(no subject)

[geekchick]

That teenager who got in trouble for supposedly writing a story about zombies taking over a high school?

Eh, maybe not so much with the whole undead thing after all.

(link from officialgaiman)

Comments

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Since they're charging him under a new law, I'm willing to bet his writings weren't illegal under older standards.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. I bet anything that in the absence of the new laws they could charge him with criminal conspiracy. Conspiracy to commit a crime is actionable whether or not the crime takes place. Depending upon whether or not something he did could be considered an act in furtherance of a conspiracy -- and the laws on that are pretty vague -- he could be charged with that.

I don't know whether his First Amendment rights are being trashed -- I don't have enough information to know. Neither do you. Until it is known exactly what is in those writings, who had access to them, whether, for example, anything in them would constitute criminal solicitation or conspiracy, we don't know. There's just too much unknown in this case. And the fact that the kid bald-faced lied to the media about what he wrote about to make himself look better (why not simply identify it as violent but meaningless fantasies? why make up all this zombie nonsense?) makes me less likely to see him as being credible in his protestations of innocence.

There are so many cases in which the First Amendment is under assault these days but I am not convinced this is one. In any case, I'm withholding judgment.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

>> Since they're charging him under a new law, I'm willing to bet his
>> writings weren't illegal under older standards.
>
> I wouldn't be so sure of that. I bet anything that in the absence of the > new laws they could charge him with criminal conspiracy.

Fair enough, you're entitled to your opinion as much as I am to mine.

Frankly I was talking about the First Amendment, which doesn't give one the right to engage in conspiracy, and I'm not saying it should. To the limited extent that I'm aware, juries have generally separated "free speech" from "conspiracy" in ways that I have no problems with. So if they do charge him with conspiracy, and make it stick, I doubt I will be crying foul.

> There are so many cases in which the First Amendment is under assault
> these days but I am not convinced this is one. In any case, I'm
> withholding judgment.

I haven't made a judgement on this kid's case either. I'm not saying his actions definitely were or were not this or that. That's for a jury to decide. I do have my *suspicions*, which I voiced, and which seem pretty damn plausible to me, but I'm not claiming that's a proof.

But what I would like to know is this: do I call the firemen when I smell smoke, when I see smoke, when I see flames, or do I have to wait until the building has burned down? How sensitive should that warning system be? I don't like people who jump to unfounded *conclusions* either, but I *do* see harm, in some situations, in waiting too long to raise the alarm once you're suspicious. Prevention is a *lot* easier than a cure. I wish we could somehow focus adequate public scrutiny on this trial *without* the media frenzy, but I don't know how to do that and if you do I sincerely hope you'll share that information. (Though honestly I suspect the media's reliance on hysteria to gain ratings makes that an unlikely prospect.)

This kid's case may have been a proximate trigger for this bout of ranting, but I sure as hell don't need the final verdict to know that the First Amendment is under assault. All I need to do is read some of the laws that have been passed since 9/11.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Some of the laws make me extremely nervous too; what makes me just as nervous the ways in which clearly innocuous (usually political) speech is being squelched using pre-existing laws such as tresspass.

As far as what to do to prevent such things -- I don't know any more than you do. I do think parents need to be very vigilant about kids, but I also know that being a parent -- especially of teenagers -- is really difficult and most people are doing the best they can. It is not so easy as when to call the fire department; the signs of trouble are not always obvious.

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

> I also know that being a parent -- especially of teenagers -- is really
> difficult and most people are doing the best they can.

I haven't raised kids but I've known plenty of people who have, including some teenagers, and everything I've heard agrees with what you say.

My childhood seems almost comical now. My parents knew who I was with and generally where we were, essentially all of the time. They also knew how to reach my friends' parents.

I look at it this way: 99.9% of parents are doing well enough that their kids will never do anything noteworthy. It's that very rare exception whose kid kills. I don't know what % of those cases could have been averted by more attentive parents, but that's the only scenario I'd address.

I truly believe that people, below some stage of development, do not understand the consequences of their actions in the way that adults do, in the way that the law usually demands. There is some emerging science to support this, though it's far from settled, and in any case I think societal consensus usually outweighs science. Because of my belief I don't think kids truly understand the consequences of their actions like adults do. One could make the case that kids are all partway to insane, from a legal point of view, in that they don't really appreciate that murder is wrong as adults do. I may be wrong but I do believe this, and as a result I don't think the law should fall as heavily on kids as on adults.

How to draw that line is another challenging question. So far society has muddled through mostly ok there, and it's not like I have any bright ideas.

Even now kids are not fully independent, legally. Parents have some responsibility to, and some special control over, their minor children.

I would probably add another legal responsibility: if your kid kills or seriously harms someone using deadly force, then you might be held responsible. I'm not sure what the penalty would be, but certainly less than if you had done the same deed yourself. The state would have to prove that the parents were negligent in monitoring their kids, compared to what other parents do, and that if they had been more diligent, the harm would most likely have been prevented. If the kid was so stealthy that only unusually intrusive measures would have found what he was doing, or they acted so suddenly that there was no real warning, I'd let the parents off the hook.

I don't know if I'd extend this to lesser crimes. Certainly not initially.

I'd try to avoid attaching any civil liability to this, beyond what now exists. If the DA declined to prosecute, I don't think the parents should have to deal with civil suits too.

Basically I would only want to punish parents who had ample and reasonable opportunity to suspect that something was wrong, and who turned a blind eye. There will always be the stealthy kid who evades the parents. I wouldn't hold those parents responsible. It's hard to make a tradeoff between the privacy of all kids everywhere and the very very few people who will get dead, but who would have lived if the parents had played Big Brother to the hilt. As much as I like to have bright lines I do think this is one for society to work out as a whole, even if there's no clearly articulated principle behind the decision. It sucks to have the very few bad seeds fucking up your privacy, but that's something even we adults have to endure.

I'm not saying that what I'd do is what the government should do. There are some good reasons I don't run anything, one being I'm too willing to make radical changes. But I do think that my problem analyses often have insight, even if my solutions are more questionable.

> It is not so easy as when to call the fire department; the signs of
> trouble are not always obvious.

I hear ya. As long as the parents are truly paying reasonable attention, that's all I ask.