WA: "he was just a kid, after all"

This is a few weeks old from the P-I, but it's still good:

Growing up behind bars - Jailed for murder at 13, Jimerson talks of lives denied

At 13, Willard Jimerson Jr. was sent to prison for 23 years, convicted as an adult of murder. Now 25, he tells his story...

Recent research on the developing brains of young people has led some legal experts to question the tough stand taken toward children such as Jimerson...

"I was incarcerated six weeks after my 13th birthday," he said in a telephone interview from the McNeil Island Correctional Facility. "And that person, honestly, does not exist any more..."