http://www.wftv.com/news/10458584/detail.html
Man that must be horrible for him, 8 months in juvenile detention and all. You know, I can’t even think of anything to say about this, I think it speaks for itself pretty well though.
What a brilliant idea. Let’s let convicted criminals tell us when they’ve had enough jail and learnt their lesson. After all, surely they regret murdering a man now that they know jail is so “hard”. He’s said he’s sorry, it’s a crime to be keeping him there against his will!
:smack:
At least the judge and the state seem to have their heads screwed on the right way around in this circumstance…
Mesner was fifteen years old when the offence occured. Fifteen year olds do really stupid and sometimes really evil things that a few years of growing up tends to even out. This boy has a non-parole period of 22 years ahead of him: at the end of such a term, a hardened, bitter and quite possibly non-remorseful human being will emerge from the penal system into a life that has for all intents and purposes passed him by.
I agree that Mesner needs to be punished, severely. I agree that his crime was heinous and showed a cruelty that needs to be addressed.
But I’m not sure if a long prison term for minors is the best way of ensuring that ‘society’ is safer at the end.
If it were me presiding over the case, I’d either lock him up permanently (rather than release a man who’s only experience of adult life is within the confines of a gaol) or make the sentence shorter, perhaps five years, so that Mesner has something to work towards and look forward to. Twenty-two years in the mind of a 15 year old is forever, and there would be absolutely no incentive to learn from his horrid mistake.
Five years is still a bloody awful punishment (shit, just the thought of five DAYS give me the creeps), and the authorities can assess his ‘readiness’ for return to society at the end of that time.
Or keep him locked up forever, one or the other. Twenty two years is just cruel.
Um. And jumping on a prone, beaten man’s chest - a man who subsequently died of his wounds - is just a little foible?
OK. My mind is officially boggled. There’s another thread where people are arguing for the violent beating and/or death of a kid who threw an EGG at a CAR (no damage ensued to car or driver but the driver shot the kid dead). So let’s go do major violence on and possibly kill someone who did actually perform a prank but let’s just give a KILLER a little pat on the head?
My own head is spinning. I have to go lie down.
Actually, in order to jump on his chest he’d have to be supine and not prone.
Perhaps that would be a good idea. Obviously your brain is befuddled, because if you had actually read my post fuckhead, you would see that I am not calling for leniency for the crime, but for the prospects of rehabilitating the kid.
As I said, either lock him up for the term of his natural life, or give him some hope of release in the foreseeable future. The alternative is cruel…not just for the offender, but for society when he IS released twenty-two years down the track.
If it were an offense where it could be argued that a teen wouldn’t have understood the severity of the outcome – spiking a water cooler with LSD or dropping a rock off a highway overpass, for example, then I’d be with you on the idea of growing out of the behavior and learning from mistakes. In this case, though, stomping a man to death, the victim was immediately in front of him and was being directly hurt by Mesner’s every action. This, in my opinion, goes beyond the degree of empathy than can be gained with a few years of maturity. If such a fundamental element of humanity wasn’t present by age 15, I don’t believe it’s going to be there at any age.
As for the sentence, I think you’re right in that he’s not going to be able to function when he gets out. He’ll probably end up back in jail for something else soon afterward. The 22-year sentence will effectively become a life sentence, with the bonus of the additional victim of whatever crime he commits after release. Whether the possibility of letting him out earlier is a better solution, I don’t know.
I had to roll my eyes at Mesner’s desire to be let out so he could be an inspiration speaker, though. Somehow, “I stomped a guy to death and did 8 months in juvie hall” doesn’t quite fill me with fearful respect for the justice system. He’ll be a much more inspirational speaker when he tells fellow teens “and now they’ll walk me back to a concrete cell, where I’ll be until I’m as old as your parents.”
I tend to agree (which is why I also added the option of a life sentence), but I have some minor reservations based on the power of peer pressure particularly on adolescents and the (perhaps naive) belief that even bad people might come to clearly see their badness and seek redemption.
So, my suggestion remains. Either lock him up for life, or release him while he (and the community) still retains some modicum of hope for his ability to function as an acceptable member of society.
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What? There’s no middle ground here? Either a slap on the wrist (which is what five years is) or a life sentence? What’s wrong with ten years? Fifteen?
Five years is a piece of cake. It’s pitty-pat. It’s a breeze. No, I’ve never been in prison and don’t plan to. But five years for a life brutully taken is nothing but an injustice!
I’m a bed-wetting liberal who usually decries harsh sentencing, but fifteen-year-old murderers are not babies who need coddling. And the fact that this dickwad is whining about his stint in juvie just proves he’s not getting punished enough. Worry about his soul, rehabilitate him, educate him…but don’t let him go free. I’m so sick of these piece of shits killing, raping, and fucking everything up for peaceful people. How dare he try to elicit pity from people! Where was his pity for the man he killed?
I have no problem with the sentence. 22 years for stomping a fellow human to death to avoid boredom seems fair even for a fifteen year old.
I have a problem with this part of the article:
The kid did something horrible. He is being punished severally for it. He is losing the best years of his life to “pay his debt to society”. However, they need to provide schooling and health care or he will be a burden to society for his entire life and they might as well have just shot him like a mad dog.
I thought maybe the mom was being over dramatic, but the judge’s response scares me. What happen to the rehab portion of prison?
I do not protest out of sympathy, but as a cold-hearted fiscal conservative* that would rather pay to educate this kid so he can become part of society when he is 37 instead of paying to shuffle him in and out of the prison system for his entire life.
Jim
- I am not really that cold hearted, but that is the most logical course of action I see from both the Governments side and the criminals side.
Agreed. If nothing else, I want this kid to get counseling so that
a) his counselors can figure out if he’s a sociopath or just a guy with a terminally weak sense of self (who’s willing to kill a helpless man to impress friends); and
b) in either case, help him discover ways of coping with his condition, ways of coping that will allow him to function in society without committing more atrocities.
Daniel
Nitpick: I doubt that would be very effective.
From here.
I think that most 15 year olds know that murder is wrong. As far as ‘hardened, bitter and quite possibly non-remorseful human being will emerge from the penal system’ - it looks like a non-remorseful human being was sent in.
Granted, all I know of this is what is in the article in the OP. However, it seems that this kid was not destined for anything great to begin with. He has the mark of someone that will start several thing and quit when it ‘gets too hard’. Plus, would it really help him to let him out early? If anything it would cause more problems because he still wouldn’t learn that actions have consequences and they aren’t always plesant.
Sounds sensible to me.
One huge problem with prisons is that when inmates are released, they tend to be unsocialized, unskilled, unemployable, and worst of all, full of antisocial rage. It’s as though prison life exacerbates the very problems it seeks to cure.
I thought we gave up the pretense of rehabbing criminals long ago. We punish. We bleeding heart liberals care about adding more damage to a screwed up kid. He will come out bigger and meaner. How does that help anyone?
I’m sorry, I’m not functioning well today and can’t find the thread. Link me?
I do agree with you on some points here: ie. he won’t be adjusted by the time he gets out and this won’t help him become a better member of society but this really got me:
He may be feeling guilty now but when presented with the idea of beating a homeless man, Messner stepped up to the plate without a second thought. Some might construe that as teen-lacking-foresight but to me, that’s pure evil. Not the stupid or slightly evil shit you do as a teenager with no regards for the consequences but lock-him-up-right-now evil. If he cannot garner any sort of conscience ** during the event**, what does it matter if he feels bad now, after his victim has died horrifically? In these sorts of situations, hindsight fixes very little and it certainly doesn’t bring anyone back from the dead.
I concur with the idea of keeping him locked up for life, this boy is not a contributing member of society.
OK, playing the devils advocate role here, how would you (if you were a magistrate) justify imprisoning him for life then?
Life without parole (at least here in Australia) is generally reserved for those who are deemed irrevocably evil/mentally ill, such as the Martin Bryant’s of this world. A kid who joins in a sadistic thrill-kill (possibly at the behest of his cronies and seeking peer approval) doesn’t quite fit that criteria**. In other words, according to the law/s of the land, he doesn’t ‘deserve’ to be locked up for life.
So, how should the state try to minimise the harm to society when this person is released from prison?
I stand by my original argument: for a fifteen yr old, unless they are diagnosed with a mental illness such as sociopathy or psychopathy, twenty two years is too long for any hope of rehabilitation into regular society.
**I would hope that the offender would have a full and comprehensive psychiatric evaluation at the time of admission, and at various other times during his incarceration to preclude any underlying mental disorder.
The kid is getting off easy with 22 years. At the bottom of the page linked to in the OP, there is a link to an article describing the crime in more detail:
“They admitted to beating Roberts, returning to the scene three times over a three-day period, kicking and punching him, beating him with sticks and rocks, and jumping on him, continuing to do so even though Roberts begged them to stop.”
3 days? It would seem the boy is already a hardened criminal. Hope he rots.
To my mind he got off light. That’s a pretty horric offense he committed. Death penalty would have struck me as more fitting; child or not.