>>>>>The trouble is that I'm not convinced that anyone who hasn't evolved the inner workings of empathy by the time he is 17, ever will. I don't see it as something you wake up to discover one day. It's ingrained or it isn't.

<snip>

>>I don't know (and none of use here do) any of the details of this particular case. I wanted to address the broader question of whether we can assume that a kid who kills at 17 has no empathy and is a lost cause. Given what we know today about brain development, there's a good possibility that with good treatment, he's not.
>
>I think it's a whole heck of a lot safer than assuming he's going to be just fine in 10 years, so that we should decide now to sic him back on society at that time regardless.
>

Keep in mind that my original response in this thread was to those suggesting we immediately fry a 17-year-old kid. I'm opposed to the death penalty generally (for reasons we've discussed before), but I can't even begin to state how strongly I'm opposed to applying it to children. And a 17-year-old is a child.

I'm not suggesting that the kid in this case be put back on the street today or tomorrow, but simply that we don't write him off as a lost cause because of what he did at 17.

Tamar