If 11-year-old Jordan Brown had yet had the opportunity in school to learn about the United Nations, it probably wouldn't have surprised him to also learn that the U.S. is one of only two nations on the globe that have refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2010 this Pennsylvania child found himself facing the possibility of being tried in adult court, as well as a life sentence without any chance for parole, for the shooting death of his stepmother.
Had Cortez R. Davis also managed to make it to high-school social studies, he too would have been unsurprised to learn about the U.S.'s unwillingness to sign this document. When this Michigan child was barely 16 years old, and even though he hadn't killed anyone, he had to stand trial as an adult and is today serving a juvenile life sentence without the possibility of parole (JLWOP).
[Photo by Michael Coghlan]
[For more of this story, written by Heather Ann Thompson, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-ann-thompson/shame-of-the-nation-the-f_b_5646100.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics]
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