Teen turns down plea deal for 25 years in prison, gets 65 years instead

You had better read the thread instead of being so lippy. I am not going to repeat everything for such a smarty pants who does not even know what he is talking about.

 

Good. It will save us both some time.

 

he didn't kill anybody. In fact, a cop did. That was acknowledged. The cop had a trial and it was in self defense or something, so they let him go. So the court pinned it instead on a black guy. And it is typical for the US to put extreme harsh sentences on black people, unlike any other race. It fits the statistics. And don't go cry about background and previous convictions... that all is taken into account to still conclude that specifically black people get far longer sentences than others. Apparently you can chance the law to no discriminate, but you can't change a century long culture in a wink of an eye.

 

When you're 15 YO, you're old enough to know that murder or rape is bad.

 

He didn't murder anyone and no one is even suggesting he is guilty of rape.

 

Nobody here has plead ignorance of the law. Cruelty of the law is displayed frequently. Yes, as Dickens' character noted, the law sir, is an ass.

 

Pulling out the race card hurts your argument. The law is used no matter what color someone's skin.

We had an incident in Oklahoma where a homeowner shot at two intruders who broke into his unoccupied home that was being renovated. The homeowner happened to be in the home at the time. One of the intruders was killed and the other 18 year old burgler was charged with murder. The 18 year old was white...so you weren't able to know about this story.

The basis of the law is to keep the victim the victim...in this case the law abiding homeowner. He wouldn't have shot the Perp if they hadn't decided to break the law and someone must pay for the death that decision caused.

I don't like the law...but it's not used based on race.

 

The only one who killed, was a cop. A cop killed somebody. That cop had his trial over it, and they judged it was self defense or something. Hence they pinned in "obviously" on a black child. The US is known for it's far harsher sentences on specifically black people. That fact is pure statistics in them kangaroo courts in the US.

And nobody got raped.

 

It is reality that blacks are the most affected by this just like they are a great deal more likely to be shot by the police when unarmed. I have stated that it also affects all who are not the very rich so I am tossing your race card, not willing to admit that this happens more to blacks, back at you.

totally irrelevant to anything.

This thread is not about discussing the inns and outs of whether anyone was guilty although a strange anomaly in Alabama law has got people talking. It is about the reality that in the US only 3% of people are now considered innocent until proven guilty, that 10% of your people accept plea bargains when they are innocent and that this man's rise in sentence from 25 years to 65 years suggests the court is giving anyone else black or white or yellow or green or any colour you want, the message that if they do not accept guilt of all they are charged with and the sentence offered by apparent plea bargain they are going to be destroyed. That is what the thread is on - the imprisonment without trial justice system of the US.

 

But you are turning the perpetrator into a victim of a crime ( murder) which simply does not exist, just as a way to shove a more serious charge on someone., no one is a victim of murder if his death is the result of justifiable homicide secondary to an aggressive act. All deaths do not create victims of a crime because without victim status, they cannot put someone away for 65 years. You still have plenty of charges to file without boy's death lying at anyone's feet.

By the way the OP she's not pulling it out because this bizarre charge was filed. She pulled it out because of the draconian sentence in the face of a refusal to plea. I agree with you in that while there may be evidence that DA's and judges are tougher on minorities who do not accept deals, it measures correlation, not causation. They are tougher because minorities are poorer defendents who have poorer representation and are far more vulnerable. These people want to punish defendants who won't plea regardless of color to set an example. They just get away with it more with poor defendents and youth.

 

This sentence is laughable. Why 65 years prison?

This costs millions. Put a bullet between his eyes and be done with it.

 

The use of longer and longer and longer and longer prison sentences does nothing but provide free medical care to a group of geriatrics who who's arthritis and heart disease is of more concern than their 'homies' of 60 years ago, and a hell of a lot over crowed prisons for judges to demand 'plans'. This 15 year old kid was part of a burglary gone very wrong. His friends brought and pulled the guns and once again the 'throw away the key' crowd loses all perspective. This same cell will be needed for someone who actually shoots or rapes someone and does need to be put away for decades.

This guy isn't a violent felon. At most, he needs 15 years until that prefrontal lobe fully develops.

 

Harsh sentences on everybody is fine for me.

I won't cry on a guy who shoot on a police officer, he could have killed him. When you're 15, you're grown up enough to know that trying to kill somebody is wrong.

This kid is a criminal, and he is treated like a criminal, he can't hide behing his colour of skin.

There is enough honest black people to not waste your pity on black thugs.

 

I agree this is not a race issue, Da's today often overcharge in hopes of a plea deal, if you refuse the plea deal you risk a jury hating you so much they find you guilty of the overcharged items rather then just finding you guilty for the crimes you committed - white or black

 

This is how things are in Alabama. There they take a very no-nonsense approach to law enforcement.

True story here. Back in 2007 I lived in Alabama, and was the victim of an armed robbery. I was working a side job delivering pizza, and had a late night delivery to "the hood". I showed up, and the order was bogus, the people in the house did not order a pizza. Returning to my car, 2 kids (each were 16) attacked me with metal pipes.

I got beaten fairly good, but got away. Next day I was driving past the location, and saw the pizza boxes on top of a garbage can. Called the cops, while I was waiting I recognized one of the kids who attacked me. 2 months later they were both arrested (they were cousins, and the mother of one owned the 2 businesses the boxes were found outside of).

When I was called by the DA and told of the arrest, they had me come in as part of the pre-trial process. In it they offered me money from the "Victim Restitution Fund" to accept a plea bargain on my case. Essentially they pay you off for accepting the lesser charges. I flat out told them no, this was a premeditated ambush attack, and they deserved to have the book thrown at them. I found out later that the daughter of a friend knew them from school. They were punks there as well, terrorizing other kids because they thought that was "Gangsta".

They had been doing attacks like this for months. Call a food order to a nearby house, then attack the delivery person and take the food. They had done this 6 times, each time stealing the food and beating the delivery driver. The son of the business owner admitted to his guilt and signed a confession and pled guilty for a 10 year sentence when he turned 18. All he did in my case was take the food.

The one that actually chased me down and beat me with the pipe was given an offer. Plead guilty and accept a 20 year sentence in my case, or take his chances at trial where they would charge him in all 7 cases and request consecutive sentences (roughly 80 years). He sat in jail for 2 years until he was 18, then pled guilty. Last year he had his first parole hearing which was denied, because he has been in and out of trouble while in jail.

Actually, he did murder somebody. For decades, in the US charging somebody as an accomplice in a murder as if they did the murder is legal. Even if one of the other criminals is the one that is killed.

In this case, he was part of a crew of 5 that was burglarizing houses. And after the police showed up one of the other members pulled a gun and shot at the cops. And yes, the cops did the expected action and made his buddy assume room temperature.

Therefore he is guilty of the murder. He made the decision to burglarize houses, and anything that resulted from that action he is equally guilty of.

He had a choice. Take 25 years (in which time he would be available for parole in 12), or take his chance at trial. He gambled, and lost.

But he is indeed guilty of murder. Not only by the definition of the law, but he was found guilty in a court of law.

 

This is still an area of the nation that believes in "punishment". Jail is not simply a vacation between stints on the street, it is where criminals are actually punished, often by very long stints of incarceration.

I lived for many years in Alabama, and honestly loved it. People are exceedingly polite, and most kids are raised that way.

I still remember my shock at first when I moved there from California. I am of an older generation, and was raised with "Southern Values" such as addressing people as Sir or Ma'am, standing for a lady, and the like. And it was a bit of a surprise the first time I was showing a computer to a customer and answered a question for a 10 year old kid and he said "Yea", and his mom smacked him on the back of the head.

"You don't do that, you say 'Yes Sir' to that man!"

And that was more or less the norm. I can't recount all the times I had kids give a short answer or be even slightly rude, and seen their parents (normally mom) smack the back of their head and dress them down. And interestingly enough, such reactions were pretty universal, regardless of race. Black, White, even Hispanic parents were more likely than not dress down their kids for not being polite.

Very different from the rest of the country. There, when convicted of serious crimes, it is pretty much expected that they will do at least 5-10 years if not more. Unlike California, where somebody with a long criminal record can often expect to get 1 year for their 5th felony.

 

If you commit a felony and someone dies as a result you get charged with murder. It's called felony murder.

 

In fact, under Alabama Law it is actually quite clear under Alabama Code section 13A-6-2(a)(3).:

https://web.archive.org/web/2011072...ate.al.us/acas/CodeOfAlabama/1975/13A-6-2.htm

That is actually a rather narrow classification, and he is indeed guilty of both of those specifications. He was guilty of the burglary, as well as the death of one of his co-thugs.

Wanna bet in his appeal, he will claim he was poorly represented? Even though his lawyers probably told him he was nuts to fight it?

 

Could you help me understand how the accomplice died as a result of the felony the other boy committed?

 

Most black people in the US live in concentrated -population areas where there tends to be more crime and more intense policing, which could explain some of the high incarceration statistics. IMO at this point that residential pattern is at least partially by choice. I have been shopping in stores where most of the customers are black and heard black people nearby pointedly state they do not like to be around white people, and have gotten hate stares from little black kids in grocery stores. We had a black family living up the street from us for awhile, but they moved out after a few years.

IMO when there are racial differences there are always going to be racists, and it is not a one-sided thing.

Johnson's welfare policies and the 70% illegitimacy rate in black births in the US is also IMO a large factor involved in many discrepancies. The most ignorant people are reproducing the most, and some girls actually seek out highly fertile males they call "baby makers" to get them pregnant. The same girls will then have catfights with other girls their "baby maker" has also made pregnant. Lower-class black welfare culture in the inner city slums in disgusting, and offensive to anyone with standards, black or white. The black middle class suffers the most from the picture of blacks this animalistic behavior produces to the larger culture. They don't behave like this, but suffer from the negative image.

 

Sure. If the felony wasn't committed the cops wouldn't have been called. If the cops weren't called then the boy wouldn't have been shot.

Google Ryan Holle's name. He lent his car to some friends who used it to commit armed robbery and someone died. He was sentenced to life without parole.

 

Simple. One of the 5 teens involved in the burglaries pulled a gun and charged the cops.

Pull a gun on the cops, expect to be killed. Part of a criminal group that results in the death of somebody (even another member of the group), you get charged for the murder. If they had not been burglarizing homes, nobody would have died.

 

well you are talking about the term of their natural life. The sort of thing that some people would talk about giving people rather than the death penalty as it is worse. This boy was 15 when he committed his crime. I know I was reading recently that your brain and cognitive thinking is not fully developed until you are 18.

Obviously if you have been attacked yourself you would have personal feelings about it. Clearly what the kids were doing was wrong. The next choice needs to be how you are going to deal with it. Sending 16 year old children to spend their entire life in jail is imo insane. Your cheaper alternative would be to kill them I suspect that will be happening soon.

There are other ways of dealing with these issues which while being initially more demanding on resources also produce better results and allow the people to move back into society and give back and obviously in the long term are going to cost massively less.

It sounds like the laws in Albaba allow for what I have heard is going on in the US called 'warehousing people'

He did not commit the murder. Your law may call it murder but he most certainly did not murder the 16 year old idiot. - I wonder if they were on drugs acting so crazily. Seriously Spain is doing something similar blaming the people who organised the referendum in Catalonia with every injury the Militarised Police received from people they were dragging out of the polling booths by the hair. As I said in connection with that a psychologist would have fun working out what was going on here but yes, he could be told he is a murderer but he committed no murder.

No he did not commit murder. No way did he physically commit murder. The policeman with his gun killed the boy for crazily coming at him with a gun but suggesting that that was the boy doing it involves some kind of transference or something and is not true, though the law calls it so.

He was certainly guilty of burglary and I have checked and he did indeed buy a gun though I suspect that was more to feel big than anything else. However he did not kill anyone. I think he did not fire his gun but not certain. Your laws may call it so but it is not reality. When we had the death penalty at one time we had this thing that if someone killed someone, all the people who were there were convicted of that murder. I think it was one of the reasons we dropped our death penalty. I seem to remember there was a situation where a 17 year old got off (we did not kill minors) but an 18 year old got hanged. Seemed to get to people's consciences. I consider sentences of the type you are speaking of to be similar to killing the people. I also consider a society which tries its minors as adults as having problems.

The very fact that you say he gambled suggests that it is realistic that he may indeed have got less than 25 years. That suggests that the final judgement is flawed. The whole thing screams of injustice. Crimes should have a tariff. To make such an enormous difference between plea bargaining and a supposed free and fair trial suggests that the US no longer has a democratic type of justice system. Indeed I was reading just today of you having Indefinite Imprisonment without trial. It being claimed this is for people who could possibly decide to become terrorists. An obvious flaw being that it leaves a once democratic country free to indefinitely imprison anyone they want without trial.

Now tell me do these people work when they are in jail because I think I have heard that. That with the 'warehousing' sounds to me that the US is just getting a new system for its slaves. There would be no way in the world that the US would be imprisoning children for the rest of their natural lives if they had to pay for the masses of people this is being done to.

You can say he is 'guilty' of murder if you choose to. However it remains that he murdered no one.

 

Well he does have that, "Guilty" look.







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I see, so you are trying to lump two different criminal acts, committed by separate people, as part of the same felony.

I do not see how being part of the group or taking part in the crime caused that other accomplice's death.