Dumb Prosecution!!

Look, what these boys did as described below, warrants a punishment, but in this case, the punish is so severe that it would be laughable if not true.

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.

OK, technically what these boys did constitutes a battery, that is the unwanted touching of another person, assuming the girls didn't want to be swatted. I can see scaring the boys with an "arrest and Miranda warnings" but I would have made it official. The school police officer could have hauled them in and called their parents--whose punishment I am sure would have been severe. But the boys stayed in jail for five, FIVE days. All kinds of things are fishy here.

First, leaving aside the charges that were filed and as such these boys are facing 10 (TEN) years in prison and a sex offender label that will follow them for the rest of their lives, their behavior, while inappropriate should have been dealt with at teh school level. Second, these boys were questioned by a police officer and the vice principle in what could be considered a custodial interrogation. In such a situtaiton, the boys should have been Mirandized first and then no questioning can take place without a parent present because they are minors and at their age, their judgement or ability to waive their rights is marginal at best, particularly in light of this statement from the news story:

Both boys said in interviews with The Oregonian that they'd been taught to tell the truth and did so in the office that day.

Third, in follow up police reports, some of the victims and witnesses recanted their original stories, saying they felt pressure to make statements in the presence of the Vice Principal and the police officer. Finally, there is this whopper:

The boys' attorneys have filed prosecutorial misconduct motions with the court, which will be heard Aug. 10. The motions allege the boys were hit with additional charges for refusing to accept plea deals and were unfairly selected for prosecution.

"It's either a crime warranting prosecution or it's not," said Lawrence, Mashburn's lawyer. "You can't pick out two little boys and string them up as an example."

Now these boys parents, including one who is a single father, must raise at least $10,000 for current legal bills, insisting they will not take any plea deals.

I smell another Duke Case.

As I said, these boys did something wrong, but it is not something that is out of the orinary for middle schoolers.

Rachel Negra, Cornelison's attorney, called the initial felony counts from Berry's office "ludicrous."

"These boys (were) charged with the same crime as a man who pulled a girl off the sidewalk and forced her to have sexual contact behind a bush," Negra said.

Christian Richter, one of the alleged victims, said, "I think it's a crime, but I don't think it's that serious."

"I do believe it should not have happened," she said. "Everybody knows about sex and our private parts. Our butts are our private parts, and I don't want mine touched."

Parents of two other alleged victims have told the school district they plan to sue because they face "significant expenses" for counseling to deal with the "sexual harassment and abuse."

Yamhill County, known more for its wineries and hazelnuts than crime problems, isn't the only jurisdiction in Oregon that prosecutes juveniles for similar conduct.

"We get, even in Portland, quite a few cases every year of boys who grabbed the breast or buttock of a girl in a hallway," said Julie McFarlane, supervising attorney at the Juvenile Rights Project in Portland, a public defender's office for youths. "It's like criminalizing fairly typical behavior, and I don't think the schools inform or warn them."

What 10, 11 or 12 year old boy or girl has not swatted the behind of someone else. While it is not nice, it doesn't rise to the level of criminal behavior.

Oh, and as a nice littel post script, assuming these boys beat the criminal charges, they still face a civil suit. Expenses for "counseling" for sexual abuse? Please, it was not nice, but it is hardly deserving of counseling.

I did the same thing to girls in my middle school and those same girls were my friends then and a couple I am still close with now--even though we are separated by hundreds of miles. I don't think their lives are in any way affected by my stupidity and immaturity.