Posted on 05/01/2013 1:44:39 AM PDT by expat1000
HILLSBORO • In just a few short months, Sherrie Gavan said, her son went from a straight-A student who loved baseball and scuba diving to a listless teenager with a short fuse.
Then she figured out the cause: heroin addiction, an epidemic that has upended life for countless parents across the St. Louis area in the past five years.
Gavan told a court on Tuesday that she took desperate measures to get her son, Clayton, now 19, clean. She slept next to him as he shook and sweated through withdrawals. She enrolled him in a new school to keep him away from a bad crowd. She sent him off to live with relatives and even took him to work with her.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Well, that is even more of an excuse that this jury should have ignored the judge and voted their conscience.
this time i would support jury nullification.
i came close to doing the same (crossed my mind) once before in my life.
ps i have 3 sons
She deserves an AWARD!
It may well be (and probably is) that whether or not she was doing it to protect her son from drug addiction WAS NEVER AN ISSUE RAISED AT TRIAL!
A good defense attorney would move the court to rule any info about that to be prejudicial.
And he would win the motion.
Look, I sure as hell ain’t saying the system is perfect. But many times we hear about jury decisions and say WTF?? but we have a whole different set of facts in front of us, the media spin, etc
...It is no surprise that the general degradation of property rights should coincide with the rise of statism and the devaluing of the individual. Either we own property -- including ourselves - or we do not. From such a belief system comes abortion; the right to life is subject to the granting of permission by the collective. Gun control is another example; the Left hates guns because they empower the individual over the collective. A man with a gun does not need the protection of the State but can deal with violations of his rights by himself. The man with a gun can, if need be, do without the collective. This chafes at liberal sensibilities, as they are absolute in their determination to make us all not just our brother's keeper but his master. There can be no right to self-defense in a world where one does not own even himself. The State is master and it is a usurpation, an act of rebellion, to defend yourself. It is even more an act of treason to defend yourself against the State. This is why there is such anger in the Progressive community against "bitter clingers" holding onto their guns; what right does any individual have to take the power of the State?
It affects religion, too. The Judeo-Christian religions believe in the duty of the individual to govern himself first and foremost. The Progressive thinking is that nobody has a right to govern himself, so Christianity and Judaism are rebels, antithetical to the cause of community and the idea that "it takes a village". Islam, on the other hand, is both a handy tool to use against them and is a system where there is no division between the State and the Faith, and the individual must submit to the larger collective...
(Read the rest of it at: American Thinker: "The Individual as Property" by Timothy Birdnow
The judge can go pound sand. This woman is guilty and OJ Simpson was not guilty?? WTF !! When the law is lawless there is no law.
In MA and other places, the criminals are considered victims and vice versa.
Barry must be very proud.
I think she deserves a commendation!
There is a way off of it - permanently, and it is not willpower.
For doing exactly what wrong?
Where’s The father?
People need to read about the Founders’ response to tyranny, set up Committees of Safety and use them. This is the proper organizational response they used before getting out the muskets and shooting the redcoats.
Great job, mom! They make no mention of the dealer’s jail time, is he is still out there doing his thing?
So I guess selling heroin is allowed in that community? Why not call law enforcement and report that the kid was selling heroin to her child? Sounds like the seller and his family are a collection of dim bulbs, and it would not have been hard to catch him.
I can honestly say if the choice was between my son and a drug dealer — I’m swinging away, trying for a homerun.
Hank Williams Jr. has an excellent song about a similar situation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnbTl5wLbxo
A good defense attorney would move the court to rule any info about that to be prejudicial.
I would hope a defense attorney that wouldn’t want this brought up in court would be fired.
a prosecuting attorney, on the other hand...
I’ll never forget seeing actor Carroll O’Conner on tv after his son died of an overdose basically begging parents to do the same thing. He tried everything to get the dealer away from his son and wasn’t successful. So sad. At least she got him to stay away from her son.
If I’d had any idea where it was coming from, I would have done far worse. About a week after my son left for his 4th or 5th trip to a rehab, I did find out, but by then the guy (who was already under an 8 year suspended sentence) was caught with over a pound of heroin, a pile of counterfeit money and for being a felon in possession of a firearm. I’m hoping that he will be locked up for a long time.
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