John Conyers: “What we do here is try to deal with the problem of 13-year-olds in this juvenile justice bill. This is really a crime…”

“What we do here is try to deal with the problem of 13-year-olds in this juvenile justice bill. This is really a crime bill. The only reason this is called the juvenile bill is because we are dealing with kids. But the whole idea is to bring them into the criminal justice process. In a word, what we try to stop the McCollum base bill from achieving is to allow the prosecutors to determine which 13-year-olds will be prosecuted for any felony, any felony. I stand here as one that says there are some crimes that 13-year-olds should be prosecuted for, but not any felony. And therein lies the difference. And certainly not to let the prosecutor unilaterally determine who is going to be tried. Where is the judge? And so for that reason, I merely strike the provisions in H.R. 3 that would allow 13-year-olds to be tried as adults at the discretion of the prosecutor for any felony. For goodness sakes, what is going on here? Why do we need this? Judges and prosecutors can try 13-year-olds now under the Federal law, under the Federal crime bill of 1994.”