The accused shooter in the Oxford Township Michigan school massacre is 15 years old yet was charged as an adult. Whenever exceptions are made to protections and rights, it’s always in favor of the state and against the individual. What if sometimes it went the other way around?
Child Crime, Child Time
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Two things. One, you’re absolutely right about the concessions always favoring the prosecution. I think a far worse problem is that attempting to avail one’s self of the guaranteed right to a jury trial ends up becoming an all-or-nothing gamble with a double-digit sentence at the end if you lose. Two, I see the prosecutor’s going after the parents. That’s not right. Go after the parents. Also go after the school officials who ignored the years of bullying. Go after the kids who bullied him. Go after the parents of the kids who bullied him. To steal a line from “Silence of the Lambs”: “Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. [He] wasn’t born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse.”