Markus Evans of Milwaukee stabbed his teacher with a pencil in kindergarten. He was arrested at age 7 and again at 9 for felony battery to a school employee. There would be 10 arrests in all, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. At 15, Evans blasted his cousin in the back with a shotgun. Two years later, he killed a girl, 17, on her way home from high school.
Evans is the latest violent offender able to elude justice time and again because of leniency from a parent, prosecutors, and judges, miscalculations by law enforcement, and poor communication between authorities, a Journal Sentinel investigation found. The juvenile justice system is designed to rehabilitate offenders who are willing to change but ill equipped to constrain those who are not. The Evans case shows a system of second chances offering little more than speed bumps for an increasingly brazen predator.