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He wouldn't be sentenced at all. Children under age 6 are not presumed criminally culpable. Although it varies by state, no state assumes age 5 is old enough to be tried.
Maybe that's true, but I know of crimes that were punished based on the age of the perp on the day the truth came out, which seems illegal to me but there you are.
Are you talking theoretically, Eric, or is there a specific case you have in mind?
Any 5 year old will either be tortured for the rest of his life or will cherish the memory. Most kids would the the former, and the intensely disturbed ones will be the latter. The second is the one who needs to be watched and treated.
Neither would be tried at such a young age. And it's very unlikely any child that young could ever get away with a murder for very long. 20 years would be a super-rare and very extreme exception, and would rely on many events that lie outside the child's control.
Any 5 year old will either be tortured for the rest of his life or will cherish the memory. Most kids would the the former, and the intensely disturbed ones will be the latter. The second is the one who needs to be watched and treated.
I disagree. A typical 5-year-old has such a rigid, self-centered sense of fairness ("if it favors me, it's fair") that only a disturbed child would be tortured by guilt after killing someone. As the child grows up and develops a more nuanced, empathetic view of other people he would be more susceptible to guilt -- or, alternatively, so defended with ironclad rationalizations that NOTHING could shake him from believing that murder was the right move to make.
A 25 year old confessing to a murder when he was 5 years old cannot be tried as a 25 year old for murder. Penalties are different for an adult vs a juvenile under 10 years old. He would face what would have happened as if he was a 5 year old, be counseled and maybe report periodically to a officer of the court.
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