Why?
As murderers go he isn’t that bad.
He shot an older boy who wouldn’t stop coming on to him - otherwise he hasn’t been in trouble.
Bit of councilling and he would probably never hurt anyone again (not that that would be appropriate in this case).
Without plea bargains, a guy arrested today might make it to trial years from now…or not at all. Witnesses forget things, die, move away. Evidence is lost, stolen, corrupted or otherwise compromised.
Plus, in jurisdictions like mine, where the same court hears criminal and non-family law civil cases, you can pretty much forget ever getting a trial date for a civil case. Criminal cases have priority on the docket, and since every criminal case will now have to be tried, there won’t be enough court time for much of anything else. Unless, of course, you’re willing to spend staggering sums of money to expand the court system…judges, prosecutors, public defenders, court reporters, baliffs, clerks, courthouses, witness rooms, jury rooms, etc.
Also,** Xan,** this kid at 14 wasn’t really entirely at a full understanding of what a murder does to so many others. I think he knew it was wrong, but the fact he premeditated it does make me wonder, so I do see your point.
Thing is, at 14, he went to his counselor, he spoke with Joy Epstien (Asst. Principal), his parents, his friends. It didn’t happen overnight, so with his young age and the steps he’d taken, still no one expected a murder. But why should they?
Again, Brandon is an asshole for shooting Larry. Premeditated. For teasing. The kid deserves prison, but I really don’t think “the book” should be thrown at him. Besides, he’s only getting a prison education, and prison treatment for this before he can even vote. Might even be for the rest of his life. He better start learning in January… at lunch, outdoors, etc.
Here’s one with a bit more information than the article Locrian cited.
This is a casw of gay rights gone too far.
Examples like this, coupled with gay bullying of those who do not agree, (especially against those who claim they are ex-gays) are the reason I no longer support gay rights.
I support someone having a right to BE gay. I do not support a right to be flamboyant in a disruptive manner in schools, the workplace, etc. Save it for the gay pride parade.
In this case we see that the victim’s right to be gay was treated in a superior fashion to the right of other students to receive their education without disruption.
The school’s dress code, which prohibited distracting dress, was trumped by the kid’s right to be gay. Well if you’re gay and you can then dress in a distractive manner, why can’t straight kids also dress distractingly? The school’s assistant principal, herself a lesbian, felt that gay issues trump all others, and even criticized McInerney for being embarrassed (wagging her finger at him for his lack of tolerance) rather than doing the appropriate thing and telling King school is not the place for his antics.
Again, if McInerney were female and King male, school administrators would have, almost without question I am sure, told the male to stop. We’re almost to the point where female sexuality is ok to express, but male sexuality is only ok to express in schools if one is gay.
School is not the place for excessive sexual overtones of either gender or any sexual persuasion. I place a lot of blame for what happened here on the school, and think McInerney should be released when he is 21.
You can’t. Voluntary manslaughter is a lesser included offense. You can be charged with both, but only convicted of one.
He was convicted of manslaughter and a firearms violation.
But, on the other hand, prosecutors who know this will stop charging their iffy cases where the evidence isn’t overwhelming, which they currently charge because they plea bargain most of their cases anyway. It is well known that prosecutors overcharge entirely for the purpose of scaring defendants into crying uncle and accepting a plea agreement.
If instead we outlaw plea agreements, prosecutors will start charging only what crimes they actually have good evidence on, and there will be fewer cases to begin with.
Plea bargaining is one of the major reasons our prisons are so full.
That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. Not that bad? What, he only murdered him a little bit?
He shot the kid in the back of the head. Twice. That isn’t some metaphorical cry for help – it’s cold blooded killing.
Fourteen years old isn’t some foreign universe where different reality exists. I don’t care how uncomfortable getting hit on by a gay kid is – shooting someone in the back of the head should never be accompanied by the phrase, “as murderers go he isn’t that bad.”
Murderers fall into a spectrum in my view.
At one end there are gangland killers-for-hire and on the other serially battered wives who snap and insane people.
All are murderers, but they are not all equally guilty - those nearer the left are more morally culpable, those on the right less so.
He should not have shot the older boy.
The older boy did not deserve to die.
Following people to a bathroom, continually making unwanted advances and humiliating fellow students in public are not death penalty offences, and I don’t believe that any absolute defence should be open to McInearney.
That said, he followed all the official avenues open to him, and the deceased’s behaviour was wrong and seems to have been deliberately calculated to hurt and confuse.
That, in conjunction with his young age puts him more towards the left side of the spectrum.
Frankly, if you let him out now, he would be a danger to no one.
The argument ‘all murderers are alike’ is a little silly - murderers come in different shades of evil - this kid isn’t that bad as they go.
I agree. McInerney did all that the system tells him to do, and instead of relief, he was chided for not accepting the gay advances thrust upon him.
The assistant principal should be fired, and gay activists everywhere should take it to heart–Your activism should be limited to the political process.
No they aren’t all alike, but you’re never going to convince me that someone who shoots a kid in the back of the head twice because he got hit on “isn’t that bad.”
What’t the alternative? Oh, poor little Johnny. I know it must have been horrible to have another boy hit on you, but at least now that he’s dead (nice shooting, by the way) that won’t happen anymore and you’re free to live a productive life.
…I think making gay kids understand that the same rules that exist for guys chasing girls also apply to guys chasing guys would probably have solved the problem.
It was more than getting hit on. The school refused to act, and the assistant principal chided McInerney for not accepting the gay advances.
It’s fine to say that still doesn’t warrant murder, but you are downplaying what McInerney went through.
Yep, but the lesbian assistant principal defined gay rights as trumping all else, including appropriate dress and behavior.
You seem to have deliberately cut out half of what I said.
I said “As murderers go he isn’t that bad.”
I also said he should not have an absolute defence - he should be incarcerated, but I still think there are mitigating factors, and, ultimately, the state is going to pay for decades to keep someone locked up who is probably quite harmless.
Anyone who shoots people that upset them in the head is not harmless. One is simply not allowed to shoot people in the head, no matter how annoying they are. Otherwise, the law would say something like “Well, I suppose everyone’s entitled to a freebie.”
I think it’s fair to say that when balancing the rights of the King and the rest of the students she didn’t do so correctly, but I doubt she ever explicitly made the choice to make one a complete trump to the other.
Any living human being with full body mobility is not harmless in the strict sense.
When I say harmless, I mean that you could let him out now with some councilling and he wouldn’t commit another crime.
And I mean that a boy who shot someone in the head is not someone I would assume will be okay and safe to unleash upon the general public with a little counseling.
I saw something in my workplace similar. Within the same calendar year, two episodes of sexual harrassment became common knowledge amongst the workers.
In one case, a male worker harrassed a female worker for a date for three months and was eventually fired for not leaving her alone about it.
In another instance, we had a gay co-worker who couldn’t keep his gayness to himself and repeatedly hit on more than a few of the rest of us. At the time I was a full-fledged supporter of gay rights and this fellow mistook this for my being gay. I explained it to him, but he was convinced I was secretly gay and couldn’t admit it, and he kept on and on and on with the sexual harrassment, including inappropriate touching, almost every chance he got.
Of course many of the guys he hit on didn’t support gays, and he went after them with his sexual advances in some kind of gay rights offensive. This disrupted work repeatedly.
The gay guy didn’t get fired and at least half a dozen of us quit. We thought seriously about a lawsuit, but never did file it.
The company (with more than one gay executive) said that he has a right to be gay and we needed to be more tolerant. I suppose that means we needed to accept his touching. On the other hand, the woman had rights protecting her from unwanted sexual advances.
It may not be that gays are asking for special rights in the political process, but when it gets down to implementation, in my experience, they are enforced as special rights.
Of course she did. The school’s dress code had no force when compared to gay rights; the school’s policy against sexual harrassment had no force when compared to gay rights. This is clear from the news reports.