(Gay) Coalition urging D.A. to try (Lawrence King) shooting suspect as juvenile

[El Pinko]

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/apr/15/no-headline---nxxfcmcinerney16/


Coalition urging D.A. to try shooting suspect as juvenile

From staff reports
Originally published 11:43 a.m., April 15, 2008
Updated 11:43 a.m., April 15, 2008


A coalition of advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is urging Ventura County prosecutors to try 14-year-old Brandon McInerney in juvenile court, and not as an adult.

McInerney has been charged as an adult in connection with the fatal shooting of his Oxnard classmate, Larry King at E. O. Green Middle School on Feb. 12.

According to students, King, 15, may have been targeted because he was openly gay.

The coalition of lesbian, gay and other civil-rights organizations, including Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Transgender Law Center, announced they asked District Attorney Greg Totten to try McInerney as a juvenile.

"We are saddened and outraged by the murder of junior high school student Lawrence King," the groups' statement read. "At the same time, we call on prosecutors not to compound this tragedy with another wrong. We call on them to treat the suspect as a juvenile, not as an adult."



I wonder how this kid feels that The Gays are sticking up for his right to be tried as a juvenile?

I agree with them in principle, but I just found it interesting/ironic...

[sasquatch]

1. This story gives me hope in humanity

[El Pinko]

2. I thought it showed that the gay groups have real principles and class.

Unlike SOME political groups, they aren't just mad for revenge.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I'm so glad they've taken this stance. It's very important--

because it's right--what the hell are we doing holding a 12 year old responsible in a situation like this?--and because of who they are. Gays and lesbians face bigotry, many kinds of harm, and death, in our society. They might have been justified in remaining silent, and letting this 'police state' prosecutor take revenge on a child. Their decision to speak out teaches us all a lesson in higher consciousness. What is good for society? What is the common good at issue here?

I am so proud of these groups! They are the real Americans--the great, peace-loving, justice-loving, progressive American majority, who, once we loose the Bushites' death-grip on our country, are going to get rid of the death penalty, and the "cruel and unusual punishment" of routine prison rape, and the horror of overcrowded prisons--70% of it non-violent offenders punished with draconian sentences for minor (compared to Bushite) theft, minor (compared to Bush Cartel) drug possession/sale, and minor (compared to Bushite and general political) prostitution. And we're going to rid ourselves, as well, of the corrupt, failed, 'police state' boondoggle called the "war on drugs," which has been used in South America to slaughter thousands of union leaders and other leftists, and to kill or poison small peasant farmers and their families, and as a fascist wedge to destroy democracy, and which has resulted in more dangerous illicit drugs here and more crime, and in excessive jailings of the poor.

This notion of prison as revenge and as punishment led straight to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and secret U.S. torture dungeons worldwide. The sort of thinking that would try a 12-year-old as an adult leads to terrible, terrible injustice. It is the WRONG thinking. How to heal this child, and how to heal his family, his victim's family, their community and our nation as a whole, is what our justice system should be about--not about notches in the belts of "codpiece" D.A.'s.

Just yesterday, I was watching a CSI TV episode in which ONCE AGAIN--and I can't tell you how may times I've noticed this, dozens and dozens--the righteous cop threatened an ACCUSED PERSON with prison rape "for years and years" as their punishment for, in this instance, an ACCIDENTAL murder ('perp' intended mischief, not death). But, guilty or not, that was the threat: repeated rape. I've also heard it out of the mouths of real cops. It is a symptom of a system gone way, way fascist--a system that would try a 12 year old for murder. And guess where he goes, and guess what happens to him, for the rest of his life?

Lord, it's so putrid!