I saw this tonight on an episode of 48 Hours and I found it very disturbing. Eric Smith was thirteen when he lured four year old Derrick Robie into the wood nears his home as Robie was walking less than a block to a summer camp. Hidden in the trees, Smith strangled the child, battered his head with rocks, poured Kool-Aid from Robie's lunch bag into the wounds, and sodomized the child with a stick. After confessing to the murder, Smith was sentenced to nine years to life in prison. In a transcript of one of Smith's parole hearings, he was asked if killing Robie had given him a 'good feeling', to which Smith replied, "At the moment, it did, yes...Because instead of me being hurt, I was hurting someone else."
Smith was denied parole in both 2006 and 2008.
Eric Smith, age 13
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in660314.shtml
The question is, how much malice aforethought can a thirteen year old child have? Does a thirteen year old truly understand the ramifications of 'dead'? What caused Eric to kill Derrick, and is he able to be rehabilitated? Are some kids, for lack of a better description, born bad?
While I don't know how much a thirteen year old understands the permanency and finality of death, I believe Eric Smith - (and kids his age who commit similar crimes) - absolutely understand that what they are doing is
wrong. I think that while Smith obviously needed (needs?) serious psychiatric help, he is exactly where he belongs. To me, there is nothing behind his eyes. His face is a blank. That scares me.