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The Child on Trial
Season 1 · Episode 123

The Child on Trial

The Story of Carl Newton Mahan

Crime at Bedtime · Jack Laurence

November 16, 202531m 50s

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Show Notes

In 1929 Kentucky, a six-year-old boy picked up his father’s shotgun—and changed American legal history.


When little Carl Newton Mahan shot and killed eight-year-old Cecil Darnell after a fight over scrap metal, he became the youngest person ever tried for murder in the United States.

Reporters packed the Knott County Courthouse as the barefoot child sat at the defence table, playing with a toy car while adults debated whether he should spend life in prison.

Convicted of manslaughter and sent to reform school, Carl’s case forced America to confront questions about childhood, morality, and justice that still echo a century later.

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