![]() ![]() The short-term politics of all this is quite clear, a movement led by cynics and assisted by their handmaidens in the Democratic Media Complex. That’s what Kavanaugh is dealing with, having to testify and defend himself against uncorroborated allegations of sexual predation 36 years ago, when he was in high school and in his freshman year of college. What we are seeing are founding American principles being swept - among them the presumption of innocence and the rights of the accused - to feed the appetites of power politics It will threaten even those who don’t give two figs for politics and see all such talk as lies told by knaves to fools. It threatens Republicans now, and Democrats tomorrow. What we’re witnessing is the symptom of an illness now deep within the very bones of our republic. Now the accused is forced to prove his innocence before accusers who must be believed, accusers who aren’t expected to bring witnesses, accusers who must not under any circumstance be subject to rigorous cross-examination, before judges who have already made up their minds. ![]() Or, better yet, a drama as Spanish as the Inquisition itself.īecause what we’re seeing in the Kavanaugh circus isn’t American, where until very recently - like a few months ago - the accused was given the presumption of innocence.Īll that has changed. Something brutally Roman with a howling mob, blood on the sand or something medieval, like trial by ordeal, with a mace and an axe and the might of brutes as the elements of God’s will. The LWOP sentence for juveniles should be reserved for only those “rare children whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption.It is tempting to watch the political spectacle of Democrats destroying Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as if it were only some shameful partisan circus. Children could be punished for terrible crimes, but punishment should presumptively not be irrevocable. ![]() In subsequent decisions, the Court ruled mandatory LWOP sentences unconstitutional and required that anyone sentenced under such statutes be re-sentenced. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” The Court held that “from a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” In 2005, the Supreme Court held that juveniles could not be executed, recognizing that“as any parent knows and as the scientific and sociological studies confirm, lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. The Supreme Court has in recent years considered that minors are different from adults in a way that is both intuitively obvious and scientifically demonstrable. After the move, Brett no longer had access to the medicine he had been taking for severe depression and hallucinations. The stepfather threatened to throw Brett’s mother and brother out of the house unless Brett was sent away, so his grandparents came to Florida and took Brett to their home in Mississippi. The police were called Brett, and not the abusive stepfather, was placed under arrest. His stepfather appeared to be worse, physically abusing Brett and his brother with switches, belts and a paddle he called “The Punisher.” He rarely called Brett and his brother by name, preferring “little motherf***ers.”įinally, at fourteen, Brett had enough: He took a swing at his stepfather and split open his ear. His father was an abusive alcoholic who knocked out his mother’s teeth and broke her nose multiple times. His previous fourteen years were marked by an all too common tangle of pathology, neglect, violence and mental illness. Brett Jones celebrated his fifteenth birthday 23 days before he killed his grandfather. ![]()
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