Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Phillip Morris is urging the resignation of a juvenile court judge, Alison Nelson Floyd, for releasing a suspect who then murdered a fellow teen. Morris says Floyd “should acknowledge that instead, she gambled with the public’s safety by releasing an increasingly dangerous teen hours before he killed” a 17-year-old boy. Floyd “rolled the dice on a violent juvenile, who had been aggressively working his way up to murder,” says Morris.
Before releasing a 17-year-old delinquent charged with the killing, a juvenile probation officer pleaded with Floyd to lock the boy up. She described the 17-year-old as a threat to the community. The boy, who has been on probation since February for several assaults, intimidation of a witness, carrying a knife and counterfeit drugs, had stopped going to school or following the curfew that Floyd had set for him. Morris says Floyd discounted the concerns of the probation officer and the fact that he was defying her own terms of probation. “What is the point of the probation department in her world?,” Morris asks. The judge also discounted the pleas of the boy’s mother to lock her son up.
Link: http://www.cleveland.com/morris/index.ssf/2008/09/after_fatal_call_judge_should.html