691
Texas cops arrest 11-year-old honors student and put him in solitary confinement for three days
(www.texasobserver.org)
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
691 points (98.6% liked)
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Not with an arrest record at age 11. Medical school applications, state medical licenses, controlled substance prescription licenses, hospital credentialing applications, etc - all of the underlying bureaucracy of being a clinician (understandably) require background checks with clean records.
Unless his lawyer can get the record sealed and expunged, he'll most likely have to explain this event at every turn. One would hope that juvenile records could be explained away, but the field is so competitive that it could very well be the thing that keeps him from pursuing his dream.
All because a shitbag principal didn't want to deal with the requests of an 11 year old grieving his father and opportunistically punished him for it on the alleged word of another dumbass child's idea of a practical joke.
Even if he actually said it - he's an 11 year old, with a prefrontal cortex that is just starting to come online, on the hormonal cusp of puberty, trying to deal with the complex social dynamics of being 11 and changing schools, getting bullied about his haircut and clothes by a shitty adult abusing their authority.
I cant help but wonder how the situation would be if he was white.
IANAL, but Texas Article 45.0218 would likely offer some protection to the kiddo since it's a Class C Misdemeanor. The short of it is that being held or detained doesn't mean that the individual was "prescribed jail time."
However, since the Texas Observer is shamelessly plugging away and, as a result, search engines may recognize the child's name, then the article (and similar "news" reports) will likely have more disastrous impacts than the actual event since the print industry is declining/desperate and the internet never forgets.
Not a lawyer either, but although I agree with that interpretation, I'm not sure where Class C Misdemeanor comes from.
The article states that:
I used your link to search for "terroristic threat," and found this statute:
Penal Code Section 22.07 - Terroristic Threat
There is no mention of a Class C Misdemeanor in that statute; so I'm not sure what the Texas Observer is talking about.
Again, not a lawyer, but by my reading of 22.07, it seems like this ridiculous charge would be a Class A Misdemeanor under:
Subsection (a)(2):
With the penalty described in subsection (c)(2):
Class A misdemeanors carry both a fine up to $4000 and jail time up to 1 year.
Texas Penal Code Section 12.21 - Class a Misdemeanor
TBH, I'm not sure if either of us (The Texas Observer and myself) know what we're talking about. IIRC, Texas classifies felony charges as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree offenses and Misdemeanors as Class A, B, or C by their severity.
The fact that they would consider it a "Felony", or anything other than frivolous, is disheartening though I appreciate your efforts to research and correct any potential misinformation that I may have spouted. (Good catch, btw)
SMDH, Texas 🤷