Annapolis Capital Punishment

The shooting event at the mall, in which two were injured, including a Secret Service agent, has been one of the biggest stories of the year. Now the justice system has come around full circle, and a young man is paying the price for his moment of poor judgment and action.

See today's Capital for the story at: www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2007/12_21-45/TOP

According to The Capital, Judge Mulford gave a 100 year sentence and then suspended all but 65 years, saying he wanted to send a message. Wow--65 years for a 17-year old. Yeah, he was violent. Yeah, he shot people. Yeah, he should be severely punished. Yeah, he should go to prison. But for 65 years? Even with good behavior and parole, he'll still likely be an old man when he gets out. Yeah, he should have thought about that before, but he is only 17. We don't give him the right to vote or to drink, and barely give him the right to drive, but we treat him in the justice system as an adult.

I wonder, just wonder, if this "message" will somehow be sent to the other teens in violence-prone gangs. I wonder, will it will sink in? I wonder, if it sinks in, will it deter others? I wonder.

I wonder if we did not make it so easy to get a handgun, would this have happened?

I wonder what role the popular web-site MySpace had in all of this?

I wonder if the hundreds of thousands of dollars we'll be spending on him to rot in prison would have been better spent in social and educational programs and services that might have helped him do better in life? I wonder.

I am just glad that nobody was killed, but I wonder, will this teenager think 65 years in prison is less preferable to dying on the street, or in the electric chair? Yeah, I wonder.

Now here are the last "I wonders" which may put the hyper-conservatives into conniptions (did I spell that correctly?): I wonder, what do most folks know about life in Robinwood? What do most folks know about what it's like for a young person in poverty, living in a place like that? I can glean an idea when I watch the kids at Annapolis Middle School and Annapolis High and when I look at their MySpace pages. I wonder. Yeah, I wonder why we don't do better in providing better schools, better living situations, better social and cultural programs for these troubled youth. Yeah, I wonder why we'll gladly recruit them into the armed services, put a rifle in their hands and send them overseas to kill-legally so, in the name of protecting us from terrorists.

Yeah. Protecting us from terrorists overseas and here while one of the main reasons we don't have en0ugh police and firefighters at home is because so many are overseas. Yeah, I wonder.