Lemmie guess...
Posted on 03/31/2007 10:21:01 PM PDT by lqclamar
A 14-year-old girl has been sentenced to a state juvenile correction facility “for an indeterminate period not to exceed her 21st birthday” for shoving a 58-year-old teacher’s aide.
The incident occurred Sept. 30 at Paris High School, while the aide was on hall monitor duty. The girl has a history of problems at school, according to court testimony.
County Judge Chuck Superville said the girl must spend a minimum of one year at a Texas Youth Commission facility. How much longer she will stay depends upon her progress, the judge said.
A three-man, three-woman jury listened to testimony Thursday and Friday before being handed the case about 3:30 p.m. Friday. The jury deliberated just 10 minutes before reporting it had a verdict: “We the jury find it true that the respondent ... did engage in delinquent conduct by commission of an assault on a public servant as charged in the petition.”
Superville discharged the jury, and the trial moved into the punishment phase, which continued for about two and a half hours before defense attorney Wesley Newell and the Lamar County district attorney’s office rested about 6:15 p.m. Friday.
School officials said they have dealt with the girl, who is now a high school freshman, many times on disciplinary issues dating back several years.
Newell argued for probation, and Superville had gone on record that sending a teenager to the TYC was something he generally would do only as a last resort.
Prosecutors argued against probation, saying that the girl’s mother is perhaps her biggest problem and that the girl has no hope of getting better as long as she’s in the same home as her mother. District Attorney Gary Young said the mother’s response to any problem at school was to paint school officials as racist.
During the punishment phase, a half-dozen or so teachers — both white and black — from the high school or from Paris Alternative School, where the girl was transferred after the incident last September, described the girl as “openly defiant, generally did not follow rules.”
Michael Johnson, a teacher/coach at the alternative school, said after a teacher “wrote her up” for violation of rules, the girl told him “I’m going to bust her in the nose.” She wanted to go home, but he made her go to the office with him, Johnson said. He said she told him, “You don’t know me very well, because I’ll burn this school down.”
Johnson, who is black, said the girl’s mother berated him, calling him the equivalent of an Uncle Tom.
The jury had three women, one of whom was black, and three men.
PHS principal Gary Preston said the school district made available every resource it had “but regularly got road-blocked with non-support of her mother.” He said he knows of nothing more that can be done.
“I think (the girl) is capable, but she is enabled by a mother who won’t support the attempts to help her. ... Up until now, I think it has been very harmful for her to be in the same home with her mother.”
The girl admitted pushing the teacher’s aide, Cleda Brownfield, but said she did so only after Brownfield shoved her first.
The Sept. 30 incident occurred about 15 to 20 minutes before regular classes were to begin at 8:30 a.m. at Paris High School. Brownfield was the hall monitor in a building where some students were having meetings and others were being helped by tutors.
The hall monitor’s job is to lock the doors about 8:05 a.m., keeping all other students out of the hallways until 8:30 a.m. to keep disruptions at a minimum. Brownfield said she was on her way to lock the door when the girl walked in. When the girl was told she couldn’t come in, she protested, saying she had to go to the restroom, Brownfield testified.
She told her she’d have to use a restroom in the cafeteria across the courtyard, and the girl finally left, she said. Minutes later, when another student was admitted into the building for a meeting, the girl insisted that she also be let in. When the girl told her, “I’ll knock your block off,” and moved to come in, Brownfield said, she put up her hands in a defensive posture, and the girl responded by shoving her hard.
A teacher, Jerry Fleming, was nearby and the girl complained that he had a pencil in his hand, causing a cut on her hand when he put out his hand to restrain her. He also stepped on her shoelaces, causing her to fall, and she bumped her head, she said.
School resource officer Brad Ruthart testified he was on duty in the parking lot when he was summoned to the building because Brownfield “had been assaulted by a student.” He said he found her in the lounge and the student seated outside the principal’s office.
Brownfield “was crying, very upset, holding her arm. I asked her if she was OK, and she said she was not. I felt she needed medical help. She was so upset she had difficulty talking,” said Ruthart, a Paris police officers who works as a school resource officer for PISD.
The girl “was very calm, didn’t appear to be a threat,” Ruthart testified. During the next half hour, he talked to the various teachers who were either involved or had seen part of what happened. He also talked to the girl and to several of her friends, all of whom insisted that Brownfield shoved first.
“I thought it didn’t seem like something Brownfield would do. From what I knew of her and from what others were saying, it didn’t add up,” he said. Ruthart said he had known the teacher’s aide for several years and described her as “mild-mannered, soft-spoken, a grandmotherly type.”
The girl’s mother testified late Thursday afternoon that she got dressed and drove to Paris High School after receiving a telephone call that her daughter had been involved in an incident.
“She was sitting in the office with two other girls, crying. She had a knot on her head and a cut on her hand,” she said.
She talked with Ruthart and Preston, she said.
“I was upset because my daughter was sitting there hurting, and nobody was doing anything to help her. I asked them why nothing had been done to treat her injuries,” she said.
Newell asked if she got any satisfaction from them.
“No, they could care less,” she said.
She took her daughter to the hospital emergency room, where she was treated for a contusion on her head, a laceration on her hand and a sprained neck, she said.
About an hour after the incident, Brownfield was removed from the school on a stretcher and was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
The girl’s mother said her daughter has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and was trying to get into the building that day so she could get medication from the school nurse.
Brownfield testified the girl made no mention of needing to see the nurse and that if she had, she would have been allowed to do so. Ruthart said the girl also said nothing to him about having wanted in the building to see the school nurse.
Compare the facts of this article to the left wing propaganda piece by Harold Witt of the Chicago Tribune that brought attention to this story and resulted in Cotton's release earlier today after political pressure was applied.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703120170mar12,0,1435953.story?page=1
The differences are simply astounding!
MSM: Claims that Shaquanda Cotton had no previous record of being a problem.
REALITY: Cotton was a disciplinary problem for a long time, including threats of violence against teachers and a threat to burn down the school building.
MSM: Claims that the hall monitor was not seriously injured.
REALITY: The hall monitor was placed on a stretcher and taken to the hospital by ambulence as a result of her injuries.
MSM: Says school officials discriminated against Shaquanda because she was black.
REALITY: Shaquanda's mother had a chip on her shoulder and frequently accused school officials, including other blacks, of racism for attempting to discipline her unruly daughter. When Shaquanda threatened a black teacher about burning down the school, Mrs. Cotton responded by calling him an "Uncle Tom."
Published March 30, 2007
Shaquanda Cotton is to be released Saturday from the Texas Youth Commsssion facility in Brownwood, according to a report from the Associated Press.
“We are glad she is getting out and are happy for her family but we have concerns about the way it is happening,” Lamar County District Attorney spokesman Allan Hubbard said.
Rep. Harold Dutton, the Houston Democrat who chairs the House juvenile justice committee, said the newly appointed conservator of the Texas Youth Commission told him Cotton was being freed, according to the AP report.
“This is one of those cases that is the poster child of everything wrong with the criminal justice system,” Dutton told the AP.
Dutton said he was informed of Cotton’s pending release by Jay Kimbrough, who Gov. Rick Perry appointed to investigate the agency accused of ignoring multiple allegations of sexual and physical abuse of young inmates.
“Apparently, cases that get the most public attention can grab the ear of state legislators who can simply order people to be freed from incarceration,” Hubbard said. “That sets an alarming precedent.”
Local activist Brenda Cherry, a friend of the girl’s mother, confirmed that they have been told of Shaquanda’s release.
“She should be home by tomorrow,” Cherry said.
Dutton told the AP late today that the 15-year-old would be released to her mother on Saturday. He said Creola Cotton was unable to pick up her daughter on Friday because of bad weather.
Two threads on the same subject in 50 minutes, you are really into this case.
Published March 25, 2007
The Paris Branch of the NAACP called for a timely release of Shaquanda Cotton from the Texas Youth Commission after a four-hour executive committee meeting Saturday.
The group also asked that an emergency item be placed on Monday night’s Paris City Council agenda to consider naming a diversity task force.
The group also called for an expedited appeal of the Cotton case by the Texarkana Court of Appeals in motions approved unanimously by nine board members at Saturday’s meeting.
Her mother should be charged with child abuse just for naming her Shaquanda.
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I'm researching it right now. The more truth that comes out about it, the more it stinks. The MSM basically just released a violent criminal thug from a well deserved prison sentence because her mother and the radical left screamed "racism."
Lemmie guess...
The Dems have been having a field day with it by citing it as "proof" of racism against a poor innocent black child. We need to get these facts out there in response.
They called it "a signal to black folks" and over 100 Black Panthers and Millions More Movement "protested" over at the courthouse and school district building.
And then I went home and told Mommy that Mother Alfred smacked me on the butt with the Angel Maker.
"Did you deserve it?"
"Yeah"
And that was the end of that.
We didn't realize we were supposed to sue the school. Darn, we could have gotten some serious money!
That means that you lie... Regardless of what the facts are, you lie because you represent yourself as somebody who knows the facts when you don't.
I work in a black school, and the quote about her schoolmates saying this or that is a joke.
"Stop Snitchin'" = their codeword for beating down anyone who reports a crime, no matter how bad.
They will lie till they are blue in the face to defend another child they dont even like because they are told to do it by hip-hop society.
The trial testimony also revealed from several corroborating witnesses that Shaquanda was a disciplinary problem who frequently made violent threats against teachers and school officials. The mother's only answer to this testimony was to call everybody "racist" - including black teachers who testified against her daughter.
The shame of it all is that the mom is still out on the street, probably putting in a call to the Reverend whomever.
The mother sounds like a real piece of work. She sees a "racist" lurking around every corner trying to discriminate against her spoiled bratty kid. The only real racist involved in this case is the one that greets her in the mirror every morning.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=112238992
I need a day job like this "mother's".
The problem is that the punishment doesn't fit the crime. 7 years for pushing someone? You're out of your mind. People get less time than that for DUI, or even killing someone. And when the judge gives another teen of a different race probation for burning down a house... Give me a break.
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