Morgan Lane Arnold: Too Young for a Life Sentence? - Essay Sample

Introduction

Morgan Lane Arnold was charged as an accessory in the murder of her father. Her legal team succeeded in showing her conduct may have been driven by mental illness, but the presiding judge refused to transfer her Case to the juvenile justice system because they believed that it would not have the capacity to address her mental health issues. Thus by choosing to put her through the criminal justice system, she became exposed to the danger of a life sentence for being an accessory to murder (Maryland Criminal Law Code, 2013).

The Howard County judge sentenced the teenager who plotted the murder of her father to thirty years in prison. The judge said that he needs to balance the age of the teen and the history of mental problems with the evidence that she had spent several months plotting the murder of her father. The father was 58 years old, and Morgan Lane Arnold was said to have manipulated her boyfriend into fatally stabbing the father.

In the Case, it looked that the crime had been well-thought-out before committing. It was clear that Morgan was the main culprit. The father was a well-known businessman writing in popular blogs and also co-hosted a podcast.

All states have 'transfer provisions,' which allow juvenile offenders to be prosecuted as adults for more serious offenses. Among the ways these transfer provisions operate is through 'Judicially Controlled Transfers' (Michon, n.d.). These kinds of transfers happen when juvenile court judges have the discretion to transfer cases to the adult criminal court system by waiving jurisdiction.

Laws Violated in the Case

The primary rule that had been violated was the right to life. Arnold teamed up with her boyfriend to kill their father. However, the court also violated other regulations that are rights for Arnold. The Supreme Court in Roper v Simmons (2005) said that children are a person below 18 who have a reason not to be subjected to the death penalty. This constitutional right cannot be taken away. This means that Morgan Lane Arnold runs the risk of life in prison without the possibility of parole if their Case is transferred to the adult criminal court system. Georgia law gives juvenile court judges the discretion to waive jurisdiction and move a child above the age of 12 who is charged with a capital offense to the adult criminal court system.

Just like in Maryland, a juvenile court judge must consider mitigating and aggravating factors surrounding the commission of the capital offense charged. A 14-year-old boy is old enough to understand right from wrong. Even if he did not know what the principal offender was going to do, it is reasonable to assume that Morgan Lane Arnold could foresee that the principal offender could be going to commit a violent crime that may result in death or grievous harm to another person because the latter was armed with a revolver.

This foresight of harm is an aggravating factor working against him. Even though there is no evidence that he engaged in a physical struggle with the mother of the deceased baby or that he shot the dead baby, there is a public interest in deterring children from engaging in violent crimes because they know they will not be subjected harsh punishments under Georgia law (aggravating factor). Thus if I were a juvenile court judge, I would waive jurisdiction to allow Dominique Lang to be charged as an adult in adult criminal court where he runs the risk of getting life without parole.

Possible Penalties Associated With the Laws

Arnold needed to face her sentence as described by a juvenile court system. The restorative justice system seems a natural fit for child welfare. The concept of child welfare is a theoretical justification for punishing children offenders less severely than adults since juvenile wrongdoing is a symptom of social or environmental factors for which the young person cannot be held individually responsible (Braithwaite, 1989). Hence the child welfare justification for restorative juvenile justice is that the primary goal of a youth justice system is to give juvenile offenders help or treatment rather than punishment. A child welfare driven juvenile justice system is characterized by:

• Tribunals dealing with children as persons who need care and protection as well as those who are in trouble with the law
• The tribunal's jurisdiction is not only confined to conventional criminal offenses but also encompasses so-called 'status offenses' including behaviors such as truancy, or sexual precociousness
• This wide-ranging jurisdiction in the welfare model does not wait until an offense has been committed before intervening in the lives of young people
• A preference for informal procedures that are not constrained by concepts such as legal relevance or the need to prove the commission of an offense
• The use of social scientific 'experts' in the form of social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, those trained in pedagogy, either as decision-makers in their own right or, more commonly, as advisers and report-writers to assist judges

Decision-makers in juvenile tribunals are given wide-ranging discretion when determining and providing for the 'best interests' of the child.

A marked preference for court orders and disposals that is flexible, individualized, and open-ended or indeterminate in duration. Such placements likewise have the effect of investing a high degree of discretionary power over the young person's life in the practitioners who are charged with implementing them.

Case Hearing

The Case was heard in Howard County Circuit Court. The court systems have the accountability of making sure that constitutional rights are secure. The public defense structure, on the other hand, requires the aspect of self-governance from the judiciary. Arnold was charged as an adult. She had an attorney by the name Joseph Murtha who tried hard to show that she should be tried as a juvenile. Arnold was only 14 years at the time of the murder.

It was important that Arnold's Case would be heard from a juvenile court system. From the foregoing, a combination of child welfare and restorative justice lead to the conclusion that children are a vulnerable class of people who always need protection from the potentially harmful and corruptive influences of the adult world, including the adult criminal justice system (Hemmens, Brody, & Spohn, 2019). The primary objective of juvenile justice must thus be addressing their needs and interests rather than their criminal culpability.

Child welfare concerns made the United Kingdom lead the way in creating a juvenile justice system, which, for the most part, treated juvenile delinquency in a less cruel way. The child welfare movement emerged in the early 19th century to successfully push lawmakers into enacting laws that separated the juvenile justice system from the criminal justice system and rehabilitated convicted minors back into law-abiding citizens.

The Outcome of the Case

The judge made the decision that Arnold would spend her life in prison for the murder of her father. The evidence showed that Arnold conspired with her teen boyfriend in the killing. The boyfriend was sentenced to 30 years in jail because there was evidence supported by the online messages that the couple exchanged between January and May. Arnold was charged with first-degree murder.

Even so, it was important that Arnold had been charged in juvenile because at the time of the murder, she was 14. Similarly, the age of the defendant, physical and mental condition as well as the amenability to treatment needed to be considered in determining the kind of court for the hearing of the Case.

Justification of the Outcome

It was important that the hearing would be done in a juvenile court because Arnold was a minor. The Supreme Court in Jackson v Hobbs (2011) said that children are persons below 18 who have a right not to be subjected to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This constitutional right is not absolute. It may be taken away if it is justified to do so. Maryland law gives juvenile court judges the discretion to waive jurisdiction and transfer a child above the age of 13 who is charged with a capital offense to the adult criminal court system.

There is an expectation that before such a decision is made, the judge will consider aggravating and mitigating factors surrounding the circumstances under which the minor committed the capital offense charged. Morgan Lane Arnold is suffering from a mental illness. She did not know what she was doing or appreciate the consequences of her conduct at the time she was procuring her boyfriend to kill her father. Her mental illness is a mitigating factor that would make be not waive the jurisdiction of my juvenile court if I was a judge hearing her Case.

A restorative justice process investigates the root cause of committing a crime to heal the offender and victim (Zehr, 2015). All this is intended to help the offender take personal accountability for the consequences of their crime and learn from their mistakes so that they grow into productive citizens. When restorative justice is used in addressing juvenile delinquency, it gets to the heart of what psychologists have established as the cause of children engaging in criminal conduct. Several studied have identified emotional, physical, sexual abuse, and parental neglect as forces that push a child into committing crimes (Chauhan et al. 2017). Retributive justice and its desire for nothing more than the certainty of punishment make it a wrong model for a juvenile justice system in light of this discovery about children in conflict with the law. Addressing these causes of juvenile delinquency may put them on a different path away from becoming an adult offender who may repeat the cycle by abusing children as an adult or teenager. As stated earlier, parental neglect may push children to be in conflict with the law. Public child welfare programs have social workers who receive and investigate reports of parental neglect. A restorative process can pinpoint parental neglect as the cause of delinquency, and the juvenile justice system can then coordinate juvenile probation officers with social workers to incorporate guardians or parents in efforts to reduce juvenile recidivism at the family level.

References

Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, shame, and reintegration. Cambridge University Press

Chauhan, P., Schuck, A., & Widom, C. (2017). Child maltreatment, problem behaviors, and neighborhood attainment. American Journal of Community Psychology, 60 (3-4), 555-567.

Hemmens, C., Brody, D., & Spohn, C. (2019). Criminal courts: A contemporary perspective, 4th ed. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publishing Company

Maryland Criminal Law Code, MD Criminal Law Code 2-203(2013).