The relevant facts are that when the boy was in eighth grade, he shot and killed a gay classmate that publicly had a crush on him. The gay teen certainly didn’t try to blend in, and this led to harassment and bullying of both boys.
I don’t know how I feel about this. When you’re a man, you’re expected to take bullying on the chin. But this was no man. He was a mere fourteen years old at the time of the murder. And it’s not like he just randomly decided to kill someone for being different- there was a clear cause and effect relationship between the victim’s actions and the killer’s torment. We know that bullying can make kids kill themselves, so it’s not surprising that they also turn the gun outward.
On the other hand, murder is murder. A person is dead, and that means justice must be served. And while the victim was the ultimate source of the kid’s anguish, the victim wasn’t breaking any laws.
Do you think 25 years is too long of a sentence for this kid? Not long enough? Should he have been tried as an adult?
ETA: The article title says 25 years, but the story says 21 years. I’m confused.
He should have been tried as a juvenile.
If this had happened to adults, and the shooter was a female who shot a man who would not take no for an answer, there would probably be those who applaud her for shooting what would probably be called a stalker.
He was sentenced to 11 and 10 years to run consecutive (one after the other) for a total of 21 years. The prosecutor said that that sentence wouldn’t include credit for time already served awaiting trial, so the 3 years nine months he spent in juvenile detention won’t count. That means he will serve a total of just short of 25 years. Hence the difference.
ETA: I think second guessing a sentence is tough because there simply isn’t enough information publicly available to make a good assessment of the individual case. Concluding he should have been tried as a juvenile or that the sentence was too harsh is, to my mind, silly, unless you have the wealth of information about the case that the judge, defense, and prosecutor have.
Failing to grant time served is illegal, unless there’s some loophole that he spent that time as a juvenile. I’m betting this gets corrected on appeal.
I’m presuming that the facts as the news reports them are true. it is indeed true that being in a better position to judge the facts can change minds.
I am sure that had the shooter been a female, and she reported the harrassment to school officials, they would have taken steps to end the unwanted sexual advances. Here, nothing was done to tell the gay kid to leave the object of his harrasment alone. That lowers the shooter’s culpability in my mind.
On the other hand, perhaps the shooter didn’t ask for any intervention.
I’m generally against the trend in this country to prosecute juveniles as adults.
Pretty much what I was about to say. Lawyers often talk about a “cold record,” the dispassionate after-the-fact reading of a trial transcript that can never really capture the nuance of what actually went on in open court. Reading a short news article is about the coldest record that there is, a heavily truncated version of alleged facts that it’s nearly impossible to weigh. I can say that a flat time 25 year sentence on a homicide for a first time 14 year old offender would be pretty harsh in my own jurisdiction; that’s comparable to what an adult offender might serve on a 50 year murder sentence. Under California sentencing law with his particular facts and locale, though, he might have dodged a bullet (pun definitely not intended).
Is there any evidence the victim was harassing the shooter? The article only said he let his crush become “publically known”, leading to bullying from other students. Announcing your crushes to your friends is part of 8th grade, I don’t think it amounts to harassment (by the victim anyways, the bullying might very well have).
Agreed. He committed a terrible act, but if we don’t think people are legally adults until 18 (or 17 or whatever), then some portion of the responsibility of the acts has to extend to the parents or guardians.
You’re on weaker ground here. I’m sure there are those applauding this kid for shooting a homosexual and would probably call the victim worse names than “stalker”. And the level of infatuation was not really publicized. Did it extend to stalking? Was it merely a high school crush that was merely embarrassing, rather than unctuous?
I agree that there’s no reason to treat him as an adult, but I don’t see how your analogy is relevant at all. Women are generally considered vulnerable to men because they are (one the whole) smaller and weaker.
What I’ve been reading is that the prosecution failed to convince the first jury that McInerney was a white-supremist in training and hate a hate for all gays. When polled after trial, most disagreed with that. Also, a retrial could land 50 years for Brandon, but the prosecution lost their wild card with the white supremacy theory already, so the kid agreed. It seemed like an isolated incident to me too. Lawrence teased and harassed Brandon a LOT, but Brandon still brought a gun to school entirely for the purpose of killing someone. He’s an asshole.
Brandon acted extreme, but he’s not an extremist. Either way, I don’t think this is a light sentence at all. He goes to state prison in January on his 18th birthday and will stay until he’s 38. And that’s only if he doesn’t get teased by another young homosexual and decides to shiv him too.
Nothing you do when you’re 14 should lead to a 25 year sentence. We have a juvenile court because kids are dumb and irresponsible… And sometimes they turn into smart, responsible adults. How does doing something really bad change any of that?
This Assistant Principal is nuts. I was hoping she’d be charged with something. She never really talked to Lawrence King to tone down his behavior. And Brandon wasn’t the only one who complained about it. Teachers wanted to look out for Lawrence’s safety. Was she afraid to intervene for fear of harassment by equal rights groups?? Also, Dawn King, Larry’s mom, contacted school officials foour days before the shooting hoping to get cooperation on helping her son tone down his behavior.
Still, there wasn’t any indication that Brandon would murder him. That was entirely premeditated. If he’s placed in Gen Pop in January, he’s going to hear about it, that’s for sure.
I don’t know if a kid who’s willing to gun down at classmate at 14 can be fixed–there’s something wrong there, I don’t care what the classmate did short of threatening his life.
But he’s sure not going to be rehabilitated in prison.