Prosecutors Refuse to Drop Charges Against Texas 11-Year-Old Put in Solitary Confinement

gedaliyah@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 627 points –
Prosecutors Refuse to Drop Charges Against Texas 11-Year-Old Put in Solitary Confinement
themessenger.com

Timothy Murray lost his father earlier this year and had been asking his principal for counseling when she called in the police

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Data from Brownsville ISD seen by The Observer showed its officers made 3,102 student arrests between May 2021 and Nov. 2023. Nearly 60% of those were on felony charges and 76 of those kids were in elementary school.

what the fuck is going on over there

High-speed school-to-prison pipeline. Because inmates=free labour and prisons are for-profit. Gotta get 'em kidz institutionalized as early as possible!

It's the conservative way. They hold these traditions sacred.

I suspect that being born from the wrong vagina is a crime for those people.

It just explains so many things: from their criminalization of abortion whilst taking State support away from poor single mothers to emprisioning kids who don't have a mommy and daddy with the right connections or who can afford the kind of lawyer who would extract a massive compensations from everybody involved in putting a kid in prision like this.

Literally there's an aspect of Evangelicalism and the "Prosperity Gospel" that portrays poor people as inherently sinful and evil, and it's not just limited to those aspects of Christianity:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_poverty_and_wealth

Then you read the Bible and like almost all the references to the rich are negative and like where the heck do people even get this crap from.

Hippie socialist Jesus > Supply-Side Republican/Conservative Jesus

Any educated and intelligent person should see that the prosperity gospel is just greed promotion disguised as religious edicts.

I've run audio for maybe a dozen Prosperity gospel events over the course of my career.. Those people are some of the scummiest people I've ever met in rl. The "preachers" usually have a group of thugs acting as security that will run interference for anyone that questions what they're preaching. I've seen people get literally dragged out and then heard, after the fact, that the "security" team "taught them a lesson". The crowd was shocked that someone was aggressively dragged out at "church" until the preacher spun the victim as someone with the devil in them, then everyone would be nodding their heads with a panicked look like "are we ok with this?.. I guess..". Fucking surreal. Also, these people would try to dodge as many bills as they could. On several of the ones I did, the "church" stiffed the AV company I was working for on a $30k+ production.

Yeah I am actually really curious how they explain that, if anyone has a genuine answer.

There is so much talk in the Bible about riches and wealth and being rewarded for being a good Christian but my memory serves that it's referencing the holy spirit or rather the relationship with God is rewarding in and of itself and that the riches and all that is in the afterlife.

And every time I recall it talking about wealth on earth it is vilified and you're supposed to give it away. And of course there this famous quote

And Jesus said unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:23-26

Anyway yeah I'm curious how people can teach this aspect of the Bible with such a contradicting incorrect interpretation. I argue that it's a contradicting book in itself all the time but wealth is not one I recall. We have hated the wealthy for millenia lol

Pretty sure avoiding "being born from the wrong vagina" is a popular defense of abortion among liberals.

"It just explains so many things" When you're a moron any description of a cause will suffice for the outcome.

I am pretty sure that body autonomy and a women being able to make her own choices about when to start a family are why we support a woman's right to choose.

There is a multitude of reasons why people support abortion. One of the common arguments is that it is better to not exist than to be born poor or to parents that don't want you (I.e literally the "born to the wrong vagina" argument). This is a widely supported belief and I would say that around 20 percent of pro-choice people I've debated (out of hundreds) use it as their primary argument.

Asserting that there is a single reason why people hold a position is absurd.

FYI bodily autonomy arguments have largely been abandoned in academic ethics, because there is just no existing right to bodily autonomy that is sufficiently strong, and we have no basis for arguing that there should be.

Absolutely Parents who do not want to have a baby should not be forced to carry one to term. It ain't some angel that came down and inhabited the womb that should be laminted as lost.

"It ain't some angel"

But it's a human, and we don't find engaging in active killing of humans permissible do we?

I also love that as a pretty open atheist, PC will constantly try to insinuate a religious motivation (even though most PL religious people don't use the ensoulment argument either).

Maybe that's just because it makes sense to not want a massive amount of expenses in a life where they may have trouble taking care of themselves already.

You really act like it's a bad thing to not have children if you can't financially take care of them.

And none of these have to do with targeted killing of human organisms based solely on the circumstances of their conception?

You don't get to play "the conservatives want to kill and imprison poor children" card, when pro-choice liberals celebrate the exact same thing (not pro-life ones like me).

"You really act like it's a bad thing to not have children if you can't financially take care of them"

This argument falls in the same category of logic error that the "abortion is good because it prevents children from being poor" that I am refuting.

The fact that it is bad for people to be poor, does not follow that they should therefore be deprived of existence, because existence is not the cause of suffering but the poverty. When someone says "I wish I wasn't poor", they are NOT saying "I wish I didn't exist" because they could easily make that happen. They are wishing that they had less hardship.

Likewise your argument is also a failure at descriptivism. Not having children for financial reasons, is not immoral. Abortion is not just "not having children", it is an active deprivation of all future experiences of an existing human organism. That's why it's immoral. (And yes trying to argue that fetuses aren't people is insufficient since one can argue from idealized persons {e.g we don't kill mentally ill suicidal people because an idealized person wouldn't want to die, in other words the immediate condition of the human is gladly ignored), or cases of temporary loss of personhood (regardless of how you define it) which would permit killing many if not all adults.

Point is, it's not immoral no matter how much you cry about it now stay out of other peoples lives.

Pretty sure I can rigorously prove that you accept moral principles, empirical facts and a logical system that determines that abortion is infact immoral, you simply never bothered to analyze it.

"Now stay out of other people's lives"

Can you imagine what a horrible (dare I say immoral?) world you would have if immoral actions could not be restricted? Next time someone wrongs you remember that you are the real perpetrator for expecting them to follow your conception of morality.

Not the original poster, but I would enjoy seeing you rigorously prove that pro-choice views are incoherent. My views:

All human beings should have a right to bodily autonomy. This includes the right to deny the use of their body to anyone, even if the person who is using their body is doing so in order to survive, and even if they've previously permitted that person to use their body. If the use can be ended without killing either party, that should be preferred, but if not, then the person being used should still be able to withdraw access.

The real world is messy, obviously, so we have some ambiguity, but in general, this is the guideline.

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Abortion is not just “not having children”, it is an active deprivation of all future experiences of an existing human organism

So is wanking into socks. Get over it.

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there is just no existing right to bodily autonomy that is sufficiently strong

What the fuck is this? Just stop posting.

I already showed that there wasn't if you actually read anything. Nobody seriously contested it.

Funny that the geniuses here haven't been able to do something that has been largely abandoned in ethics.

I already showed that there wasn’t if you actually read anything

First, I haven't found any place where you did this. Second, if you did show that "no existing right to bodily autonomy [is] sufficiently strong", I think you probably need to also show why the law isn't in the wrong, rather the moral beliefs of the people in this thread.

Nobody seriously contested it.

I mean, people are. It's a conversation that's still happening.

...that has been largely abandoned in ethics.

Gonna need a citation on that one, boss.

Anyone else that comes along can follow along in the main conversation with @jasory@programming.dev and myself over here.

"Show why the law isn't in the wrong, rather than the moral beliefs of the people in the thread"

What law? There is no law in discussion here, and an action being immoral does not necessarily entail that a law must exist to prohibit it. (I've already pointed this out, so the fact that you completely ignored it is just laziness)

"the moral beliefs.."

Because it results in a contradiction with their other beliefs. Essentially nobody will ever claim that a contradictory moral system is good, OR that denying a third party the ability to override bodily control in the interest of others (and often that very person, e.g most people think self-harm is wrong) is good. If neither of these are true then a sufficiently strong bodily autonomy cannot be true either.

"It's a conversation that is still happening"

But there are no actual rebuttals. In fact all you did is go back and assert that bodily autonomy actually is relevant, without even addressing the initial refutation.

This is how every single debate about bodily autonomy goes (or really any bad argument). The person will either reject all criticism without any reasoning, or concede all the arguments and play a pseudo Motte-and-Bailey where they continuously switch between arguments they have already conceded were false. Both are simply instances of a person clinging to a belief that contradicts other beliefs they hold, simply because they think it justifies a result they like.

"Gonna need a citation on that"

Wikipedia says that Judith Thompson is credited with changing the view of abortion to a question of autonomy in the public space. What it does not say is that it changed the view of abortion in ethics. (It didn't, it was basically a phase that was pretty quickly moved on from. I also edit Wikipedia so I would have put in it if it did)

Now this is not argument of Wikipedia's infallibility, but it's absence does show that we have no reason to believe that the public's perception of abortion is the same as academic ethics.

So with just this absence of evidence, it is reasonable (but not proven) to say that bodily autonomy is abandoned when it comes to abortion. It is also reasonable to say the converse.

If you actually search academic literature, for as famous as the bodily autonomy argument is it has surprisingly few defences, even pro-choice/pro-abortion (yes they exist in philosophy) ethicists have criticised it. In fact Boonin is probably the most notable defender of it, but even he concedes that it's not very good, discarding it in favor of a "cortical organisation" argument (which I in turn think is an arbitrary selection of a stage of human development that itself doesn't grant personhood any more than being a human organism).

And again the absence of defences, and presence of criticisms makes it more reasonable to think that it is not well accepted.

As for an actual citation, meta-philosophy isn't that popular of a field and you just have to be familiar with the topic to know what I'm referring to. As someone who does research, I can tell you a huge amount of information you want or need isn't neatly collected and more often than not doesn't exist. It could be that there is a vast swath of pro-choice ethicists who use bodily autonomy arguments, which are awfully silent and don't write papers. But based on the evidence it seems like bodily autonomy is truly not a popular argument outside of motivated reasoning by lay persons.

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Is this a bot designed to create an example of disjointed unintelligible thoughts?

Pretty sure [...]

Followed by ignorant bollocks about what "those other people" supposedly think.

“It just explains so many things” When you’re a moron

Ah, it's satire.

Well done!

I said a popular defence, not the only defence. Go to the abortiondebate or pro-choice subreddits and count how many people say that abortion is good on the basis of eliminating unwanted children.

Even better make a post asking if abortion is morally good (not just permissible, good) if the child would be born poor or the parents don't want them. You will receive an overwhelmingly positive response, and you know it.

Nope.

People would at most say that of an embrio, not a child.

Unlike what the "every sperm is sacred" crowd thinks against all scientific evidence, a ball of cells with no brain activity is as much a child as a piece of human intestine, a toe or the cells flaking of your skin every minute of the day are: they're all mindless bundles of cells which happen to have human DNA - organic things, not persons.

The non-morons who support abortion actually set a time limit on how late in the pregnancy it is legal to do an abortion exactly because having thought about it, they're aware that a viable embrio will eventually transit from mindless bundle of cells with human DNA into person (though you need to be seriously undereducated to call a fetus at even that stage a "child") and morality dictates that once it's a person their life is sacred.

This is why in most civilized countries abortion is allowed up to 12 weeks: because before that tne embrio has no brain at all and is as much a person as a human toe or kidney, but once it does have some brain activity, whilst we don't really know if and how much of a person that early in gestation it is, we chose to consider it as person just to be on the safe side hence with the right to live.

Only the ultra-simpleton crowd would think that the ball of indiferentiated human cells the size of a pea which is the embrio earlier in gestation is a child.

PS: The funny bit is that the people you're criticizing have the same moral posture with regards to children as you do, the only difference being that they're informed enough and have thought about it enough to know that an early gestation embrio is nowhere near the same as a child hence it makes no sense for the rights of the woman that carries said embrio to be suspended in favour of that mindless ball of cells.

The arguments of the anti-abort crowd really just boil down to "Because I'm too ignorant to understand that which has been known for over a century, other people must be thrown in jail"

This is ontologically and empirically false. I don't really have time for debunking this incredibly self-masturbatory screed, but holy shit you have no idea about categorisation of beings or an arguments about the wrongness of killing. (You're not exactly talking to someone as mentally deficient as you).

The cortical organisation argument is simply cherry-picking a worse instance that satisfies the criteria of possibility of human experience. The fact that it is already a human organism is sufficient, especially since cortical organisation doesn't grant consciousness and even if it did by definition it would fail to describe the wrongness of killing temporarily unconscious humans.

You clearly don't even understand the meaning of the words you're parroting there, to the point that you ended up making the case for even later than 12 weeks abortion.

It really is a case of your own ignorance justifying that others must go to jail.

"You're making the case for even later abortion"

Well of course, the 12-week limit is pure horseshit. Literally nobody in ethics makes this argument it's merely invented by supremely ignorant lay persons to pander to both sides.

You only feel that it is an argument for later abortion, because you are affirming the consequent (a laughably stupid logic error to make) by assuming that abortion is already permissible.

Either killing humans is permissible period or it's not. Dependency and development arguments fail to provide exceptions that don't also apply to adults.

Your argument works by creating your very own definition of what it is to be "a human" to then say "you can't kill a human".

Redefining the meaning of the words used and then claiming that you're right because there exists widelly accepted moral rules which use those words - but not as you defined it to be - isn't actual logic, it's wordplay.

The foundation of all your arguments on this is a "trust me" definition of "a human", provided as an unchallangeable, undetailed and unsubstantiated axion - change that definition to, for example, "a human is somebody born from a woman" and that entire argumentative structure of yours collapses since in that alternative definition until the moment of birth a fetus is a thing, not "a human".

So you pointedly bypass the actual hard part that matters the most and were the main disagreement is - the whole "when do human cells stop being just cells that happen to have human DNA and become 'a human'" - with an "it is as I say" definition on top of which you made your entire case. That's like going "assume the sun is purple" to make the case for painting the walls of a house with a specific color.

All this would be an absolutelly fine and entertaining intellectual game, if you weren't defending that people should go to Jail when they do not obbey the boundaries derived from your definition of "a human" and treat as "not a human" that which you chose to define as "a human", which is the logic of the madman.

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This was what they found in other schools too. One specific location ( I can't remember where) the dads formed a group to a) keep kids peaceful and b) because they were being sent to jail for schoolyard bs. It was a largely black school. If you want to look it up with the sad details my brain is providing. Sry

Yep. Also noticed that the principal that called the police and the DA refusing to drop the case have the same last name. Garza isn't that rare of a last name, but it's not exactly "Smith", either. I'd bet good money those fuckers are related to each other.

Wait, that's just slavery with extra steps!

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what the fuck is going on over there

Brownsville is 94% Hispanic or Latino. This is Texas doing Texas shit.

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I've tried to understand what the charges are, as far as I could tell it seems it's somehow related to an anti terrorist law and caused by the kid pulling someone's hair and gesturing to cut paper with scissors, which was interpreted as gesturing to cut a finger.

The article seems to try very hard to obfuscate the actual reason (I'm guessing for legal reasons?)

In any case, this seems insane, seems like excessive overreaction from everyone involved.

its because there is no actual reason for it. they are still trying to document one

texas, you fuckin cowards.

The whole thing is weird.

His ordeal began five days later. In the late morning of September 8, Timothy was pulled out of music class and ushered into a room where he found Garza, Assistant Principal Michelle Saucedo, a district police officer, and a counselor sent from the district’s central administrative office. He was told another student had just reported that Timothy said he was planning to kill the principal. Rincon said she was called and rushed to the school but was not allowed to be in the room while Timothy was being questioned.

“When the police officer had his body cam off, they were yelling and telling me, ‘We’re gonna go to the full extent. We’re gonna put you in a lockbox,’” Timothy said. “Then, when the body cam was finally on, they were so nice.”

Timothy told me he had explained to the school and district officials that the accusations were not true, that the only conversation he had that morning was with two other boys about wearing his sweater over his uniform.

Rincon has received only a school conduct referral form, on which administrators wrote that “Timothy told another student that his hair was messy because he was up all night to come up with a plan to kill Mrs. Garza (principal).” Underneath, Timothy wrote: “No I was not up all night I just forgot [to comb my hair].”

On the bottom of the form, administrators had written: “OSS [out-of-school suspension] 3 days 9/11-9/13.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/why-was-this-11-year-old-honor-roll-student-put-in-solitary/

Not the point of this article/topic but why is law enforcement required to wear body cameras but they can turn them off whenever they want!? That's asking for abuse! Unless they're using the restroom (and even then I'd lean towards an independent reviewer deleting footage, if anyone). These are public servants on-the-clock! If there's no enforcement, there's no consequences to purposely deactivating the taxpayer-funded camera they're supposed to be operating under...

So it started with a kid who made up a really tall tale, told it to an adult in the form of completely unsubstantiated hearsay, which the admins for some mysterious reason chose to belief. Those admins must be either stupid or malicious.

I'm leaning towards maliciousness, jealousy and spite as the most likely reasons for why this is happening.

I thought the same thing. Here's the archived Texas Observer article on it, which is what this article's source seems to be.

Apparently the principal heard from another student that this kid was "making threats" against her. Sounds pretty thin to me.

Unless the kid brained someone with a tee ball trophy, I categorize this penalty in the "extreme" category.

Obviously the cops and prosecutors are real shitheads here, but I think some blame goes to a piece of shit principal who woukd call the police on an 11 year old.

The DA and Principal are likely related, same last name. I'd bet this isn't the only incident between these two, with the principal setting up the targets and the DA knocking them down.

She also apparently called CPS on a different mother for questioning her special education program.

None of them should have any kind of power over others. If we ever manage to fix this system despite the dipshits that are trying to break it further, whether system comes next should have a specific focus on preventing people like this from getting power or keeping it if they manage to hide themselves until after they've gained power.

And also the stupid law that allows charges against children. Our system of kids under 14 not being "strafmündig" (criminally responsible) is often criticized and has other issues sometimes but at least it prevents shit like this

Data from Brownsville ISD seen by The Observer showed its officers made 3,102 student arrests between May 2021 and Nov. 2023. Nearly 60% of those were on felony charges and 76 of those kids were in elementary school.

What the everliving fuck is wrong with these people?

It’s Texas. They’ve NEVER been afraid of letting everyone know just how big of pieces of shit they are.

That's just absolutely fucking insane.

Despite being accused of ignoring Texas laws which require parental involvement before such interventions, Cameron County District Attorney Rene Garza told a hearing Wednesday that his office was gathering further evidence against Murray, rather than deciding to drop the charges.

If the law protects you, it will be ignored and the people who ignore it will face no consequences for their lawlessness. The law is for hurting you, and only laws that hurt you count.

i cant stop laughing at the idea of the grown ass adults asking a 10 year old boy if be wanted to hurt himself whilenin handcuffs so they put him in a turtle suit and solitary his ass

What kind of incompetent principal reacts to trouble making elementary schoolers by calling the cops on them?

This article:

https://www.texasobserver.org/why-was-this-11-year-old-honor-roll-student-put-in-solitary/

Should shed some light on the subject. Particularly:

Garza comes from a Brownsville education legacy. Her mother, Rachel Medina Ayala, was one of Brownsville Independent School District’s first female superintendents. Garza’s two sisters are also principals in the district.

So, in answer to your question:

What kind of incompetent principal reacts to trouble making elementary schoolers by calling the cops on them?

A nepotism hire with a vindictive streak.

Jesus Christ, I didn't even know dynastic public school administrators was a thing...

The DA that’s refusing to drop charges shares the same last name.

This ain't incompetence, this is a power trip. She also called CPS on a mother for questioning her special education needs program

Family of educators inspires women to follow dreams

Excuse me but what are those dreams exactly 🌚

Also, the interior of the photo in the second article looks posh, I wonder if it's a school interior.

Also, the interior of the photo in the second article looks posh, I wonder if it’s a school interior.

I would guess it is Rachel Ayala's dining room.

“So, when my daughters were young, all three of them, I would take them with me to school,” she said. “One of them would answer the phone, the other one would help me deliver textbooks, and the other one would help me do something else. So, they grew up there. … They’re just fantastic.”

Is this kinda... weird? I remember liking to help my dad out once in a while with simple tasks since I had to stay with him at work, but I don't know how I'd feel about doing it every day.

I don't know if I would say "weird". I think it is unusual. Shouldn't they have been going to class? Why was the principal in charge of delivering textbooks? How often do textbooks need to be delivered anyway?

The same that calls CPS on parents

Other parents have also complained to the outlet about the principal. One mother said that, after a meeting with Garza about her 5-year-old in which her own mom questioned the school's special education plan for the boy, Garza called Child Protective Services on her.

Conservative ones. Conservatives should never be in a position of authority over others, especially children!

Garbage state.

And the liberals in the cities think texas is better than just about every other red state.

False. I'm a Liberal in a blue city and I think this state blows.

Most of us do, in fact.

Obviously, Florida is better.

Florida is better and it's sad Texan liberals can't realize that.

It just goes to show how deluded they are.

This is the same detention center that had an employee who embezzled 1.2 million dollars worth of fajitas over the course of 9 years. He only got caught because he took the day off to go to a doctor's appointment and a delivery of 800lbs of skirt steak showed up that no one else was expecting.

What I'm saying here is the Darrell B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center isn't known for the fastidious oversight of its employees.

I'm not even mad. I'm impressed, that's amazing.

The Fajita Bandit has become a bit of a local folk hero, partly because of how ridiculous the story is, and partly because (in retrospect) fajitas were more reasonably priced in Cameron County than they had any right to be.

…. Wtf is some one gonna do with 800 pounds of fajita?

Sell it to local restaurants for less than the county paid for it.

Well thats just an entire chain of people that are so completely divorced from reality, common sense, and compassion, that humanity would only benefit from them being skimmed out of the gene pool.

People think Texas is the lone star state. The reality is that Texas is the one Star review state.

I think you are being very generous with that one star, lol.

The devs don't let you give no stars. A design flaw, imo.

I mean, we have a lot of climate/agricultural diversity across the state as well as three cool, very progressive, large cities within a few hours of each other.. I'd say it's at least 2.5 stars

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One mother said that, after a meeting with Garza about her 5-year-old in which her own mom questioned the school's special education plan for the boy, Garza called Child Protective Services on her.

Garza's mom questioned it? Or the 5yr old's? Or the mother of the 5yr old's? Who is "her" referencing?

5-year-old, mom, and grandma showed up to the meeting with the principal. Grandma questioned the school's special education plan. Principal called CPS on mom.

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This seems very strange, like it took place in a parallel universe or something.

America is a bit like a parallel universe

More like a whole parallel multiverse with how each state has its own set of quirks

if you actually want to protect kids, this is the shit you form a posse to go protect right? for all the people worried about children this is where you would show up at the court and/or prison and demand their release?

Dude this is in Uvalde. They already let a couple of fat cops prevent them from saving their kids.

I want to get off Mr Bones wild ride.

This principle sounds like such utter shit. The world would be much better off without her.

Giving more reasons to defund them

Easy there. Finding reason to defund public schools is Greg Abbot's wet dream. It's the first step toward his goal of state vouchers to religious schools.

Also consider that Brownsville is a border town of mostly Hispanic residents. What better sacrificial lamb to demonstrate the evils of public schools?

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