There is a crime here for putting a 15 year old boy in solitary confinement for 18 years. The people who did this should be prosecuted and punished. What kind of society does this to their children?
Here is the NY Times Article on how Florida locked 15 year old Ian Manuel in a room for 18 years with no human contact. How he was brutalized physically and mentally.
As a 15-year-old, I was condemned to long-term solitary confinement in the Florida prison system, which ultimately lasted for 18 consecutive years. From 1992 to 2010. From age 15 to 33. From the end of the George H.W. Bush administration to the beginnings of the Obama era.
For 18 years I didn’t have a window in my room to distract myself from the intensity of my confinement. I wasn’t permitted to talk to my fellow prisoners or even to myself. I didn’t have healthy, nutritious food; I was given just enough to not die.
...
On occasion, I purposely overdosed on Tylenol so that I could spend a night in the hospital. For even one night, it was worth the pain.
Another time, I was told I’d be switching dorms, and I politely asked to remain where I was because a guard in the new area had been overly aggressive with me. In response, four or five officers handcuffed me, picked me up by my feet and shoulders, and marched with me to my new dorm — using my head to ram the four steel doors on the way there. When we reached my new cell, they dropped me face-first onto the concrete floor. Cheek pressed to the cold concrete, I lay there, staring at the blank wall, shaking in fear and pain. I couldn’t believe I was still alive.
I served 18 consecutive years in isolation because each minor disciplinary infraction — like having a magazine that had another prisoner’s name on the mailing label — added an additional six months to my time in solitary confinement. The punishments were wholly disproportionate to the infractions. Before I knew it, months in solitary bled into years, years into almost two decades.
What kind of special evil people do this to a child?
Bet you can guess what I googled. Bet anyone who reads your post will want to google the same thing. So let me save them the time: He mugged a woman and shot her in the face. The bullet, luckily, lodged in her jawbone and she survived.
ReplyDeleteSome mitigation, for those who want to keep an open mind: he was only 13. He was running with older kids who no doubt influenced him. The victim, after some years, learned to forgive him and support him.
But nonetheless, he decided to rob a woman, with a gun. And because she didn't respond quickly enough, or for whatever reason, he aimed the barrel at her face and pulled the trigger.
None of this means he is beyond legal protection or even human sympathy. But without that context any judgment feels incomplete.
@3:05 - I could not disagree with you more. Some things are simple beyond the pale and are not justifiable. What this young man did was wrong. What was done to this young man was wrong. Neither justifies or mitigates the other. They each stand on their own.
ReplyDeleteThere is a false equivelence of comparing what he did to her and what was done to him. @9:13 is absolutely right. Two wrongs never make it right.
ReplyDeleteThird DCA says the pandemic suspends speedy trial time limits.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.3dca.flcourts.org/content/download/726729/opinion/192108_DC08_03242021_101219_i.pdf
Shot a woman in the face, while trying to rob her? Fuck that guy. I am elated the guards showed him the same mercy, he showed the woman he tried to kill, while robbing her.
ReplyDeleteYou need to work on your sentence structure and drop the word her after the word robbing. That said the victim forgave the shooter. 18 years in solitary makes me wonder what he did to get into solitary. Torture none the less. There are always two sides to a story. This blog is no longer written by the man who started it.
DeleteNext up the 5 year old on tonight’s news.
ReplyDelete