to provide adequate psychological counseling, education, and preparation for a trade before releasing any juvenile convict from prison. If a state is going to punish a child in loco parentis, then the state should act like a good, competent parent.