You are being a bit disingenuous, Jim, I feel. I agree with you, as I have said, that 10-year-olds, however iniquitous, shouldn't be treated just like adult criminals; but Richard's point about their having spent a good while earlier taunting the authorities for not being able to touch them whatever they did because they were under the age of crim respons is well authenticated, and to come on with this 'only innocent kids' bit really won't do {as I suggested in an earlier, perhaps over-sarcastic, response, to which Fred took peculiar exception}. I am surprised, btw, that their savvy let them down when it came to killing Jamie ~ if it had occurred to them to do it a few months earlier then probably nothing could have been done about it at all. Just ask yourself, I beg you, would you have felt better about that?

~Michael~