Old Mill Creek is a village in Lake County, IL. Lake County is directly north of Cook County, which includes the City of Chicago and many suburban communities. Some of suburbia spills north into Lake County, but Lake County also has a lot of farmland and open spaces.
According to Wikipedia, Old Mill Creek's population is only 178. Its median family income is about $92K/year, which is considerably higher than the US and Illinois medians. One of the news stories I'll reference below describes it as "a rural area with a cluster of historic homes surrounded by large equestrian farms." Wikipedia reports that its population is 87% white.
At sometime around 1 am this past Tuesday, an Old Mill Creek resident, who still hasn't been identified by name in news reports, noticed that some people were on his property, standing near his car. This Chicago Tribune news story reports what ensued:
The 75-year-old homeowner went outside to see why there were people near his parked 2011 Audi and yelled at the individuals to leave, but at least one male teen moved toward him with an unknown object in his hand, officials said in the [Lake County Sheriff's Department news] release. [D]eputies responded to a 911 call in the 17600 block of West Edwards Road in Old Mill Creek about 1:15 a.m. The caller told dispatchers he shot at thieves before they fled, Covelli said.Police pursued the Lexus. The chase went on for miles, all the way to the West Side of Chicago, where the Lexus apparently ran out of gas. The passengers exited the car and fled on foot; all four of them were apprehended pretty quickly.
“The homeowner feared for his life,” the Tuesday night release said. The homeowner fired “several shots” at the subjects, [Lake County Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. Christopher] Covelli said, adding that it was possibly more than three shots. A 14-year-old from Chicago was wounded “in the head area” while he was outside the car, according to Covelli. Covelli said “a bowie-style knife” was recovered at the scene of the shooting. The group left the scene in the Lexus.
Soon afterward, six people in a stolen 2015 Lexus SUV encountered Gurnee police officers investigating a crash at Route 132 and Hunt Club Road. They asked for help for one of the passengers who had a gunshot wound, Covelli said. Police administered first aid to the passenger, who was then taken to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville. The passenger was pronounced dead at the hospital, Covelli said.
A person who left the Lexus with the wounded passenger was taken into custody, but the other four sped off in the Lexus.
The criminal charges still are being sorted through, but here is the headline charge:
By Tuesday night, the group of Chicago teens had been charged with first-degree murder by the Lake County state’s attorney’s office.
“The teens were charged due to them being in commission of a forcible felony, when the 14-year-old victim was shot and subsequently died as a result of being shot during the commission of a burglary,” according to a Tuesday night news release from the Lake County sheriff’s office.
The teens reportedly admitted to police that they had stolen the Lexus, were driving around looking to commit burglaries, and had done this in the past. The police have stated that goods stolen in other burglaries were found in the trunk of the Lexus. Some of the teens apparently have juvenile records.
Even so: it wouldn't have occurred to me that the teens would be charged with murder; if anything, my first thought was that the homeowner would be charged with something - if not murder, then manslaughter or a similar charge. The news reports note that prosecutors haven't closed the door to that possibility. But as things stand now, it is the teenage accomplices that are charged with murder - and they are all being charged as adults, even though only one of them is as old as 18.
The teens are eligible for murder charges, even though they didn't fire the gun (in fact, the gun was fired at them) because of a legal provision known as the felony murder rule. An article in the Daily Herald newspaper explains:
Almost all states have a felony murder rule. About half of those, Illinois included, allow co-conspirators to be charged with the deaths of their accomplices at the hands of someone else. The rule is rooted in medieval law, with its current incarnation dating back to 18th century English criminal law.
"With accomplice liability, we often get the situation where a co-felon is held liable for an unintended killing by one of their partners," said Guyora Binder, a law professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and author of a book on the history and application of felony murder rules in the United States. "But many states have exceptions to co-felons being charged with the death of their partner by another party like police or a victim of the crime or even a bystander."
The U.S. is one of the last "major, modern countries" to still enforce felony murder rules, Binder said. England, Wales and Northern Ireland abandoned the felony murder rule years ago. It was ruled unconstitutional in Canada. And some parts of Australia have abolished it, as well.
[Lake County State's Attorney Michael] Nerheim said the teens are culpable because they armed themselves with the knife, drove the stolen car to Lake County "to commit several forcible felonies, including vehicular burglary and residential burglary," and "collectively ignored" the 75-year-old's demands that they leave.As may be expected, the parents of the teens are devastated.
"I feel terrible," said Curtis Dawson Sr., the father of 16-year-old Curtis Dawson Jr. "They are charging him with murder as if he was the one pulling the trigger. That's just crazy. That's unbelievable."
"I am not going to say my son is a saint but this ..." said the teen's mother Tiffany Williams. "He's going to spend the rest of his life in jail for something he didn't do. I have been crying a lot."Prosecutors have noted that the homeowner has a valid firearm owner identification card and a concealed-carry permit. Kevin Williamson, in an opinion piece that appeared in National Review in the wake of the recent spate of mass shootings, sums up the Constitutionally-underpinned laws of gun ownership and use in the United States in a striking way:
The Second Amendment isn’t about shooting ducks. It’s about shooting people.So a teen is shot dead - and so far, prosecutors aren't faulting the shooter. A 75 year old man living in an isolated area, perhaps in possession of valuable goods: that sounds like a burglary ring's perfect setup, perhaps even someone it would target. If I was that man, owning a gun might have a certain appeal to me, too. But now a teen is dead, the lives of other teens are on the brink of being ruined, and families are crushed. What constitutes justice in this situation? I'm not certain that Lake County prosecutors have struck the right balance.
Once you really get your head around that, you can begin to appreciate the political architecture of the gun-control debate and the fundamental problem at the heart of it: The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure the right of Americans to keep and bear arms designed to kill people in armed confrontations, and everything that makes firearms unsuitable for that purpose is at odds with the Second Amendment.
Seems like the public defender's office should be able to work to get the charges reduced. They are guilty of something, attempted burglary and grand theft auto. But first degree murder seems quite a stretch if they didn't shoot the victim.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't say anything about what race the thieves were. Hopefully that wasn't a factor in the murder charge.
There is police cam video of the car chase, including of the teens sprinting away from the car after it ran out of gas in Chicago, and their mug shots are now appearing on newspaper front pages and television newscasts. They're African American. I don't know the race of the shooter, but 7 out of every 8 residents in his town are white. Race will be a factor in this, but I am not certain how that plays out in Lake County. My guess is, not in a good way for black teens from Chicago with rap sheets.
DeleteThe felony murder rule as described here does not strike me as just. Nevertheless, it seems to me the surviving teens are in some significant way responsible for the death of the other teen. That does not make them murderers, though.
ReplyDeleteIn a careful analysis, much would depend on how justified the original shooting was. But it's probably difficult to ascertain that in retrospect, because given the little bit we know about the teens, it is not difficult to imagine them as being threatening whether they actually were or not.
What are the odds that teens who steal cars and go on burglary sprees can become upstanding, law-abiding adult citizens if dealt with by our current criminal justice system? I have no idea. A very quick Google search indicates that the recidivism rates for juveniles are very high.
"What are the odds that teens who steal cars and go on burglary sprees can become upstanding, law-abiding adult citizens if dealt with by our current criminal justice system?"
DeleteDavid, I love that question. I'm sure you're right, that the odds are already against them. At the same time, they've not yet reached the age where life circumstances constrain their ability to make substantial, even dramatic, changes in their lives. Surely that is one of the points of the relatively light sentences that are dealt out in juvenile court.
FWIW - when I was in deacon formation, I went to a juvenile facility - as a matter of fact, it was in Lake County, IL - every Saturday for a summer to lead a prayer service. We weren't allowed to bring in books or papers, so we used these little mini-bibles that were in the recreation room - they had the Gospels and the Book of Psalms. King James Version. So each Saturday, we would read the Gospel passage for the coming Sunday together. And then talk about what it meant and what application it might have for their life and circumstances. The teens were from all different faith traditions - not a few from little or no tradition at all. But they came because it got them out of their cell, and because there was one particular corrections officer who didn't look upon them like dirt - he treated them like humans and cared about their welfare, and he really encouraged them to come. Some of the teens rolled their eyes (after all, they were teens) but some really got into it. As they were all students (more or less) when they weren't in jail, they were pretty comfortable in anything resembling a classroom situation. Some of them already were pretty hard-boiled, or at least on their way to it, but some of them, in my opinion, were sort of teetering and could fall either way.
No idea if I made any lasting impact or difference. For me it was an exercise in seed-planting - trying to bring them a little Good News. On the other hand, they told me that on Thursday nights, an evangelical minister would come and talk to them about how sinful they were, and how likely they were to roast in hell. Personally, I thought that was an exercise in spreading Bad News (and, I hope, Fake News, although we didn't have that term then).
"What are the odds that teens who steal cars and go on burglary sprees can become upstanding, law-abiding adult citizens if dealt with by our current criminal justice system?"
DeletePerhaps greater than we think. When I worked for the mental health system, I went to a national conference on children’s service. A clinician-researcher from Toronto had developed an interesting model for children’s services.
He maintained that problems usually begin in a minor area, e.g. child not getting along with peers. That escalates into problems with doing schoolwork, then family problems. The child begins hanging out with other similarly disturbed children. Then lawbreaking occurs. Then incarceration occurs. Then more severe law breaking and career criminality.
What he did to break the trend of getting into worse situations, was to find for the child a relationship that began a new path to better situations.
He probed the child’s life for the good things that really interested them, e.g. music, sports, arts, etc. He then located professionals who were willing to intervene in their lives and mentor then in the direction of the positive experiences.
Of course it is difficult to insolate them from all the bad things in their environment, and of course the earlier the intervention the easier it is to move them from progressively worse environments to progressively better environments.
The whole model is environmental. Not making good people out of bad people but moving people from bad environments to good environments.
However, I suspect a key factor is finding the positive attraction in the person’s life. I don’t think just changing environment does it. The person has to experience the positive in themselves as the catalyst for the change, and that the environment is reflecting back something deeply good inside themselves. They then become the good person they see reflected back.
My husband is part of a jail ministry team. They do Bible study at the county jail one evening a week. There are a couple of Protestant groups who also do classes. Like Jim said, the classes are well attended, because it is something to do that gets them out of their cell. The group my husband is part of uses Catholic materials, though they aren't there to make converts and anyone can attend. Sad how many actually are Catholic, though most didn't get very far in their faith formation. Hopefully some of them are at a teachable moment in their lives.
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