bosket

It began prosecuting young adolescents as adults under a draconian law passed in 1978, in the aftermath of the Willie Bosket case.

Mr. Bosket was a 15-year-old black boy who fatally shot two men and wounded a third on the subway.

But the Raise the Age legislation didn’t roll back the so-called Willie Bosket Law, and end the practice of charging 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds as adults for serious violent felony charges.

In Episode 3, it provides historical perspective through the story of Willie Bosket, who, in 1978, at the age of fifteen, murdered two strangers on the subway and shot a third, terrifying much of New York City.

Bosket’s case led to the creation, that year, of New York’s Juvenile Offender Act, which allowed minors as young as thirteen to be tried as adults; the other forty-nine U.S. states followed suit.