Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: Judge Makes Wrong Call in McInerney Trial
A Ventura County Judge has ruled that the teenager charged with shooting Larry King during a high school computer class will be tried as an adult.
McInerney is fifteen years old – three years shy of the cutoff imposed on youth sentences (he was fourteen when the crime was committed). As I’ve stated before on this site, that cutoff is there to recognize the difference between rehabilitation possibilities for children and teenagers and those of adults. It also recognizes the difficulty children and teenagers have in making rational decisions.
McInerney announced to many of his classmates that he intended to kill Larry King. He did so in the middle of a crowded room, full of witnesses. And has, up until now, insisted that King had been sexually harassing him at school.
These are not the actions of a rational sane adult.
First, if McInerney actually understood the consequences of murder, it is likely that he would not have announced his intention to kill King to his classmates before committing the crime. He would not have shot him in the middle of a class. These are not the actions of a fully informed adult with total control over his impulses.
Second, the evidence illustrated that McInerney was very close to a police detective who indoctrinated him with the teachings of white supremacy. He was obsessed with Nazi imagery and often spoke about racist doctrine. This child was encouraged by an older person with authority in the community that certain lives don’t matter. He was too young to distinguish these teachings from truth.
Anger about Larry King’s death is appropriate. Committing this teenager without full impulse control or proper moral guidance to an adult sentence, is the same as ending a second life. McInerney is a damaged kid who committed a horrible crime. He is not the same as an adult who lies in wait and murders because of a calculated and informed disregard for human life.
He had enough impulse control to pull the trigger.
Do the crime, do the time. We had a home invasion last year, by three young punks, aged 14, 15, and 16. They came from a lousy family background too, and the system had been coddling them for years …. it didn’t work. The oldest punk had already been arrested 12 times for previous burglaries. You can’t change the spots on a leopard, and sociopaths do
not change. If you are verklempt about this punk, send him commissary money to buy K-Y with if that will ease your concerns.
“15 year-olds are not permitted to serve on juries. Why? “Because they are not yet adults – with sufficient life experience and knowledge to grasp complex legal issues.”
So – if this is true – then HOW CAN THE SAME 15 year-old BE HELD TO ADULT STANDARDS?
How can their brains be ‘adult’ enough to be tried for adult crimes, yet not ‘adult’ enough to serve on juries?
Interesting question……”
It’s not that interesting, really. There’s a difference between “complex legal issues” and fully understanding the difference between right and wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, I have not yet fully made up my mind in this particular instance…but, I do not believe that teens can never be tried as adults.
Listen to what you are saying. Are there some crimes so illogically committed that the perpetrator must have must let off because they failed to think the situation through? Recently a less-than-bright bank robber passed a holdup note on the back of a deposit slip preprinted with his name and account number. Was his crime less because he was not thinking clearly?
Youthful threats are not real threats? Larry King is somehow less a victim of a terrible crime because the gunman was really a gunboy?
I hope McKiernan is given every protection and chance the law permits. But premeditated murder is an adult crime for which he should be tried as an adult.
Michael:
Actually, your comment raises a rather important issue – and presents a conundrum to those who agree with the judge.
15 year-olds are not permitted to serve on juries. Why? “Because they are not yet adults – with sufficient life experience and knowledge to grasp complex legal issues.”
So – if this is true – then HOW CAN THE SAME 15 year-old BE HELD TO ADULT STANDARDS?
How can their brains be ‘adult’ enough to be tried for adult crimes, yet not ‘adult’ enough to serve on juries?
Interesting question…….
Thats crap.
This kid knew damn well what he was going to do, and did it. A 14 yr old may not be as smart as a 45 yr old, but he’s not stupid people. He knew that when you send 2 bullets into a persons head, odds are they are going to die.
I feel in NO WAY did the judge made a wrong decision and to make a headline as such is much the same as the Christi-ban forcing their beliefs on the rest of the world (As I’m sure you’ve writted about previously Ms. Ruby-Sachs).
Don’t attempt to mask your opinions as facts in the headlines of your articles. My opinion is that the judge acted with justice.
Will you change your headline to that?
“Judge makes invigoratingly correct call in the trial for a 14 yr old MURDERER!”
Didn’t think so…
“Michael Duffy Said: July 23rd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
If you want a 10, 14, 15yo kid to be tried as an adult then give him a jury of his peers… 10, 14, 15yo jurors. If you can’t do that then he doesn’t get a fair trial.”
I concur. Of course any cutoff is arbitrary, but at 14 I think there is still an ability to turn around.
If you want a 10, 14, 15yo kid to be tried as an adult then give him a jury of his peers… 10, 14, 15yo jurors. If you can’t do that then he doesn’t get a fair trial.
so sad….
that this doesn’t carry the death penalty.
Sullivan: Judge Makes Correct Call in McInerney Trial.
See, it’s just one persons opinion. Just because it’s a headline, doesn’t make it true.
While I feel very sorry for the unfortunate life experiences of McInerney that may have / probably led to the brutal killing of Larry King, we must not loose sight of the fact that a terrible crime has been committed. This was not a case of accidental man slaughter, it was cold premeditated murder. This is an adult crime no matter how you look at it and there is no evidence that McInerney was in any way confused about whether his actions were right or wrong. His potential for rehabilitation also has no bearing on how he should be tried for this crime. To suggest otherwise is to cheapen the life of Larry King. Hopefully a guilty verdict and stuff sentence will give McInerney sufficient time to reflect on his crime. Hopefully it will also serve as a warning to others who would so readily dehumanize members of the LGBT community as a pretext to crimes of violence.
Early intervention and education in our schools in regard to intolerance and diversity is an important and necessary beginning. The radical extremist parents and leaders of those, like religious fundamentalists, KKK, Neo-Nazi, etc., oppose such education because it undermines their own hateful teachings and agenda. How else do you break the chain of hate?
I totally disagree with Ms. Ruby-Sachs’s opinion. Hypothetically speaking, if McInerney was at the cutoff age when he committed the murder and given the same situation – his announcement on the intention of killing his classmate as well as the close relationship between him and the police detective – would he then be try as a juvenile instead? Expanding on that view, would any adult, given the same situation, be qualify to try as a juvenile for any heinous crime that they commit? Given the magnitude of the situation and the severity of the crime, I think the judge did the right thing to try McInerney as an adult. After all, it would create some closure for the family of Larry King.
The judge has essentially said this kid has to suck it up. Your father shot your mother and was facing felony charges before he died? Your father was a career criminal, and your mother was evidently unable to remove you to anything better? Nobody from social services–which was aware of the problems in the family–intervened, even moving you to foster care, or possibly to a relative’s house? Suck it up, kid.
If the kid is tried as an adult, I suspect that alone could prejudice the jury. Justice isn’t just meting out a sentence, it’s upholding laws while paying attention to the ideas on which those laws are based. This boy was all but thrown away; he would’ve been better off if he’d just been abandoned by his parents, at any age. Soon enough, there’s a very good chance he’ll be another number, and it’s likely that he’ll be both brutalized and institutionalized beyond any repair. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it, “institutionalized” means that you can’t function outside a controlled setting. You can’t process deciding for yourself what you’ll eat today, or what time to get up, or how to behave around others. Your brain is shaped to the rules of the jailhouse. This is a 15-year-old boy with a pretty nasty childhood (if you want to call it that); he’s been exposed to a great deal of violence, but it doesn’t sound like he was constantly acting out against others. Many kids like him will act against themselves more than others, which at least keeps them off the police radar. No question there was one murder committed, but the piss-poor response of the social-services system in Ventura County left this boy to his own slow death. He MIGHT be able to return to society with a shitload of help, and he should get that chance. We adults turn these kids into killers. Some of them have seen things that some of us saw too, and it was just the luck of the draw that it wasn’t one of us here. But aren’t adults supposed to protect children? One child is already dead. How is it any kind of positive action to take another child’s life when he was left to fend for himself by the same system that now wants to take his life? Do any of you really want a society that hard? If so, then maybe we should just go to the schools, pick out the kids with bad homes, and shoot every third or fourth one to save both social services and the courts the trouble as they get older.
The ONLY legal question is whether he was of sufficient mind to understand the difference between right and wrong. Most of us are fully aware by about age 10 that killing another person is ‘wrong’ unless done in self-defense.
My only question is why the adult who indoctrinated this porr kid in this violent and harmful philosophy is not facing charges as well for ‘Inducement to Commit a Crime’. Why is no action being taken against the figure that put the gun in his hand and told him his act was perfectly OK?
I say the parent(s) should be prosecuted as well as the kid – and made to pay for the actions of the child they set loose upon society.
I am a gay man who was violently bullied as a child to the point that i left school early. Over time i met those bullies when we were adults. They greeted me like an old friend, completely oblivious of the harm they had caused me. And so, I completely agree with Ms. Ruby-Sachs. What happened to Lawrence King was terrible and we cannot allow his killer a free pass, however, McInerney’s actions at 14 are far more a reflection of the ideas passed to him by adults around him. They are far more responsible then this boy who really didn’t grasp the consequences of his act let alone the forces that motivated him. And as Ms. Ruby-Sachs said, McInerney is at an age where rehabilitation has a high likelihood of success. As i saw the positive change in the childhood bullies that i knew, I believe we should support that possibility for this boy. Now, what can we do to help make that possible?