I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

[mr friendly guy]

http://www.buffalonews.com/feed/teenage ... n-20140110

Teenager sentenced to lengthy prison term for killing girlfriend’s 23-month-old son

A Springville teenager who fatally beat his girlfriend’s 23-month-old son told a judge Friday that he did not intend to kill the toddler.

“I never wanted to hurt Austin. I never wanted Austin to die,” Dylan Schumaker, 17, said in a tearful apology to his 19-year-old girlfriend in a Buffalo courtroom.

Jurors who convicted Schumaker of second-degree murder last month didn’t buy it.

Neither did State Supreme Court Justice M. William Boller. He sentenced Schumaker to 25 years to life in prison, the maximum punishment.

“At 16 you knew right from wrong,” Boller told Schumaker, who turned 17 this week. “You knew it was wrong to keep punching his head.”

Schumaker previously testified he put a pillow on the back of Austin’s head and punched it to stop him from crying and waking his baby brother.

The March 19 attack occurred while he was baby-sitting Austin and Austin’s 3-month-old brother.

Schumaker lived with his mother, along with Ashlee Smith and her two sons, in his mother’s home on Cochran Avenue. He was 16 at the time of the attack. Neither of the children was his.

The judge called the trial testimony gut-wrenching. Witnesses described the attack and Austin’s extensive head injuries that led to brain bleeding and the toddler’s death.

The judge said the last minutes of Austin’s life must have been terrifying. “He loved you, he trusted you, and you betrayed him,” Boller said.

The judge questioned Schumaker’s testimony at trial that he did not intend to kill Austin or realize his actions could kill the toddler.

Boller called Schumaker “a manipulator and deceiver.”

The judge said he took note of a comment Schumaker made in a phone conversation with his mother last July while in the Erie County Holding Center awaiting trial.

“I’m a 16-year-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry, and they’re going to feel sorry for me,” Schumaker told her, referring to the jury.

The judge also cited the 200 texts Schumaker sent as he baby-sat the two children while his girlfriend worked her night job at a Springville restaurant.

In those texts, the judge noted, Schumaker tried to set up a sexual tryst with a girl and sell drugs to his friends.

“But when the texting stopped, the beating started,” Boller said.

For a 17-year-old, Schumaker has caused so much pain and grief for so many people, the judge said. He said he received letters from 13 people describing how Schumaker’s crime impacted them.

“The night of March 19, my family’s life was decimated because this didn’t have to happen,” Michael Smith, Austin’s grandfather, told the judge in court, his voice breaking.

“He had numerous opportunities to get out” of the house and seek help, Smith said. “But he didn’t.”

Smith asked the judge to consider the family’s feelings in sentencing Schumaker.

“We’ll never get Austin back,” he said, crying. “A piece of our heart will always be missing.”

Joseph Terranova, Schumaker’s attorney, agreed with Smith.

“This didn’t have to happen,” Terranova told the judge. “If the Smith family hadn’t thrown Ashlee and her children out” of the house, “they wouldn’t have ended up at Dylan’s home,” with the children being baby-sat by a teenager who was unable to control his anger and ill-equipped to take care of them.

Doctors prescribed medicine for Schumaker to treat his anger and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but he chose not to take it, Schumaker said during the trial.

Terranova said the minimum sentence of 15 years to life would be a more reasonable punishment, given his client’s tough childhood, his remorse over Austin’s death and his inability to take care of children.

“What about the protection of the community?” the judge asked Terranova. “If he is released in 15 years, who’s to say it won’t happen again?”

The defense attorney said no one can predict what will happen, but he assured the judge that his client “is not a serial killer who will get out and want to kill another kid.”

“To blame anyone other than Dylan for what happened flies in the face of reality,” said homicide prosecutor Colleen Curtin Gable.

Although Schumaker was inexperienced as a baby sitter, what he did to Austin is not what a normal 16-year-old would have done, she said.

By taking in Ashlee Smith and her children into his mother’s home, “I was trying to do what my father didn’t do – be there,” Schumaker told the judge.

He then turned to Ashlee Smith. “Ashlee, I’m sorry,” he said, crying as she and others started crying. “I never wanted to hurt Austin. I never wanted Austin to die. I don’t know why I didn’t go for help.”

He told the judge he did not have a good family life growing up, but he thanked his family members for attending the sentencing.

As he was brought into court for sentencing, Schumaker cried out, “I didn’t mean to hurt him. You know I loved Austin.”

During his trial, Schumaker told the jury that he slapped Austin’s face and spanked him when he spit out his food and used an obscenity. He also admitted he slammed the boy’s head on the floor while changing his diaper as the child tried to get up and that he later put a pillow over the back of his head and punched it three times because he was afraid that the boy would wake up his baby brother.

He said it was only the second time he had taken care of both the boys.

Idiot. He forgot to mention he suffered from affluenza. Because sometimes just being white isn't enough to cheat justice.

[Scrib]

Torn by the maximum sentence. On the one hand the judge seems to presuppose that rehabilitation will fail and that he should merely be warehoused. On the other he seems like a possible manipulative sociopath. On the other other hand he could just be a fucking asshole.

[Metahive]

I guess he forgot that you not only have to be white, but also be affluent to get away with killing people.

[Oskuro]

Maybe it's just me but... If a baby crying turns you violent against the baby, maybe there's something broken in your head.

[Eternal_Freedom]

You know it's not a good sign when your defence lawyer agrees with prosecution witnesses. Also, that comment about "they'll just feel sorry for me" is hilarious and depressing. Muppet should have remembered stuff like that is recorded for a good reason.

[TheFeniX]

Maybe it's just me but... If a baby crying turns you violent against the baby, maybe there's something broken in your head.

“I’m a 16-year-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry, and they’re going to feel sorry for me,” Schumaker told her, referring to the jury.

The judge also cited the 200 texts Schumaker sent as he baby-sat the two children while his girlfriend worked her night job at a Springville restaurant.

In those texts, the judge noted, Schumaker tried to set up a sexual tryst with a girl and sell drugs to his friends.

These 3 points really sum up the mentality of this fine upstanding citizen. I don't send 200 texts in a month, much less one night. No big deal really except using it to try and get some on the side and sell drugs while babysitting is, which opens your "girlfriend" up to the possibility of losing her kids because CPS takes that shit pretty seriously.

I don't know at what point a teenager is supposed to learn that covering a toddler's head with a pillow and punching him a few times is wrong and you go to jail for it. But if you have to be taught that, no matter the age, you're not likely fit for life in public.

[TheHammer]

Torn by the maximum sentence. On the one hand the judge seems to presuppose that rehabilitation will fail and that he should merely be warehoused. On the other he seems like a possible manipulative sociopath. On the other other hand he could just be a fucking asshole.

I'm not torn. The circumstances and attitude of the defendant warrant the maximum sentence.

[Covenant]

It isn't as if the sentence could not be reduced in the future. I believe that is quite often how this kind of thing is (and should be) handled. If you have a young, empathy-less self-absorbed little monster like this kid, throwing the book at him to make it really hit home will give you a better chance at encouraging rehabilitation. He could do a lot of damage in the next 5 years, if at 16/17 he's still so devoid of human decency. 25 may be overkill in the long run, as coming out at the age of 42 will pretty much ruin him for life, but he's clearly not suited for fatherhood and he needs to change just about everything he's doing to become a valuable memory of society.

The hope is that he'll lose his ego, figure out that he's not going to get special treatment for his skin tone and hair color, and then actually accept the goal of rehabilitation. If he doesn't then he's really just trash. Even if he doesn't end up hurting any more children, which seems instinct in him now (it was not just the one beating), he's emotionally destructive to those around him, egotistical, and a drug-use facilitator.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I get the feeling he's not going to be very popular in whichever prison he winds up in.

[Oskuro]

These 3 points really sum up the mentality of this fine upstanding citizen.

What I meant is that infants are supposed to trigger protective instincts in our minds (I think), so deciding to just attack a baby seems to me like something is very wrong in this kids head, besides being a consumate asshole (as evidenced by all the crap he got up to).

I get the feeling he's not going to be very popular in whichever prison he winds up in.

Young, blonde, cries on command? I think he is going to be very popular </prison rape joke>

[Eternal_Freedom]

As far as I know, even amongst murderers, thieves and rapists, some idiot white kid who beat a toddler to death and genuinely didn't think what he was doing was harmful and then tries the "i'll cry on cue" bit in court is going to be extremely unpopular.

[Borgholio]

As far as I know, even amongst murderers, thieves and rapists, some idiot white kid who beat a toddler to death and genuinely didn't think what he was doing was harmful and then tries the "i'll cry on cue" bit in court is going to be extremely unpopular.

There IS a "code of honor" of sorts in prison. Murders, car thieves, and the like are all grouped into one category. They judge each other based on things like race, gang affiliation, etc...but they tend not to care about the crime you committed unless you're in the second category. The second category includes especially heinous crimes such as terrorism, pedophiles, child rapists, etc...

If you're in that second category and the other inmates find out about it, you're fucked...literally and figuratively.

My wife's ex was arrested for possession of child porn several years back...some rather nasty stuff. So he's quite firmly in that second category and if he's even halfway smart, he has made up a "fake" crime for which he was imprisoned.

[Scrib]

It isn't as if the sentence could not be reduced in the future. I believe that is quite often how this kind of thing is (and should be) handled. If you have a young, empathy-less self-absorbed little monster like this kid, throwing the book at him to make it really hit home will give you a better chance at encouraging rehabilitation. He could do a lot of damage in the next 5 years, if at 16/17 he's still so devoid of human decency. 25 may be overkill in the long run, as coming out at the age of 42 will pretty much ruin him for life, but he's clearly not suited for fatherhood and he needs to change just about everything he's doing to become a valuable memory of society.

The hope is that he'll lose his ego, figure out that he's not going to get special treatment for his skin tone and hair color, and then actually accept the goal of rehabilitation. If he doesn't then he's really just trash. Even if he doesn't end up hurting any more children, which seems instinct in him now (it was not just the one beating), he's emotionally destructive to those around him, egotistical, and a drug-use facilitator.

Yeah, I don't think that judges should be relying upon a potential and not at all guaranteed promise of "reduction" (how? parole?)that are not in their hands when making decisions about how to punish someone. Not that the judge seemed to give a shit.

Not to mention that nebulous qualities like "scare factor" are also highly problematic given that you're essentially deciding both hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cost to a society directly in prison maintenance, the cost when this ill-adjusted adult comes out and has to re-integrate and the priceless cost to said adult in terms of time all on the basis that 25 years will scare the criminal more than 15 years. How much more? More. Not twelve metric units of "more" (which would justify the cost) just...more. And again,all of this on the gamble that whoever has to look at this kid's file will be lenient or that irreparable harm would not be done to him by then.

[Zaune]

As far as I know, even amongst murderers, thieves and rapists, some idiot white kid who beat a toddler to death and genuinely didn't think what he was doing was harmful and then tries the "i'll cry on cue" bit in court is going to be extremely unpopular.

What I want to know is, why is he being sent into the prison system instead of a psychiatric hospital? If that isn't a strong indication of some kind of personality disorder I don't know what is.

[Scrib]

As far as I know, even amongst murderers, thieves and rapists, some idiot white kid who beat a toddler to death and genuinely didn't think what he was doing was harmful and then tries the "i'll cry on cue" bit in court is going to be extremely unpopular.

What I want to know is, why is he being sent into the prison system instead of a psychiatric hospital? If that isn't a strong indication of some kind of personality disorder I don't know what is.

And this is another problem. If the kid is just an asshole then the judge claiming that society needs to be defended from him and using this to justify the maximum sentence is problematic since he is giving the boy no fucking chance of reform

If the kid is a either mentally ill, a psychopath or suspected to be one then he should really have psych workers helping to deal with this, until we know that he cannot be reformed.

[Simon_Jester]

The US system sends people to mental hospitals only if they are criminally insane, which is a formally defined term. It means that the defendant is so insane that they are unable to understand that they are breaking laws, and/or that breaking laws is wrong.

Psycho/sociopaths can understand quite well that they are breaking laws and that society holds this to be wrong... they just may not care if it's to their advantage to break that law.

It doesn't help that socio/psychopathy is extremely hard to treat, especially in adults. This isn't like, say, schizophrenia where there are well-known combinations of drugs and therapies with a shot at cracking the condition's grip on the patient.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Didn't Reagan basically close a bunch of psych institutions in the name of cost cutting during his presidency? That being something that the treatment of mental illness in this country has never quite recovered from. Also, IIRC isn't that one of the reasons the U.S. has a lot of mentally ill homeless (or at least why that perception exists).

[Napoleon the Clown]

Hallucinations convince you someone is a demon or Jesus demands you kill the person: Can get you into the psychiatric hospital instead of prison. You'll likely end up there longer than prison would hold onto you, though. For criminally insane to work you've gotta be in a mental state where you can't even understand what you're doing properly. Personality disorders generally don't hold the "vague grasp of reality" thing.

Far as this kid goes, I don't see starting treatment at 17 as being particularly likely to "cure" him if it is a personality disorder of the relevant type. If it isn't something that can be diagnosed as a personality disorder, then it's gonna probably be anger issues. Hard to say without actually picking his brain and having the education background needed to make judgements on what you see and hear from him. Beating a kid to death is one of those things that I sort of question how much potential he will have regardless of how long he's in prison. 42 or 32, the list of employers willing to hire someone who went to prison for punching a toddler to death while trying to sell drugs is gonna be rather short. His life is pretty much down the shitter no matter how long he's in prison.

This all assumes the rest of the people in prison don't find out what he did and decide to take matters into their own hands. Everything I've heard is that people who do shit involving children can expect to face lots of beatings and even death, depending on how quickly the guards can get things broken up.

Maybe the kid gets out early because he shows signs of reform. Which would be great. Maybe he never shows signs that he'll reform. If you beat a child to death that shows there's something seriously fucking wrong with you, and it just might turn out that can't be fixed and letting you live out the rest of your life in prison is the best option. I'm not qualified to say if that's the case with this kid, but given the nature of his crime I'm not exactly opposed to the possibility of life in prison.


That's kind of true and kind of not, Wing Commander. He also did something similar while he was Governor of California. In California, he slashed funding for mental hospitals and signed a law that severely restricted when you could hold someone against their will. Slashing the budget forced a lot of hospitals to close. He didn't directly order them closed, he just made it so they had no choice. As POTUS, he slashed the federal budget for mental health care, including the federal dollars that went to help hospitals across the country. Many had to close down or release people who were considered to be less likely to cause problems out on the street. Depended on the hospital's finances and everything. So while he didn't exactly say "shut these down" he did cause the funding issues that forced many to shut down or kick out people. It's among the reasons I particularly loathe the man. And yeah, it contributed to homelessness to a fair degree. I don't recall if they actually went over it in class, but I remember the text book for the psychology class I took in high school talking about the situation.

[Formless]

Didn't Reagan basically close a bunch of psych institutions in the name of cost cutting during his presidency? That being something that the treatment of mental illness in this country has never quite recovered from. Also, IIRC isn't that one of the reasons the U.S. has a lot of mentally ill homeless (or at least why that perception exists).

IIRC, when I was taking psych class they noted that the rise of mental illness among the homeless is correlated with the invention of better psychiatric drugs, especially for treating schizophrenia. Apparently, the unfortunate tradeoff was that the drugs allow doctors to handle schizophrenics on an outpatient basis, when many of them still need to be kept in a psych ward just to make sure they even take the drugs. So a lot of mental patients stop taking the pills that allow them to keep themselves together, hence they lose their homes when they lose control of their lives.

Its not the only factor (cultural backlash against psych wards is another, for instance), but it was a fairly strong correlation.

[Grumman]

As far as I know, even amongst murderers, thieves and rapists, some idiot white kid who beat a toddler to death and genuinely didn't think what he was doing was harmful and then tries the "i'll cry on cue" bit in court is going to be extremely unpopular.

What I want to know is, why is he being sent into the prison system instead of a psychiatric hospital? If that isn't a strong indication of some kind of personality disorder I don't know what is.

Your proposed first step in curing him of his sociopathic disregard for the wellbeing of others is to teach him that sociopathy is a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Letting him off lightly because you caught him trying to manipulate people into letting him off lightly does not seem like an effective means of curing him of his antisocial tendencies.

[Zaune]

Stuffing him in a concrete box for twenty out of every 24 hours with nothing to do but watch TV -if he's lucky- isn't going to do much to rehabilitate him either, is it?

[TheHammer]

It isn't as if the sentence could not be reduced in the future. I believe that is quite often how this kind of thing is (and should be) handled. If you have a young, empathy-less self-absorbed little monster like this kid, throwing the book at him to make it really hit home will give you a better chance at encouraging rehabilitation. He could do a lot of damage in the next 5 years, if at 16/17 he's still so devoid of human decency. 25 may be overkill in the long run, as coming out at the age of 42 will pretty much ruin him for life, but he's clearly not suited for fatherhood and he needs to change just about everything he's doing to become a valuable memory of society.

The hope is that he'll lose his ego, figure out that he's not going to get special treatment for his skin tone and hair color, and then actually accept the goal of rehabilitation. If he doesn't then he's really just trash. Even if he doesn't end up hurting any more children, which seems instinct in him now (it was not just the one beating), he's emotionally destructive to those around him, egotistical, and a drug-use facilitator.

Yeah, I don't think that judges should be relying upon a potential and not at all guaranteed promise of "reduction" (how? parole?)that are not in their hands when making decisions about how to punish someone. Not that the judge seemed to give a shit.

Not to mention that nebulous qualities like "scare factor" are also highly problematic given that you're essentially deciding both hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cost to a society directly in prison maintenance, the cost when this ill-adjusted adult comes out and has to re-integrate and the priceless cost to said adult in terms of time all on the basis that 25 years will scare the criminal more than 15 years. How much more? More. Not twelve metric units of "more" (which would justify the cost) just...more. And again,all of this on the gamble that whoever has to look at this kid's file will be lenient or that irreparable harm would not be done to him by then.

I agree Scrib. He has no chance to become a decent member of society. And quite frankly, he probably never did. It's too bad he couldn't be sentenced to death and thus removed the concern about his post prison life.

[Wing Commander MAD]

That's kind of true and kind of not, Wing Commander. He also did something similar while he was Governor of California. In California, he slashed funding for mental hospitals and signed a law that severely restricted when you could hold someone against their will. Slashing the budget forced a lot of hospitals to close. He didn't directly order them closed, he just made it so they had no choice. As POTUS, he slashed the federal budget for mental health care, including the federal dollars that went to help hospitals across the country. Many had to close down or release people who were considered to be less likely to cause problems out on the street. Depended on the hospital's finances and everything. So while he didn't exactly say "shut these down" he did cause the funding issues that forced many to shut down or kick out people. It's among the reasons I particularly loathe the man. And yeah, it contributed to homelessness to a fair degree. I don't recall if they actually went over it in class, but I remember the text book for the psychology class I took in high school talking about the situation.

Yeah, I didn't mean Reagan literally ordered them closed. More that they were/are a casualty of "small government" that he and those like him espoused.

[Johonebesus]

Regarding mental illness, in the U.S. criminals are sentenced to mental hospitals instead of prison when found not guilty due to insanity. Many jurors are reluctant to acquit a killer even if he is completely out of his head. Compounding this is a general cultural disdain for mental illness. A lot of folks are very judgmental and view the mentally ill as lazy, sinful, weak, or just plain lying to avoid prison. There are cases of schizophrenics being sent to prison or executed because jurors just couldn't "let them get away with it." Just because a kid is delusional, has hallucinations, and believes he is obeying God's commands doesn't mean he shouldn't be electrocuted for slitting a child's throat.

Plus the sad fact is that many people with mental illness get better treatment in prison than on their own. Not only are mental hospitals few and underfunded, psychiatric medication is expensive.

[Scrib]

The US system sends people to mental hospitals only if they are criminally insane, which is a formally defined term. It means that the defendant is so insane that they are unable to understand that they are breaking laws, and/or that breaking laws is wrong.

Psycho/sociopaths can understand quite well that they are breaking laws and that society holds this to be wrong... they just may not care if it's to their advantage to break that law.

It doesn't help that socio/psychopathy is extremely hard to treat, especially in adults. This isn't like, say, schizophrenia where there are well-known combinations of drugs and therapies with a shot at cracking the condition's grip on the patient.

Simon: It's not so much that I want him locked in a psych ward and treated for sociopathy until he's better.I'm aware that there seems to be no cure It's that I want to know with some degree of certainty that he's a sociopath before we essentially decide to lock him away for longer than he's been alive because we need to protect society.

Now, maybe I'm fixated on the one thing, all sorts of factors probably went into the judge's decision, but the one he gave for the huge sentence seems like something worth debating . He may even be right in a practical sense, that prison for 10+ years would harden the boy regardless but this seems highly problematic as well; you're essentially conceding that you have a shitty system and punishing people for it.

On purely punitive grounds I suppose I understand, it's just this one thing.