A trial is not a test balloon, sent up to see what may happen. Dale speculates that the state attorney was hoping that the grand jury would return an indictment of second-degree murder, which would have allowed Tate to be tried in the juvenile justice system. But when the grand jury issued a first-degree indictment, he had to be tried as an adult. Even then, as Lazarus pointed out, the state could have refiled a lesser charge. They did not, and the game played out to its conclusion.
Nobody pretends that the issues raised by young people who kill are easy.
There's an unfathomable moral calculus that changes with every case. But then, sometime down a long and terrible road, I hope I wouldn't want to anymore. That's why we have laws. I don't want to live in a society where my primal impulses, and those of every other injured person, are kowtowed to. Gary Kamiya is Salon's executive editor.