January 10, 2012. Alyssa Bustamante, a teenager from Missouri, USA, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder of a nine-year-old neighbour Elizabeth Olten on October 21, 2009.
At the hearing, Bustamante looked straight at the judge and told him she strangled Olten, stabbed her in the chest and cut her throat. She also told him that she understood that by pleading guilty, she was giving up her right to a trial. Bustamante could face between 10-30 years to a life sentence for the murder charge and three years to a life sentence for armed criminal action.
Juvenile murder cases are one of today’s most controversial issues within the court of law. They have been described as an effect of media violence on children through videogames, television shows, movies, magazines, and violence-portraying toys. A 1994 National Television Violence Study in the USA revealed that juveniles who watch a lot of television seem to be less disturbed by violence in general and are less likely to see anything wrong with it. Having seen so many acts of violence, children may lose their capacity for empathy and become less distressed by real acts of violence.
Other experts maintain that there is no conclusive evidence that links media violence to aggression. They argue that child abuse is a much more conclusive cause of juvenile crime than violent images in the media, and that it is the parents’ responsibility to teach their children the difference between fantasy violence and reality. Other factors for juvenile murder cases may also include broken homes, abusive parents, rebellious tendencies, peer pressure, and gang influence.
When the deed is done however, many people, especially the victims’ families, believe that murder is still murder, and one does not have to be psychologically mature before he/she understands what is the possible outcome to the act. Some people even go so far as to believe that even at age 14, a child is fully responsible for his mind in many aspects of life especially concerning the outcome of crime and violence.
On the other hand, others believe that at a juvenile age, a child is psychologically not fully introduced into the world of maturity. He is not capable of thinking through their behavior and predicting the outcomes as a mature person is. Juveniles may be somewhat responsible for their mind probably in certain basic aspects of life such as the wellbeing of oneself, but not when it comes to strictly right and wrong viewpoints about life. As a US mental health worker put it, if the society underestimates juvenile intellect, categorizes them under less responsible persons, and as an end result would not allow them to vote, smoke, nor allow them to drink until a certain age of imperative mental maturity is reached, then why would the society all of a sudden want to hold them responsible for certain delinquencies they commit?
Comments and posts in the internet about this news ranged from possible causes to outright condemnation of the act. Criticisms centered on the lowering of the plea from first-degree murder to second-degree murder and racial discrimination issues between urban black and white youths. Meanwhile, others defended Bustamante by quoting juvenile justice officials that Bustamante attempted to commit suicide in 2007 and had been receiving mental health treatment for depression and cutting herself.
The fact remains, however, that Bustamante had, at 15 years of age, knowingly caused the death of a nine-year-old neighbor, telling the judge that she knew what she was doing at the time of the attack. She wanted to know what it felt like to kill.
Curiosity as an emotion represents a drive to know new things, and is a major driving force behind scientific research and other disciplines of human study. An old proverb warns us, however, of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimentation, “Curiosity killed the cat.” It was the cat’s curiosity that led him to his demise.
But in Alyssa’s case, a bright girl who, witnesses at her adult certification hearing say, ranks roughly in the top third of her class at Jefferson City High School, and who has not been in trouble at school or with the law before her arrest in Elizabeth’s killing, what went wrong when this same curiosity leads her to bring about the demise of others?
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