Some kids should be locked up

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:52 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 21, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Some kids should be locked up

When our current "juvenile justice" system was established, reformers argued the average "juvenile delinquent" was actually more likely to be turned to a permanent life of crime if incarcerated with hardened adults.

The argument was heard again Wednesday, June 14, when Clark County (Las Vegas) Family Court Judge Robert Gaston declined to transfer Shawn Kennedy, 15, to the adult corrections system after he escaped from the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center on March 26.

"To place a 14-year-old child in an adult facility would be a guarantee that this child will be a criminal the rest of his life," Judge Gaston declared. (Young Kennedy has turned 15 since his escape.)

Likewise, though he was originally booked into the Clark County Detention Center on two counts of felony murder, 14-year-old Milton Ennis no longer faces murder charges, even though two people died in a high-speed crash in which he was a participant at the Spaghetti Bowl May 29.

Police attempted to pull over two stolen cars in northwest Las Vegas late that Sunday night, but the thieves sped away onto U.S. 95 southbound, finally coming to a bad end in the famously complex interlinking ramps of the intersection with I-15.

The two thieves who died were in one of the stolen cars. Ennis, who suffered only minor injuries, was driving the other. Nevada law allows prosecutors to charge the other participants in a felony with murder when death results - a sensible law which holds the getaway driver just as culpable as the robber who pulls the trigger. But Chief Deputy District Attorney Bill Koot said June 2 that prosecutors had decided "not to proceed" on the murder charges against Ennis, allowing the youth to be transferred back into juvenile custody.

Car theft of the organized sort with which Milton Ennis is charged is not a spur-of-the-moment crime, like shoplifting a candy bar. If Ennis is not to be tried for an adult crime because he "didn't mean to kill anyone," why is prosecutor Koot's office proceeding with felony charges against nude dancer Jessica Williams, who merely fell asleep at the wheel before running off the road and killing six members of a teen-aged road clean-up crew? Do prosecutors contend that's as willful and negligent an act as taking a stolen car on a high-speed chase - without a driver's license - even after police order you to pull over?

But the prosecutors' dubious decision in the Ennis case pales in comparison to what Judge Gaston has wrought in the matter of Shawn Kennedy and his accomplice, Jeron Ishmael, who's less than three months away from turning 18.

On March 26, Kennedy and Ishmael plotted to hide themselves in a cell area at the county juvenile detention center as other inmates were taken to supper. That area was being patrolled by lone female guard Theresa Daka.

Kennedy sprang out, took away Daka's radio, and bashed it into her head repeatedly, knocking her unconscious and smashing her face. Reconstructive surgery will be required.

Kennedy and Ishmael then used Daka's keys to escape the jail. Stealing a truck, they drove it to the Valley Auto Mall in Henderson, where they stole a BMW.

No second-class wheels for these thugs.

When North Las Vegas police tried to pull over the stolen BMW the next day, Kennedy sped away as Ishmael jumped out, ran into a nearby apartment, and demanded to be hidden, allegedly kidnapping a woman and pointing what prosecutors say "looked like real gun" at the heads of her 6-year-old son and 4-year-old godson.

Ishmael has since told Judge Gaston he committed more than 50 residential burglaries while serving in the aptly named Freedom Program, supposedly the most closely monitored probation program available for Clark County juveniles.

(Gee, that's working well. What "opportunity" will the kids be offered next -- a lucrative career in discount used auto parts?)

Yet Judge Gaston refused the request of Deputy District Attorney Frank Ponticello to remand even Ishmael to adult custody. Instead, this vicious terrorist will continue to be treated by the law like some confused little boy.

Is Judge Gaston nuts?

Sort of. Bob Teuton, chief deputy district attorney in charge of the Juvenile Division, reports the judge has refused to remand any juvenile to the adult corrections system following the troubling incident in which juvenile Conan Pope, charged with shooting his father, was reported to have had consensual homosexual intercourse with an adult inmate while in county custody earlier this year.

"We had another situation where a kid, he was 17 years 8 months, had been committed to the Spring Mountain Youth Camp for grand larceny auto. He got out and did it again and got committed to Elko, then once he got out on parole for that second grand larceny he goes out and commits his third one, and the judge's opinion on the record was that he 'wasn't going to throw this young man's life away' by remanding him as an adult."

Not only that, D.A. Teuton says Judge Gaston has testified before the interim Juvenile Justice Subcommittee that the Legislature should eliminate even the current exemptions which allow juveniles to be automatically remanded as adults when charged with murder, or when those over 16 with previous felony convictions are charged with sexual assault or felonies with firearms.

If Judge Gaston is so concerned over the Pope incident -- as well he might be -- he would be better advised to go to the heart of the problem, demanding reform of a penal system which routinely tolerates forced or coerced sex in adult lockups as an additional, unofficial punishment.

Or does he mean to imply it's fine for 18-year-old offenders to be used as shower toys - just not the 17-year-old kind?

Give a kid a second chance after a non-violent offense? Sure. We could also seriously thin out the population "in the system" by entirely eliminating penalties for "curfew violations" and a dozen other bogus penalties for "hanging around while young." But we're dealing here with dangerous thugs who willfully beat and disfigure - who terrorize children at gunpoint in front of their mothers who author one-man crime epidemics.

Judge Gaston would take a better example from the courts in West Palm Beach, Fla., where 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill was indicted as an adult on Monday, June 12, for stealing a .25-caliber pistol, taking it to school, and killing Middle School teacher Barry Grunow on the last day of school, May 26.

The Florida boy's lawyer contends the pistol went off accidentally. But almost no modern firearm will discharge "accidentally." If one points a firearm at another person, places one's finger inside the trigger guard, pulls the trigger, and then says, "Whoops, I didn't mean it," the mechanical defect in question is in the shooter's brain, not in the weapon.

(No evidence has yet come out that young Brazill was legally doped up by school authorities on Ritalin, Luvox, or Prozac, in their ongoing campaign to treat male adolescence as a disease. Most recent school shooters have been.)

It's also typical that young Brazill apparently stole his weapon. Federal statistics show young people who are given firearms by their parents, along with firearm safety training, commit virtually zero gun crimes (as opposed to gun thieves, who commit crimes with those guns 21 percent of the time.) Furthermore, they're about half as likely to commit any crime at all as kids from homes where there are no guns. (See www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=10; or www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/urdel.pdf).

In the end, to demand that such young thugs get more than a slap on the wrist and a month on the farm is not necessarily vindictive or blood-thirsty. It is simple societal self-defense, and the last known way to stop citizens and police from taking the next logical step.

Because if there is no justice in the courts, rest assured, someone will eventually decided to mete out justice in the streets. And that's when we'll really start to see some young lives "thrown away."

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair