Recently, the public has paid special attention to the issue of sentencing in the vicious case of juvenile homicide in Handan, and there are basically two levels of voice, one is the negative theory of the legal scholars, and the other is the affirmative theory of the people. The latter is especially loud.
I noticed that Luo Xiang said that only punishment can bring about the effect of transformation. He did not say this explicitly, leaving room for it. But there are also rumors on the Internet that it is said to be another sentence from Luo Xiang: create a precedent if there is no precedent. It is unknown whether it is true or false.
But I can basically guess what Luo Xiang really meant. However, this matter involves the stability and authority of the law, and it is not trivial. So there is actually no room for discussion from this angle, and I dare not talk nonsense.
Don't dare to talk nonsense, just talk about something else, and say whatever you want. This incident reminds me of a mythical story, that is, the title of this article says, Nezha killed the third prince of the Dragon King at the age of seven and was sentenced to death by the Jade Emperor.
This story is in China, and even children know it, because there are more film and television animations in this area. Although the versions of the story are different, the main content is roughly the same, that is, Nezha pays the price of his life for his actions.
Although this is a story, and some versions of the story are still a negative image of the third prince of the Dragon King, but judging from the Jade Emperor's sentence to Nezha's death, killing people to pay for life is a simple value, which seems to have little to do with age.
Checking the information, I noticed that some legal provisions and real cases on juvenile homicide in ancient China also had certain age regulations in ancient times, but there were also special cases, such as the Qianlong period, Liu Jiuzi accidentally killed a child at the age of 9, and instead of following the practice of leniency under 10 years old, he broke the convention and sentenced him to hanging and imprisoned.
However, no matter how the regulations are made and how they are operated, both ancient and modern, both in China and abroad, a question has arisen now, that is, what is the basis for these regulations? Since there is a saying that "murder pays for life, and debts are repaid," then why does it exist that minors do not have to pay for their lives for murder? What is the basis for not bearing criminal responsibility?
I know that the common argument for minors not to be criminally responsible is that minors do not have the capacity to bear criminal responsibility, that minors are still young, mentally immature, and lack the ability to correctly understand and distinguish between right and wrong in their own actions. To put it simply, he is still a child and does not understand.
But this claim is debatable. When a child kills an ant, he knows that the ant will never survive again, and of course he understands the meaning of killing. Knowing that hitting someone is a mistake, they certainly know that killing someone is a more serious mistake. There seems to be some contradiction between having the ability to kill and not having the capacity to bear criminal responsibility.
The third prince of Nezha killed the third prince of the Dragon King, and the Jade Emperor sentenced Nezha to death, which is a fair sentence in mythological stories. Looking at this story now, I suddenly found that it also has a good value for popularizing the law.
This part of the story should be intercepted and introduced into teaching materials on morality and the rule of law, so that students can learn how to pay for murder from an early age, rather than letting students know that the death penalty is not applicable under the age of 14.