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

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

Post by Simon_Jester »

Well, the converse is:

How the hell do you justify something considerably more lenient, say five years in prison, for brutally murdering a two year old child? Put Schumaker in jail for five years, and when he comes out he's barely into his twenties. About the same age as most college graduates.

For murdering a two year old child placed in his care.

If you care about the 'punitive' argument or the 'protect society' argument or, hell, literally anything except rehabilitating criminals... that is just ridiculous. And if you are basing everything on rehabilitation, then you must face in a very serious fashion the question of whether Schumaker is remotely curable. If not, it makes little practical difference whether he goes to jail or a mental hospital for being an irresponsible, violent, narcissistic ass.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Scrib »

Simon_Jester wrote:Well, the converse is:

How the hell do you justify something considerably more lenient, say five years in prison, for brutally murdering a two year old child? Put Schumaker in jail for five years, and when he comes out he's barely into his twenties. About the same age as most college graduates.

For murdering a two year old child placed in his care.

If you care about the 'punitive' argument or the 'protect society' argument or, hell, literally anything except rehabilitating criminals... that is just ridiculous. And if you are basing everything on rehabilitation, then you must face in a very serious fashion the question of whether Schumaker is remotely curable. If not, it makes little practical difference whether he goes to jail or a mental hospital for being an irresponsible, violent, narcissistic ass.
As I said, I understand the punitive aspect.

And why would I need to justify something less than five years? There's a whole gulf of time between the time he got and the "reasonable" time a 16 y/o can get for murdering a child. For example: 15 years. Still a huge gap between that and what happened.

And why on Earth can't you have both?It's quite possible to both punish and rehabilitate.See above with a 15-20 year sentence. My problem is that the judge specifically denied a request for less time on grounds that presuppose no rehabilitation. He didn't say that the kid was a disgusting child murderer and should face the full brunt of the law, he said that it was possibly unsafe. That is caring about rehabilitation, and thinking that it won't happen.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Covenant »

Scrib wrote: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.
It's part of the system. It's safe to say that the system is flawed, but I don't exactly find it strange that he was given a heavy sentence, given the nature of the crime and the defendant, especially when considering the system. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have it set up this way, but the way it is now, this is appropriate. If you gave him 10 years then he's going to serve 5. If you give him 25 he'll serve 10-15. His crime was violent but there's no reason he can't rehabilitate and work his way out of the system. To me, that sounds perfectly reasonable. If I'm woefully misinformed then I'll take back some of my statements, but I think it's reasonable.

Personally, the whole justice system right now is a giant mess, and I think you're just as likely to harden the kid and turn him into a drug-pushing gang member when he comes out, and not just some punk. But I'm not going to haul out all my prison reform pamphlets at the sentencing of guy who was 16 when he punched a baby to death, and thought he could turn on the waterworks to get out of it. The kid basically painted a giant political target on his ass. It sucks but setting a precedent is part of what happens in the justice system proceedings, and an argument in favor of setting a precedent against casual violence on the part of minors (and/or of people of privilege) is important.

I know the whole "you're fucked because you said something that'll rob everyone of sympathy" thing sucks, because it shows that the prosecution of criminals is an emotional thing and not a rational thing with rehabilitation as the goal, but... I don't know. I'm not surprised.

I'd still advocate for a rehabilitative process. We don't need a 40 year old con in a gang, but we could use a repentant and reformed 22 year old.
Scrib wrote: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.
He basically threw his own life into the toilet the moment he started abusing a child and then beat it to death. It's unfortunate but it was entirely within his own control not to beat a toddler to death with his bare hands. I'm not saying that it means we should throw the guy into a meat grinder, but he further ruined any room for lenience when he pulled his "I'm blond and 16, I'll cry and get off" act That basically undermined any attempt to work in his favor.

In any case, I'm just not seeing it here. Yeah, I think it's garbage just to throw him in a cell for 25 years and then throw him back into society, useless and angry. But he's pretty much a perfect example of someone who does something that nobody would excuse, with no doubt whatsoever, and without remorse. He got a huge sentence because he did everything possible to earn himself one. We need a system that prioritizes rehabilitation, but don't have one yet. So I'm hardly surprised.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Channel72 »

At the risk of invoking the board's ire, I honestly see this a bit differently. To me, this kid sounds like an arrogant, amoral little shit, who thinks he is untouchable. You know, like a lot of normal 16 year olds. The difference is, most 16 year olds don't punch babies to death. But then, most 16 year olds aren't put in the position of having to basically father 2 (step)-children. He's not even legally an adult, and has major drug problems, for fucks sake. Why isn't anyone also complaining about the parents and/or guardians who enabled this absurd situation, where a 16 year old drug-addict was regularly left to care for an infant and a toddler?

This kid was obviously an arrogant asshole with a major anger problem. But, so are a lot of other teenage males. Most of them mature and grow out of it. This guy likely never will now.

I can't bring myself to feel sorry for him - he murdered a toddler in a fit of rage. But the whole situation just makes me sad. I suspect that under different circumstances, this punk-ass kid could have become a responsible member of society.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Simon_Jester »

Scrib wrote:As I said, I understand the punitive aspect.

And why would I need to justify something less than five years? There's a whole gulf of time between the time he got and the "reasonable" time a 16 y/o can get for murdering a child. For example: 15 years. Still a huge gap between that and what happened.
I don't see much practical difference between 15 and 25. Getting out of jail at 31 and getting out of jail at 41 are both different, but either way your adult life is hugely marked by it. I'd argue the damage is done once you commit to a double-digit number of years in prison at all... at which point at least putting the possibility of life imprisonment on the table makes sense.
And why on Earth can't you have both?It's quite possible to both punish and rehabilitate.See above with a 15-20 year sentence. My problem is that the judge specifically denied a request for less time on grounds that presuppose no rehabilitation. He didn't say that the kid was a disgusting child murderer and should face the full brunt of the law, he said that it was possibly unsafe. That is caring about rehabilitation, and thinking that it won't happen.
The judge may honestly think it won't- hell, I do. If there is something so wrong with you that you think of "I'm babysitting" as an opportunity to set up a drug deal, and then beat a toddler to death when he starts to cry...

Does there not come a point at which it is bluntly unrealistic to assume the system can and will rehabilitate someone? I'd like to believe there's no such thing as a genuine monster of a person... but I don't believe that. Not really.
Covenant wrote:Personally, the whole justice system right now is a giant mess, and I think you're just as likely to harden the kid and turn him into a drug-pushing gang member when he comes out, and not just some punk. But I'm not going to haul out all my prison reform pamphlets at the sentencing of guy who was 16 when he punched a baby to death, and thought he could turn on the waterworks to get out of it.
Yeah. Honestly, any significant length of time in jail makes him likely to be thus hardened; fixing that has nothing to do with the duration of his sentence because it'd be pretty likely for any length of time.

And while we can and should want prison reform, I agree with Covenant that this isn't the time to talk about it.
The kid basically painted a giant political target on his ass. It sucks but setting a precedent is part of what happens in the justice system proceedings, and an argument in favor of setting a precedent against casual violence on the part of minors (and/or of people of privilege) is important.
Yes. That's the "scare criminals" and "punitive" aspect of the judiciary, and I think it has a very real role: you're trying to get across more than just that beating a toddler to death is wrong, and that the state disapproves. You're trying to get across the idea that if someone willfully beats a toddler to death, they've pretty much stepped outside any reasonable claim on the mercy of society at large or the courts in particular.

[Note use of word 'willful,' which I think it important to understanding Schumaker's offense here. His conduct throughout the whole affair was very much willful]
I know the whole "you're fucked because you said something that'll rob everyone of sympathy" thing sucks, because it shows that the prosecution of criminals is an emotional thing and not a rational thing with rehabilitation as the goal, but... I don't know. I'm not surprised.
On the other hand, criminal sentencing is often very much about the emotional state of the defendant: is this person contrite, do they post an ongoing threat to society, will their attitude make them more likely to fall into recidivism?

Saying something quotable that makes you sound like a completely cynical sociopath, in public, gives the judge good reason to think you might in fact be a completely cynical sociopath. In which case your chance of rehabilitation is effectively nil.
Channel72 wrote:At the risk of invoking the board's ire, I honestly see this a bit differently. To me, this kid sounds like an arrogant, amoral little shit, who thinks he is untouchable. You know, like a lot of normal 16 year olds. The difference is, most 16 year olds don't punch babies to death. But then, most 16 year olds aren't put in the position of having to basically father 2 (step)-children. He's not even legally an adult, and has major drug problems, for fucks sake. Why isn't anyone also complaining about the parents and/or guardians who enabled this absurd situation, where a 16 year old drug-addict was regularly left to care for an infant and a toddler?

This kid was obviously an arrogant asshole with a major anger problem. But, so are a lot of other teenage males. Most of them mature and grow out of it. This guy likely never will now.

I can't bring myself to feel sorry for him - he murdered a toddler in a fit of rage. But the whole situation just makes me sad. I suspect that under different circumstances, this punk-ass kid could have become a responsible member of society.
[/quote]The problem is, I suspect that we'd need a time machine to make those different circumstances. He needed excellent parenting and medical treatment, and he simply didn't get them. Now he's a person who's capable of deciding that the appropriate way to stop a crying toddler from waking his brother is to beat that toddler to death.

Even if he does have the potential to "grow out of it," how many (more) people would have to suffer or even die for the sake of giving him a chance to complete his delayed path of personal development?

It's a damn shame, but we can't back up and fix it now. I don't see how we'd fix it without giving the state the authority to monitor all parents and make sure they're "doing a good job," which raises a host of problems of its own.

Also, Schumaker wasn't really fathering these kids as far as I can tell. Not in any meaningful sense of the word 'be a stepfather.'

For practical purposes he was babysitting, temporarily keeping an eye on helpless-young children while the more responsible adults are off doing something else. Babysitting is a normal thing that we expect adolescents to do; we don't always expect them to be very good at it but we do expect them to have enough self-control to not commit felonies or murder our children.

Am I against the situation? Yes. Because while it's not abnormal for a 16-year-old to be entrusted temporarily with the care of two infants, it IS unusual to trust a 16-year-old drug addict, as Channel72 says. Did anyone actually know about Schumaker's drug habit before this event?
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Grumman »

Simon_Jester wrote:Saying something quotable that makes you sound like a completely cynical sociopath, in public, gives the judge good reason to think you might in fact be a completely cynical sociopath. In which case your chance of rehabilitation is effectively nil.
And even if it is possible to rehabilitate Schumaker, how do you tell when it works? Because he starts crying and apologising for what he did? He's already doing that to try to sucker people into letting him off.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

Channel72 wrote:At the risk of invoking the board's ire, I honestly see this a bit differently. To me, this kid sounds like an arrogant, amoral little shit, who thinks he is untouchable. You know, like a lot of normal 16 year olds. The difference is, most 16 year olds don't punch babies to death. But then, most 16 year olds aren't put in the position of having to basically father 2 (step)-children. He's not even legally an adult, and has major drug problems, for fucks sake. Why isn't anyone also complaining about the parents and/or guardians who enabled this absurd situation, where a 16 year old drug-addict was regularly left to care for an infant and a toddler?

This kid was obviously an arrogant asshole with a major anger problem. But, so are a lot of other teenage males. Most of them mature and grow out of it. This guy likely never will now.

I can't bring myself to feel sorry for him - he murdered a toddler in a fit of rage. But the whole situation just makes me sad. I suspect that under different circumstances, this punk-ass kid could have become a responsible member of society.
Whilst I can understand your point, there is a problem: he wasn't "regularly left to care for an infant and a toddler." From the OP:

"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."

And:

"He said it was only the second time he had taken care of both the boys."
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Zaune »

That said, you don't have to be Mary sodding Poppins to realise that punching a toddler in the head is probably a bad idea.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

Zaune wrote:That said, you don't have to be Mary sodding Poppins to realise that punching a toddler in the head is probably a bad idea.
Absolutely, I was merely pointing out that CHannel72's point of "why is no one blaming the parents" doesn't really apply since this was a new situation for all involved.

And, incidentally, his defence attorney did make such a comment, quoted fromt he OP:

"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."

Not that that in any way defends or justifies the little bastard's actions of course.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Wait, where are people getting this "drug-addict" thing from? There is nothing in that article that states or even implies that he was a drug addict.

There is a vague throw-away line about him texting to try to sell drugs to friends. That doesn't imply that he's an addict, or anything even remotely of the sort. For all we know, he just had a little weed he was trying to sell to a friend. Which isn't comparable to being a drug addict in any way, shape or form, unless you buy into "Reefer Madness" bullshit.

The only other mention in the article is that he was supposed to be taking medication, but he wasn't actually taking it.

So … where is this drug addict thing coming from? Are you sourcing another article? Or are some of you just hyperventilating over that "sell drugs to friends" line?
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Simon_Jester »

Eh.

I think I just got my reading comprehension mixed up. That said, his getting involved in trading drugs is at the very least another example of grossly irresponsible behavior; it sets the background for the crime and suggests Schumaker's indifference to the law and his responsibility to care for the infants that were left with him.

If your loved one says "babysit my children for me," and your response is to send off an avalanche of texts to (apparently) another girl trying to hook up with her, and to try and arrange to sell some (unspecified) drugs to a friend, while the infants are sleeping in the next room... it says something about you.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Simon_Jester wrote:Eh.

I think I just got my reading comprehension mixed up. That said, his getting involved in trading drugs is at the very least another example of grossly irresponsible behavior; it sets the background for the crime and suggests Schumaker's indifference to the law and his responsibility to care for the infants that were left with him.

If your loved one says "babysit my children for me," and your response is to send off an avalanche of texts to (apparently) another girl trying to hook up with her, and to try and arrange to sell some (unspecified) drugs to a friend, while the infants are sleeping in the next room... it says something about you.
Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that the guy is anything other than a piece of shit, but a couple of people repeated the drug addict thing and it seemed a bit silly. There's plenty of perfectly accurate reasons to call him a waste of life without making stuff up.
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Simon_Jester »

I honestly thought he'd been known to be using drugs, rather than simply having been... trading them?

Reading comprehension fail.

Though it's hardly an unfair inference that he's used illegal drugs, if he's trading in them. We're not convicting him in a court of law here, but it's reasonably to say "this teenager possesses drugs and tries to negotiate deals involving them, this impacts his fitness to watch my child."
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Re: I’m a 16 yr-old blond. Probably all I have to do is cry

Post by Channel72 »

I think I originally implied Schumaker was a drug-addict. I could have sworn I read he had recently been through six months of rehab, but it doesn't appear in the OP.

... googling ...

http://wivb.com/2013/03/20/teen-alleged ... -to-death/

Maybe I read it there?
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