We’ve
all done it; come across a web site so outrageous you can’t help but laugh, and wonder why the page’s author isn’t
writing fiction for the New York Times’ best seller's list. And then you discover what you've read isn’t
fiction at all; rather, it's reality, a reality so horrifying, so mind boggling, so unjust that it baffles comprehension.
Such is the case of Brandon Hein.
The short version…read the long version at Hein's web site:
A
few months after his eighteenth birthday Hein was out with friends doing what kids do, partying; a fight broke out.
Imagine that, teenage boys getting into a fistfight! The unfortunate result…a boy in the group, while protecting his
little brother from a beating, stabbed another youth, who ultimately died from the wound.
The
District Attorney’s office used the California “Felony Murder Rule” (abolished in most countries) to
prosecute the teens.
Although the responsible teen, under oath, from the witness stand, admitted his mistake, the DA’s attorneys
frightened and cajole the jury into believing the boys were a gang, and deserved to be labeled as societal predators.
A
year after his arrest, Brandon Hein, barely nineteen years old, was sentenced to a prison term of Life Without The Possibility Of Parole by the presiding judge…sympathetic to the victim’s father;
a Los Angeles police detective.
How
curious is it that Charles Manson, who planned and orchestrated multiple murders, gets a parole hearing every few years,
but Hein (LWOP) will never be free?
Fortunately, Governor Schwarzenegger has displayed a little
common sense (being removed from the emotion(s) of the issue) and intervened. He commuted Hein’s sentence to LIFE, which means Hein is now eligible for parole in 15 years. Thanks,
Gov, now let's see if you the have balls to be humane enough to override politics!
Fifteen years in prison for someone else's mistake is enough!
Do you agree
with Kreig’s opinion: “The sentencing in this case can only be labeled judicial brutality.”
I don’t,
but it’s his web page.
