Eighteen year old Jerome had his head and heart set on becoming a Marine. He was a first generation Latino born in Texas who grew up in Alabama. During his qualifying physical exam I asked him the required questions including, “Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?”
He told me he and his younger brother were expelled from school during his junior year because the school inspectors found a knife in his truck during a routine search of students’ vehicles. He was quick to add that because neither he nor his brother had had any previous problems in school and were both good students they rescinded and reinstated both of them a week later.
I expressed my disgust for “Zero tolerance” laws, then he added one of the inspectors had found a gun in another student’s truck, but that student was not even suspended. When I asked if the other student was Latino he blushed and said, “No.”
Fortunately, Jerome was able to finish high school, passed the physical and will soon be defending the same men and women who so blatantly abused his civil rights.
I stopped fuming a few days later until I picked up the Tennessean and found a front page article about a man who was serving a 25 year sentence for a murder he was said to have committed at age 17. This Black boy had just received a scholarship to play college football and for what it’s worth, his brother plays for the Titans. According to the article, he was driving a car from which someone fired a gun killing a passing motorist. None of the three passengers was found guilty. The driver, bound by “gang loyalty”, refused to say who fired the gun. He was tried as an adult found guilty.
The author implied that this man should not still be in jail, and I am of the same opinion. Trying kids as adults makes no sense to me. Who has not done something really stupid at age 17? I am not saying murder is not a major offense, but there were no eye witnesses who testified, and from what I could conclude there was no evidence this boy pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately, this man was not as luck as Jerome and will continue to sit in prison and pray for his family, the family of the slain motorist, and perhaps even the judge and jurors who condemned him.
I was still on fire when I opened the USA Today Section and saw that Department of Justice decided not to charge Lois Lerner! The US Assistant Attorney General said the investigation of this former official of the IRS “…uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgement and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints.”
Perhaps Lois Lerner was spared the hardship and hassle of prosecution and trial because she and the US Assistant Attorney General are “political mates”. I am not saying Lerner is guilty, though a physician with …”substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgement, and inertia….” in the care of a patient would no doubt face a malpractice suite.
I just wonder how this judgement and the judgement against a young Latino and a Black teenager can all be called justice.
Isn’t it time to take a long, hard look at our justice system? Let’s start by reviewing zero tolerance laws, mandated sentencing, prosecuting teens as adults, the role of race plays in “justice”, and the pass given to politicians of ever ilk.