Problem with Criminal Justice System in a Nut Shell

While reading the Houston Chronicle this morning there was a story explaining how one of our poor misguided victim citizens, Carlos Antoine Daniels, “accidentally” killed a man while attempting to steal his SUV. The gun discharged “accidentally” when the owner of the vehicle tried to keep the door closed during a tug of war, the edge of the door hitting the gun and a bit of bad luck caused the owner of the SUV to die a tragic and rather painful death.

“He (Carlos Antoine Daniels ) was convicted of robbery with bodily injury in May 2007 and possession of marijuana in March 2007.”

The newspaper article listed the incident as a carjacking; a watered down acceptance of the inevitable rather than call it aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. People have their cars stolen all the time, what’s the big deal, just write a traffic ticket, isn’t that the way a major crime is viewed since it happens so often? We don’t have room in jail for all these petty criminals, and besides, it cost too much.

How come Carlos Antoine Daniels wasn’t in prison, you know, that place where they put dangerous people to keep them away from the public? Carlos Antoine Daniels was convicted, that means he’s been found guilty in case you were wondering, convicted of robbery with bodily injury in May of 2007; that’s last year for crying out loud. What is a dangerous criminal doing out on the street?

I’m sorry, I forgot to mention that Carlos Antoine Daniels is only 19 years old and should be treated differently in the criminal justice system; isn’t that what presidential candidate Obama wants? Putting Carlos Antoine Daniels in prison for a crime he might not fully understand could damage his chance to fully achieve, to escape all those years of living in the shadow of the ghetto.

Robberies happen all the time, pull a gun, rough up the victim a little; what’s the big deal? Carlos Antoine Daniels has already said it was an “accident”, that the gun went off because of the SUV’s door hitting it. Carlos Antoine Daniels was just doing what he always does to earn a living; and anyway, the victim, Enrique Heras, should have picked something less desirable, something that didn’t pollute the environment.

The shift in attitudes here in America makes me wonder if this isn’t just a bad dream, that when I wake up life and property will still hold value. We’re more concerned about keeping young violent criminals out of prison than we are about protecting honest law abiding citizen’s lives and property. We’re more concerned in perceived injustices supposedly inflicted on convicted criminals due to race than we are with crime victims.

“An entire industry in the law schools now dedicates itself to flushing out prosecutorial and judicial bias, using ever more complicated statistical artillery. The net result? A few new studies show tiny, unexplained racial disparities in sentencing, while other analyses continue to find none. Any differences that do show up are trivially small compared with the exponentially greater rates of criminal offending among blacks…says Patrick Langan, former senior statistician for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Prosecutors and judges observe the heinousness of a defendant’s conduct, for example, but a number-crunching researcher has no easy way to discover and quantify that variable.”

Recently several state legislatures have gone to great lengths to define in very specific terms when and how individuals may protect life and property; for antiquities sake they are referred to as “castle laws”, a throw back to a time when it was commonly expected that a man’s home was his castle. In times past it generally acknowledged that the right to defend property and those who live on that property was a right from God. Now, the state, by defining when where and how you may defend yourself has taken upon itself the role of God; after all property can be replaced, do citizens (subjects of the state) really need to kill some stupid criminal just to prove he can? That’s “taking the law into your own hands”, let the courts decide; yea, we see how the courts did such a good job keeping Carlos Antoine Daniels off the streets and how safe the world was for Enrique Heras; remember Enrique Heras, he’s the dead guy who got shot by Carlos Antoine Daniels who’d already been convicted of aggravated robbery with injury only last year.

Think about it; after learning about the details of a robbery gone sour while watching the “tube”, sitting there in the comfort of your living room, the kids are upstairs playing Gone in 60 Seconds on their X-Box, hearing about a shop owner who’d shot a gun wielding suspect (alleged gun wielding suspect) for stealing a six pack of beer? The public outcry for killing a young person who only wanted a six pack of beer; what’s the value of a life wasted compared to a six pack of beer? Never mind that once or twice a week the shop owner gets ripped on similar trivial losses, sometimes after looking down the barrel of a gun.

Quanell X will, no doubt, make a personal appearance while holding the hand of the alleged gun wielding suspect’s mother to ask for a thorough investigation by an outside agency, implying how totally corrupt and untrustworthy our own local police department has become. “Is this what our community wants, young people cut down by a greedy shop owner who couldn’t wait to shoot this poor misguided young man?” “I’m not advocating violence; but if his shop gets burned to the ground, and I’m not suggesting anyone should get a box of matches, two and a half gallons of gasoline, a shop rag to be used as a fuse or anything like that; I’m just saying this is what happens when shop owners take the law into their own hands and shoot a young person who hasn’t had the benefit of a trial by his peers.”

I’d say the death of Enrique Heras at the hands of Carlos Antoine Daniels during the alleged commission of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon spotlights the problem of our criminal justice system in a nut shell. If you don’t already have your wallet card, a concealed handgun permit; get one and learn how to defend yourself, the criminal court system is broken. Vote for Obama if you think letting folks like Carlos Antoine Daniels wander around free is a good idea.

I’m starting a special account to help raise defense funding for Carlos Antoine Daniels to help with his legal fees while defending himself from a biased and prejudicial justice system. Use your Pay Pal account to send your money to http://www.ihopeherotsinhell.com or call our toll free number, 1-800-BAD-EGGS (The phone number was made up for the purposes of this article; please don’t start calling that number. If you insist on calling; the folks at MGI, the folks who have that listing, will get annoyed rather quickly)