I was very saddened by this story.  I wonder what was going on in the mind of the Judge.  I printed the entire story and it did not give the details of the murder, so I can't discern or even relate to why the Judge made his decision.  I can imagine the abuse a young girl would have to endure living in the house with a drug-addicted mother.  The fact that she could still achieve and win a Young Author's Award f or a book should have been taken into account.  I am very angered with people in charge can't relate to the people whose life is in their hands.  They don't care and ti becomes a way of making an example out of an obvious victim. The article talks about a black women (maid) who was executed in 1945 for killing her white male pimp/captor, notice the word captor.  I know the sentence was based on the fact that the Judge was messaging women of color by letting them know if they kill a white man, no matter what the circumstances are, you will die and be killed.  She said what she did she did in self-defense. In some cases self-defense doesn't apply especially when there are racial issues.  The articles also addressed how in Pennsylvania the judges received 2.6 million in kickbacks by sending teenagers to a privately run juvenile detention center-sometimes for crimes such as building spoof MySpace pages to satirize a school principal.  The article talked about how the press does not show concern about the school-to-prision pipeline or the penitentiary privatization schemes. I have often wondered why so many black teenagers are being locked up for the rest of their lives and the real culprits are being awarded because it is the countries economy or too much money is being made to stop the crime at the top.   This is another example of legal genocide in my opinion.  How long are these people going to get away with the oppression, the killing, and the raping of black people. Yes, once again it is a racial issue.  Since you all keep the statistics take a look at your numbers and honestly ask yourself is this a result of genocide and racism. I don't want to juge this case without all of the facts, however if a sixteen year old is given life for killing someone who killed her, where is the justice.  You don't have to be physically dead to be dead.  A lot of physciatrist are making alot of money off of the living dead. A man that had a young girl working twelve hour shifts without going before a judge, what kind of justice is that, well, I can answer my own question the system is also quilty of child abuse and child neglect.  Maybe if this pimp would have been put behind bars he would still be alive. The judges in these cases are not the same, however they seem to have the same mindset. I guess they wanted to prove it's still a man's world and you women cannot kill one of us and come before a male judge and expect compassion no matter how you were abused and no matter what your age is.  The good old double standard. I thought that Judges had to have some integrity and morality.