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Should Teen Killers Face Adult Punishment?

Daniel Kim Views  

As the trial of a teenage boy who brutally murdered an 8-year-old girl begins in China, public calls for the execution of minor violent criminals are growing louder.

According to the New York Times (NYT) Chinese news on June 26, the first trial for a teenage boy, Xiao Lang (alias, then 13 years old), accused of murdering 8-year-old Gong Moyang two years ago, was held at the Longxi County Court in Gansu Province, China.

Xiao Lang is accused of brutally killing Gong Moyang with a premeditated weapon in a small village in Gansu Province in September 2022 and then desecrating her body.

According to the indictment, Xiao Lang confessed that his motive for the crime was a hatred towards women arising from his dissatisfaction with his mother’s disciplinary methods. His mother, Chen, acknowledged her son’s punishment at school and admitted to corporal punishment against him.

In China, a revised criminal law that lowered the age of criminal responsibility for certain crimes, such as intentional homicide and intentional injury, from 14 to 12 years old has been in effect since March 2021.

Xiao Lang, who was 13 at the time of the crime, was not subject to this juvenile law. However, local prosecutors did not indict Xiao Lang even over a year later, and in the meantime, several teenage heinous crimes occurred, stirring public opinion that even juveniles should be punished as adults.

In January of this year, a boy in central China who killed a 4-year-old girl by pushing her into a manure tank was not prosecuted because he was under 12 years old. Additionally, in March, three 13-year-old boys in Handan City killed and buried a classmate.

This has sparked heated debates on Chinese social media about teenage violent crimes involving murder and burial. The Handan City murder and burial case recorded over 1 billion views in just one day.

Legal scholars and netizens called for severe punishment for the perpetrators, with some even advocating for the death penalty.

There are also claims that juvenile offenders are more likely to commit crimes because they are exempt from legal responsibility. A criminal law professor with 30 million followers criticized the lack of punishment for minors as moral relativism. With increasing public pressure for zero-tolerance punishment, the Supreme People’s Court announced last month that it had sentenced four cases of crimes committed by 12-13-year-olds to 10-15 years in prison, along with guidelines holding guardians accountable for their children’s actions.

With the opening of the first trial for Xiao Lang, who killed an 8-year-old girl, there is much interest in how his actual sentence will be determined.

Although a death sentence is still impossible, the call for zero-tolerance punishment dominates public opinion, and there have been cases where heavy sentences have been handed down. Considering the claims of the victim’s family that Xiao Lang shows no remorse for his crime, there are also analyses that he could receive a life sentence.

Daniel Kim
content@viewusglobal.com

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