By Mansfield Frazier
Oh, the horror of it! The PD headline blared that T.J. Lane, the suspect in the Chardon school shootings, is not in jail but remains housed in a youth center. Heaven forefend! Quick, someone launch an investigation… call out the National Guard… maybe a bunch of true American patriots should get together and storm the center commando-style and drag him out by the scruff of his neck — and someone remember to bring along a rope.
While not intending to come off smarmy or to interject levity into the very serious issue of how we, as a society, treat mentally ill youth, sometimes “clowning” folks and institutions is the best way to highlight the insanity of what is occurring… without putting your own sanity at risk. In other words, it’s laughing to keep from crying.
The PD article goes on to question who’s paying the $120 per day cost of Lane’s incarceration since the judge ruled the county would not pay it. How about this for an answer: None of your goddamn business, since you’re certainly not paying it. Next someone at the paper will be calling for an investigation to determine how Lane’s family (whom, I’m assuming is footing the bill) can afford to do so. Look for the suggestion to be made that perhaps the money is illegal gains, profits made by shipping weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations around the world. Someone better alert Homeland Security.
While the above suspicions might sound utterly ridiculous (in spite of the fact such borderline-legal investigations are carried out on more occasions than anyone might imagine) — and they’re meant to — they’re no more ridiculous than the slyly pejorative PD article, the tone of which seems to suggest Lane is somehow gaming the system by remaining out of county jail and in a facility better equipped to handle his psychiatric issues.
But what the article failed to mention is the simple fact that Geauga County is actually saving money by not having to provide a bed for Lane… a bed that would far exceed the average of $80 per day it costs to house a prisoner. Due to his age, Lane would require special housing in an adult facility, something that is routinely done for juveniles, even when they’ve been bound over as adults. Is the PD complaining because Geauga County is saving money?
The fact that Lane is not in the county jail must rankle the hell out of the “lock ‘um up and throw away the key” crowd… those who hoped he would be placed among some hardened criminals where he would “get what he deserves” in terms of rough treatment. They’d like for him to be placed in a facility where he’d only be fed bread and water, seeing as how upset they are with him.
Next the yahoos will want to dispense with a trial altogether… after all, they got him on tape, why waste taxpayers’ money? Sounds outrageous? No more outrageous than what’s going to happen to 17-year-old T.J. Lane in the end.
In spite of the fact Lane is being represented by two of the best criminal defense attorneys in Ohio (and perhaps the nation), our criminal justice system has become so lopsided in favor of the government that avoiding a life sentence for this mentally disturbed teen is well nigh impossible. The deck is stacked for the prosecutor, and as the prosecutor often does, he’ll be dealing from the bottom of it.
To wit: No matter how many legitimate, qualified psychiatrists testify that Lane is schizophrenic, the prosecutor will be able to bring in a hired gun to testify otherwise. There have been cases where the defendant has for years been locked in a rubber room playing handball with his own shit, yet the paid “expert” will testify that he’s sane… unless the other side pays him to say otherwise.
Thus our legal system has made whores out of many of the members of this profession we’re supposed to respect, and no one in the judicial system bats an eye. Instead of couching their testimony in high-minded professional jargon, why don’t the dueling psychiatrists simply sit on opposing sides of the courtroom and yell back and forth: “He’s insane.”
“No, he is not!”
“Is too!”
“Is not!”
Then they could stick their fingers in their ears, close their eyes, and stick their tongues out at each other while yelling at the top of their lungs. “Is too!… Is not!…” In this manner we’d be able to see just how low the criminal justice system has caused this profession to sink to.
When criminal justice reform finally does come to America (which won’t happen until the stench reaches a mile high, and currently we’re only at the three-quarter mile point) the courts will be allowed to appoint a qualified panel of experts to evaluate the mental state of criminal defendants and their ruling will be inviolable. Until then it’s all fun and games in courtrooms all across the country as lawyers argue back and forth (as billable hours increase) and then they all go out for drinks afterwards. And the public is sold the notion ours is the best system of justice on the planet… which anyone with half a brain knows is a patent falsity.
Meanwhile the T.J. Lane’s of the country get legally railroaded. Why? Because that’s what the American public (lead around by the nose by a sensationalist media that’s only interested in creating controversy so it can sell soap) thinks it wants. We’ll all feel safer after the legal system crucifies this youth… and the Church will remain eerily mute.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
3 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Is This a Great System, or What?”
Bill R.
I agree with your comment about the church Mr. Frazier. I often wonder where all the good Christians and churches are when we wage war on another country killing thousands of civilians or when we march the next victim off to the death house. The churches seem to have decided that gay marriage is far worse than the countless murders taking place through war and executions. The so-called pro-lifers just standby and stay quiet while tens of thousands are murdered.
Dick Peery
Mansfield, you are a voice of needed grace and sanity as malignant hatred and vengeance continue to poison public policy.
mansfieldf
Thanks for the kind words Dick