Target Shooting Research Paper

A fourteen-year-old female juvenile, living in Illinois, was in an altercation with the Intended Target over a former boyfriend. Unfortunately, the altercation left the Intended Target’s friend, the Victim also fourteen, dead. Two weeks prior to the incident, the Offender was jumped and beat up by a group of girls that included both Victim and Intended Target. Intended Target threatened Offender the day of the event with a message indicating she was going to die. In preparation of retaliation against the Intended Target, Offender was handed a gun by her uncle. She was further provoked by her aunt who quoted, “shoot the bitch [Intended Target].” However, the gun did not harm Intended Target. The bullet only grazed her arm. Sadly, the Victim …show more content…
Unlike a status offender, Offender has displayed herself as a serious threat to society. Whether or not Offender missed Intended Target and killed the Victim accidently, she still fired a gun with the intent to harm another human being. In addition to being a threat, Offender’s own family provoked the shooting. An intake officer should not consider releasing the juvenile back home when there is no proper adult guidance. Although the mother was not around, she should have not allowed her child to be around negative influences such as the aunt and uncle. Now that Offender awaits adjudication in a juvenile detention facility, the question of whether or not her case should or should not be transferred to adult …show more content…
Judges consider many factors when making the decision to transfer juveniles into the adult system such as age, maturity of understand consequences, relationships with family, school and community, if they are dangerous and if juvenile court service could potentially help them. Considering murder is a serious and violent offense, the judge should transfer the case to adult court. Although Offender is fourteen years old, she had the intent to harm another person and she acted on her intent by deciding to shoot a gun at the Intended Target. If Offender did not kill Victim her case should still held in the juvenile courts. However, Victim did die. Offender decided to commit a serious hate crime, therefore she should be tried as an adult. After deciding which court Offender should be tried in, the judge must determine her