"your implication that none of us knows anything about the case which would entitle us to state objections,"
I don't think I said this Mike - my reaction was to the definitive solutions being offered here - personally I accept neither executing (neither do you), nor banging away for life; the idea that you might lock two children/young men up in a secure unit alongside hardened adult criminals and then release them into the world at an unspecified date with all the skills and ideas they would have gained inside fills me with horror, especially after what they did.
I really don't think our system is constructed to cope with crimes like this, so you either go with the knee-jerk and punish them as adults (revenge), or leave it to the experts; not a great choice either way, but I can't think of another.
"adequately punished"
I find the the older I get, the less my desire for revenge on wrongdoers, especially young people, otherwise I would find myself permanently stationed in the lane outside our house with a half brick, waiting for the next ton-up boy-racer who uses this narrow road as a race-track and makes our lives a misery and it virtually impossible to let children out or keep domestic pets.
I feel we spent our lives (mine anyway) with a justice system heavily biased towards punishment and almost totally ignoring reform; things have changed and I'm willing to give it a go, especially with children and young teenagers.
I suppose that in the end it's down to whether you believe that these two are any different from any other child who commits a crime and thumbs their noses to the authorities because of their age; in my experience they all do it and despite the enormity and horror of their crime - I don't.
As far as press involvement is concerned, I long for the days when you could pick up a newspaper an read the news, even with an identifiable spin on it. Nowadays it takes me about a quarter-of-an-hour to read the news and the rest of the day doing the crossword.
Best back,
Jim Carroll