Editorial
After the horror must come introspection

It is, of course, every parent's worst nightmare: a child goes out to play, turns up missing, is found murdered.

The grief and horror visiting the Puna District on the Big Island following the death of Kauilani Tadeo are shared statewide. That a 6-year-old child can suffer such a fate is hard enough to bear. That a 14-year-old boy is now charged with her kidnap, rape and murder makes it almost unbearable.

It is essential that the wheels of the criminal justice system turn deliberately, correctly, without passion. That a suspect has been identified and charged is no excuse for a rush to judgment.

A second question will be whether the boy might be tried as an adult. The victim's father, not unreasonably, says that "if this boy is capable of doing this crime, then he is capable of doing the time."

This question, too, however, must not turn on the emotional temperature of a community but the dispassionate application of the letter of the law as the Family Court decides whether to waive this case to the Circuit Court.

The reasoning behind laws covering separate treatment of juveniles comes down to a belief that young lives are not irredeemably ended with wrongdoing. Their cases are handled behind closed doors to give them a chance at a future. Still, under the law, the records are released for 14-year-olds after they are convicted in Juvenile Court.

But few juvenile cases have much public exposure. One possibly negative consequence is that it is difficult for the community to judge whether crimes committed by youths are simply individual aberrations of "bad apples" or are reflections of society at large — the result, perhaps, of violence in the media, the breakdown of nuclear families or a dearth of spirituality.

If this Big Island suspect should be tried as an adult, he would be the youngest in state history to be tried as an adult on murder charges.

In a recent trial in Florida, a 14-year-old boy, convicted of murdering his favorite teacher by shooting him between the eyes, was sentenced to 28 years in prison.

His was the latest in a series of high-profile cases involving youths being tried in adult court.

In January, a South Florida jury convicted a boy who was 12 when he murdered a 6-year-old girl. He was given an automatic life sentence for the crime. A Detroit youngster who was 11 when he shot and killed a man also faces a possible life sentence.

Our willingness to try ever- younger offenders as adults reflects the greater severity of the crimes children are committing and a belief that what deters adults from such crimes might deter children.

But more important for society today are questions like: Why are increasingly younger children turning to violent, even heinous crime? And what does it say about American society that its prisons are filling with long-term inmates too young to shave?