“Such a brutal and heinous crime deserves the maximum prison sentence,” they often say.
I usually give prosecutors a pass when they use the word “heinous” to describe the acts of hardened adult criminals, but when they use it to incite hatred for a child—especially someone like Alex King or Cristian Fernandez, children who have been abused and driven to some desperate act by the adults in their lives—well, this is where things cross a moral line for me.
“Adult crime” and “adult time” inevitably find their ways into the prosecutors’ next statements—the rhyming slogan is so effective in getting folks to turn off their critical thinking skills. It has such a nice ring to it and seems to make so much sense if you just don’t think.
But if you do think about it, if you think about what it means to be inciting hatred for a child—even a child who has been led horribly astray by the abusive, negligent, selfish and self-absorbed adults in his or her life—this defiles the most sacred and fundamental values of civilized humanity. This is truly heinous.
It would be easy to incite a hate fest against reprehensible prosecutors like David Rimmer, Jim Oliver, John Bongivengo, Angela Corey, and Brandon Young—but today I want to draw your attention to a responsible prosecutor who made a sincere effort to do the right thing in the case of the 12-year-old boy from Burlington, Colorado, who killed both his parents, Charles and Marilyn Long, and injured two of his siblings in March.
A couple days ago a colleague sent me a link to a radio interview by Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner with Bob Watson, the Burlington district attorney who struggled to achieve the best and most balanced disposition of the case for both the child and the interests of the public. This interview runs fifteen minutes, and I encourage you to please take the time to listen.Even if you do not agree with everything Mr. Watson says, this interview provides an excellent example of the thinking process this ethical prosecutor employed in reaching a difficult decision.
Violent crimes committed by kids—and parricides, especially—rarely arise out of circumstances that are black-and-white enough to be reduced to snappy slogans. Justice, true justice, is more nuanced and requires real thought and a commitment to higher values than mere political ambition.
In this case justice has been well-served by a prosecutor who deserves our admiration.۞
Groove of the Day
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