IN FEBRUARY 1996, two sixteen-year-old Florida youths, Max Brazley and Xavien Bendross, and twenty-year-old Barry Chandler were accused of killing a Dutch tourist. Chandler, considered an adult by the law, was charged as an adult and, if convicted, faced a lengthy sentence in an adult prison. Brazley and Bendross presented authorities with a dilemma. Legally, they were not adults, yet they had been accused of a brutal and violent crime. If charged as adults, and convicted, they would face a lengthy sentence in prison. If charged as juveniles, their cases would be processed in a separate juvenile justice system that was originally designed to handle minor juvenile offenses, a system that traditionally emphasized rehabilitation over punishment.

But some would argue that the juvenile justice system had already failed in its mission to rehabilitate the youths and that this case belonged in...