6 ms·

Teen Jailed For Facebook Comment Reportedly Beat Up Behind Bars

66 points by socalnate1 13y ago

jamieb 13y ago
"We have to...protect the general public and specifically, in this case, with it involving school children, we have to act." This is disgusting. If someone says what he did it means one of two things: 1. He really meant it, and is about to go out and eat children. 2. He was being creative in a public medium. It should be immediately obvious that in this case, we are dealing with situation #2 and the boy should be released. I am of the opinion that the burden of proof means that police should not be allowed to arrest someone even in the case of #1 unless there is more than just a public statement. It beggars belief that after discovering the facts in this case that the police still have him in custody. This law must be found unconstitutional as soon as possible.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
bmmayer1 13y ago
This is a shame. The incentives for law enforcement are completely misaligned. Of course they will always want to be seen as "doing something" and never want to take the chance that someone's threats, real or fake, ever get carried out. But we are so hysterical about some form of terror maybe happening that we completely ignore the state terror that is happening. This isn't worth the imprisonment of our citizens for thoughtcrime!
gerhardi 13y ago
Wow.. This so smells like North Korea. A bad joke here and there or getting too tempered after bad game and the police throw you into jail. Of course I hope that he really was just joking - I've even heard of video game rage that has done some real harm and never I have heard that anyone was jailed.
- incision 13y ago
  >This so smells like China or North Korea. Don't know if I'd be quick to compare getting beat-up after making a despicable "joke" within 6 months of a historic tragedy to having your entire family sent to die in a hard labor camp without explanation.
- nether 13y ago
  No, in the DPRK you and your family would be sent to labor camps and possibly mass executed a few years later.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Give it some time, we'll eventually get there… after-all, NK hasn't always been like that throughout history… Fine go ahead and downvote me, but while you stick your head in the sand, we're talking on hn doing and nothing about what is going on, while our government does stuff like this, and you think it is not going to get worse? Ha.
  - gerhardi 13y ago
    Sure, thats why it only smells like it. In this case only the boy is imprisoned and beaten in jail and his parents are extorted for half a million dollars to get their son back to safety.
    - incision 13y ago
      >...extorted for half a million dollars to get their son back to safety. http://money.howstuffworks.com/bail.htm http://money.howstuffworks.com/bail.htm
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        You realize that making bail doesn't mean you don't have to go to trial, right?
        13y ago
ams6110 13y ago
The sad thing is, a video game scenario of shooting up a school is probably perfectly legal.
- sageikosa 13y ago
  You just can't talk about it.
jkeel 13y ago
I dislike that in the article they removed the context of his statement. Just reading this, it sounds like he was making a threat, but if you read the KHOU.com (Houston) article it appears that here's merely mocking the person who is calling him insane. http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Texas-teen-charged-with-making-terroristic-threat-after-online-joke-212931111.html http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Texas-teen-charged-with-... NPR version: "I think Ima shoot up a kindergarten / And watch the blood of the innocent rain down/ And eat the beating heart of one of them." KHOU version: 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,’ to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk.,"
- watty 13y ago
  I think he crossed the line of "merely mocking". Stating something so non-funny and grotesque shortly after a elementary school shooting on a public facebook page is idiotic. Not only is it stupid but he also a young white male (and appears to lack common sense) - why shouldn't it be considered a threat? Edit - I never said he deserved jail time or the ridiculous bail. I'm simply stating that his words on a public medium should be taken seriously and looked into. I'd expect the same from bomb threats or other terrorist activities. Devils advocate - if an American Islamist made a comment about bombing ______ but then stated "jk", is it crossing the line? What if they were radical? It's a slippery slope and I'm not a judge. I'm simply stating that I believe he crossed the line and I'm glad someone looked into it. No, he doesn't deserve to be in jail.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    > why shouldn't it be considered a threat? Because no matter how shocking or unfunny you personally may find it; it clearly is not a threat? What is his real crime here, be honest. Offending you?
    - watty 13y ago
      I don't know what his intentions were, adding "lol" or "jk" afterwards doesn't make it go away. Honestly, I do think it was a joke from a dumb kid. I don't think he deserves jail time but I'm glad someone took it seriously enough to look into it.
aeze 13y ago
This is horrible, I really don't understand why such little reason has been applied to this case.
pyre 13y ago
I wonder what today's world would think of "A Modest Proposal" or even "Lolita?" Works that are now considered good literature would, were they published today, see their authors vilified, (possibly) tortured, and jailed by an extremely paranoid public in a manner befitting the height of Soviet Russia (i.e. "Report your neighbour, comrade!").
- JonSkeptic 13y ago
  Actually, if A Modest Proposal was published today it would be taken literally by the general populace, acknowledged as good, satirical reading by a few, and then it would be promptly ignored by every major news outlet because they would be too busy talking about Snowden's girlfriend or Paula Deen.
  - pyre 13y ago
    Are you sure that eating children wouldn't be regarded as "making a threat" and the author jailed?
- gizmo686 13y ago
  I think its worth mentioning that Lolita was first published under a pseudonym, and was controversial when it came out. In general, old works get much greater leeway in what they are allowed to do because they are old.
  - pyre 13y ago
    According to Wikipedia it was not published under a pseudonym, though there was an original intention to do so.
leot 13y ago
"Terroristic" -- this whole concept is straight out of 1984. How is it useful, legally? What qualifies as "terroristic" and what doesn't? Does threatening to organize an online sit-in count? If not, why? I'm already censoring myself. Congratulations America.
DanBC 13y ago
> "The whole situation is kind of unfortunate," said New Braunfels Police Lt. John Wells. "We definitely understand the situation that Mr. Carter is in, however he made the comments, and it is an offense. We have to ... protect the general public and specifically, in this case, with it involving schoolchildren, we have to act. We take those very seriously." It's very tempting to start screen-shotting and reporting Xbox live (and all the rest) comments. The police have said that they take it very seriously, and that they have to act. Perhaps law enforcement is not aware just how toxic some parts of the online community is, and how many people they'd be locking up.
Fuxy 13y ago
Wow ironic sarcasm is punishable with 10 years in prison I didn't know that. I can tell even without seeing the context. BTW doesn't this violate freedom of speech? The kid didn't commit any crime he said some stupid things on Facebook as far as I know that shouldn't be a punishable offense. Or are we becoming like the Minority Report without the time travel?
dendory 13y ago
In a normal world, authorities would look at whether he has a motive to commit a crime, means to do it such as having illicit firearms, and plans to do it such as written statements. In the fucked-up US of A, a sarcastic Facebook comment is enought to terrorize people enough to send him to jail.
dmazin 13y ago
By the way, at least in California, $500,000 is the recommended bail for... perjury? Threat of violence? Assault of a police officer? No: that's the recommended bail for an attempted assassination of a public official using a machine gun. Presumably, the bond is this large because someone behind the case was afraid the kid might attack the school. On the one hand, this is understandable (though not excusable) because of previous events in that area. On the other, this is what leads to thought police and such behavior from courts needs to be destroyed at the core.
samatman 13y ago
In middle school, I was assigned to write a parody. What I wrote was a parody of the Night before Christmas, in which a male student brought weapons to school and shot among other people the principle. This was pre-Columbine, mind you. I was called into the Principle's office; he explained that he didn't take it personally, because he knows what parody is, but that they wanted to make sure everything was okay at home and that the other students weren't bullying me. I got an A.
- segmondy 13y ago
  You wanna what is also crazy? If you had been serious. The principals action in that case could have actually changed your mind. A lot of times for some of these kids that are about to lose their mind. Just knowing that someone cares puts an end to the blooming insanity.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Kindness takes more effort than fear.
dagurp 13y ago
A similar thing happened recently in the UK where a comedian was convicted for telling a joke. 10 O'Clock Live's take on it: http://youtu.be/d0aP-dGbjzw?t=18m43s http://youtu.be/d0aP-dGbjzw?t=18m43s
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
The bail is over the top. I don't know enough about what it takes for a charge to be a felony or not. I do know that a lot of things straddle the line between felony and not felony and then certain other factors can tip it one way or the other. Not sure if this is the case here. I'm guessing the word "terroristic" gets people all worked up since what he did is no where near what we think of today as a "terrorist". But when you take that word back to its root (and forget all the current political and emotional baggage it has today) it is fitting. And as has been discussed before, the amount of jail time cited in an article usually depends on the bias the article has. Stories like this love to toss around the absolute max sentence that this level of crime could bring. It makes the actions of legal system appear all the more ridiculous. ("Wah? 10 years for a stupid Facebook post?") But stories the other way (about some bad person getting off easy) like to throw around the absolute minimum sentence. This also makes the legal system appear all the more ridiculous. ("Wah? He could be out in as little as some short time for murder?") Even better is when they pair the two together and say that some relatively minor offence has a max sentence of X, while some other horrific offence can carry a sentence as little as Y (where X > Y). I do love how we citizens love to second guess the actions (or inactions) of law enforcement without ever actually being in their position of making the decisions they have to make. Was this kid really going to do those things? Probably not but we can't really say for sure ("clearly there was no threat" is just an opinion). But if the police did nothing and then later he did it (or even something equally sinister) we would have been all over them for not seeing the warning signs or seeing and dismissing them.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Buzaga 13y ago
anyone feel like making an little web app for collecting all that instances that the ~terrorism-alarm~ is used against the common civilian, or in a way that doesn't have anything to do with the proper definition of the term? All this shit is really out of hand, even if for some reason he was actually making a threat and really felt like doing that, would he be a terrorist or just someone going through an episode, with a mental instability of sorts? For example, in the latter case, there'd be no political reason so would it be terrorism? although indeed someone that is dangerous should be looked upon, maybe contained even of course, this metaphorical person going through mental issues would also need to be looked after. This is civilian rights destroyed right there in it's embryo form. Also everything comes with the acceptance that 'terrorism' is the devil and you can do anything about it, then it's also a broad term and in every each and every country this globalized-american-reasoning is tapped for politics. People can't say anything they want in supposedly private web places, say you're pissed and you just feel like releasing it writing, or talking... Surprised we still haven't got news of Heavy Metal Bands sent to Guantanamo for their lyrics... and when someone comes after them for a banality like this, the context is not clarified. They're instantly jailed and left there even after it's an obvious mistake? Why? As an example for other's that may be 'having too much thoughts'? The dumb sheep around there are already in line with your new authoritarian state and they'll comment "well, he DID said that in his perceived private message exchange with his friend, he should know he can't do that" Demonstrators are labelled terrorists, pacific manifestations are, brasilian protesters were, Ocuppy NY was Moxie Marlinspike was threatened with the label for refusing to work in making surveillance state tools in an authoritarian regime, and in the oppressor regimes people are raising up, dictator calls them terrorists Some weeks ago a rumor spread in Brasil that some welfare for the poor would be ended, creating a big mess... President said it was a terrorist action, even with no one knowing where this rumor came from, ignoring the possibility of a viral happening(and also that no terrorist organization ever had Brasil as target!!!)
Ultron 13y ago
The thing is, what if the teen did commit that act a day/week/month later? Yes, the half million bail and physical abuse is wrong, but ultra-violent comments like this are from a psychologically disturbed mind. Something had to be done.
jccc 13y ago
A whole wall of posts about the law, the prosecutors, the bail -- not one about this seemingly ordinary teenage kid stripped naked, held in solitary, black-eyed and beaten to concussions in pre-trial confinement. The law is what the police, the prosecutors and the general public can get away with, and this prosecution is what we get when there is no skepticism or accountability at all for those who carry out "the law." But why is it that we never seem to care much about what happens to people in jails? Is it just a given now, something so commonplace that we just can't get worked up about it anymore? If we can't have accountability for police and DA's can we at least have some accountability for the variously careless, incompetent and/or sadistic Mayberry's who run our prisons?
tyrion 13y ago
(Aaaand sometimes I hear people saying the Italian's Juridical System sucks. Just saying)

66 points by socalnate1 13y ago

"We have to...protect the general public and specifically, in this case, with it involving school children, we have to act." This is disgusting. If someone says what he did it means one of two things: 1. He really meant it, and is about to go out and eat children. 2. He was being creative in a public medium. It should be immediately obvious that in this case, we are dealing with situation #2 and the boy should be released. I am of the opinion that the burden of proof means that police should not be allowed to arrest someone even in the case of #1 unless there is more than just a public statement. It beggars belief that after discovering the facts in this case that the police still have him in custody. This law must be found unconstitutional as soon as possible.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

bmmayer1 13y ago

This is a shame. The incentives for law enforcement are completely misaligned. Of course they will always want to be seen as "doing something" and never want to take the chance that someone's threats, real or fake, ever get carried out. But we are so hysterical about some form of terror maybe happening that we completely ignore the state terror that is happening. This isn't worth the imprisonment of our citizens for thoughtcrime!

gerhardi 13y ago

Wow.. This so smells like North Korea. A bad joke here and there or getting too tempered after bad game and the police throw you into jail. Of course I hope that he really was just joking - I've even heard of video game rage that has done some real harm and never I have heard that anyone was jailed.

incision 13y ago
>This so smells like China or North Korea. Don't know if I'd be quick to compare getting beat-up after making a despicable "joke" within 6 months of a historic tragedy to having your entire family sent to die in a hard labor camp without explanation.
nether 13y ago
No, in the DPRK you and your family would be sent to labor camps and possibly mass executed a few years later.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Give it some time, we'll eventually get there… after-all, NK hasn't always been like that throughout history… Fine go ahead and downvote me, but while you stick your head in the sand, we're talking on hn doing and nothing about what is going on, while our government does stuff like this, and you think it is not going to get worse? Ha.
- gerhardi 13y ago
  Sure, thats why it only smells like it. In this case only the boy is imprisoned and beaten in jail and his parents are extorted for half a million dollars to get their son back to safety.
  - incision 13y ago
    >...extorted for half a million dollars to get their son back to safety. http://money.howstuffworks.com/bail.htm http://money.howstuffworks.com/bail.htm
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      You realize that making bail doesn't mean you don't have to go to trial, right?
      - 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago

The sad thing is, a video game scenario of shooting up a school is probably perfectly legal.

sageikosa 13y ago
You just can't talk about it.

jkeel 13y ago

I dislike that in the article they removed the context of his statement. Just reading this, it sounds like he was making a threat, but if you read the KHOU.com (Houston) article it appears that here's merely mocking the person who is calling him insane. http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Texas-teen-charged-with-making-terroristic-threat-after-online-joke-212931111.html http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Texas-teen-charged-with-... NPR version: "I think Ima shoot up a kindergarten / And watch the blood of the innocent rain down/ And eat the beating heart of one of them." KHOU version: 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,’ to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk.,"

watty 13y ago
I think he crossed the line of "merely mocking". Stating something so non-funny and grotesque shortly after a elementary school shooting on a public facebook page is idiotic. Not only is it stupid but he also a young white male (and appears to lack common sense) - why shouldn't it be considered a threat? Edit - I never said he deserved jail time or the ridiculous bail. I'm simply stating that his words on a public medium should be taken seriously and looked into. I'd expect the same from bomb threats or other terrorist activities. Devils advocate - if an American Islamist made a comment about bombing ______ but then stated "jk", is it crossing the line? What if they were radical? It's a slippery slope and I'm not a judge. I'm simply stating that I believe he crossed the line and I'm glad someone looked into it. No, he doesn't deserve to be in jail.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > why shouldn't it be considered a threat? Because no matter how shocking or unfunny you personally may find it; it clearly is not a threat? What is his real crime here, be honest. Offending you?
  - watty 13y ago
    I don't know what his intentions were, adding "lol" or "jk" afterwards doesn't make it go away. Honestly, I do think it was a joke from a dumb kid. I don't think he deserves jail time but I'm glad someone took it seriously enough to look into it.

aeze 13y ago

This is horrible, I really don't understand why such little reason has been applied to this case.

pyre 13y ago

I wonder what today's world would think of "A Modest Proposal" or even "Lolita?" Works that are now considered good literature would, were they published today, see their authors vilified, (possibly) tortured, and jailed by an extremely paranoid public in a manner befitting the height of Soviet Russia (i.e. "Report your neighbour, comrade!").

JonSkeptic 13y ago
Actually, if A Modest Proposal was published today it would be taken literally by the general populace, acknowledged as good, satirical reading by a few, and then it would be promptly ignored by every major news outlet because they would be too busy talking about Snowden's girlfriend or Paula Deen.
- pyre 13y ago
  Are you sure that eating children wouldn't be regarded as "making a threat" and the author jailed?
gizmo686 13y ago
I think its worth mentioning that Lolita was first published under a pseudonym, and was controversial when it came out. In general, old works get much greater leeway in what they are allowed to do because they are old.
- pyre 13y ago
  According to Wikipedia it was not published under a pseudonym, though there was an original intention to do so.

leot 13y ago

"Terroristic" -- this whole concept is straight out of 1984. How is it useful, legally? What qualifies as "terroristic" and what doesn't? Does threatening to organize an online sit-in count? If not, why? I'm already censoring myself. Congratulations America.

DanBC 13y ago

> "The whole situation is kind of unfortunate," said New Braunfels Police Lt. John Wells. "We definitely understand the situation that Mr. Carter is in, however he made the comments, and it is an offense. We have to ... protect the general public and specifically, in this case, with it involving schoolchildren, we have to act. We take those very seriously." It's very tempting to start screen-shotting and reporting Xbox live (and all the rest) comments. The police have said that they take it very seriously, and that they have to act. Perhaps law enforcement is not aware just how toxic some parts of the online community is, and how many people they'd be locking up.

Fuxy 13y ago

Wow ironic sarcasm is punishable with 10 years in prison I didn't know that. I can tell even without seeing the context. BTW doesn't this violate freedom of speech? The kid didn't commit any crime he said some stupid things on Facebook as far as I know that shouldn't be a punishable offense. Or are we becoming like the Minority Report without the time travel?

dendory 13y ago

In a normal world, authorities would look at whether he has a motive to commit a crime, means to do it such as having illicit firearms, and plans to do it such as written statements. In the fucked-up US of A, a sarcastic Facebook comment is enought to terrorize people enough to send him to jail.

dmazin 13y ago

By the way, at least in California, $500,000 is the recommended bail for... perjury? Threat of violence? Assault of a police officer? No: that's the recommended bail for an attempted assassination of a public official using a machine gun. Presumably, the bond is this large because someone behind the case was afraid the kid might attack the school. On the one hand, this is understandable (though not excusable) because of previous events in that area. On the other, this is what leads to thought police and such behavior from courts needs to be destroyed at the core.

samatman 13y ago

In middle school, I was assigned to write a parody. What I wrote was a parody of the Night before Christmas, in which a male student brought weapons to school and shot among other people the principle. This was pre-Columbine, mind you. I was called into the Principle's office; he explained that he didn't take it personally, because he knows what parody is, but that they wanted to make sure everything was okay at home and that the other students weren't bullying me. I got an A.

segmondy 13y ago
You wanna what is also crazy? If you had been serious. The principals action in that case could have actually changed your mind. A lot of times for some of these kids that are about to lose their mind. Just knowing that someone cares puts an end to the blooming insanity.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Kindness takes more effort than fear.

dagurp 13y ago

A similar thing happened recently in the UK where a comedian was convicted for telling a joke. 10 O'Clock Live's take on it: http://youtu.be/d0aP-dGbjzw?t=18m43s http://youtu.be/d0aP-dGbjzw?t=18m43s

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

The bail is over the top. I don't know enough about what it takes for a charge to be a felony or not. I do know that a lot of things straddle the line between felony and not felony and then certain other factors can tip it one way or the other. Not sure if this is the case here. I'm guessing the word "terroristic" gets people all worked up since what he did is no where near what we think of today as a "terrorist". But when you take that word back to its root (and forget all the current political and emotional baggage it has today) it is fitting. And as has been discussed before, the amount of jail time cited in an article usually depends on the bias the article has. Stories like this love to toss around the absolute max sentence that this level of crime could bring. It makes the actions of legal system appear all the more ridiculous. ("Wah? 10 years for a stupid Facebook post?") But stories the other way (about some bad person getting off easy) like to throw around the absolute minimum sentence. This also makes the legal system appear all the more ridiculous. ("Wah? He could be out in as little as some short time for murder?") Even better is when they pair the two together and say that some relatively minor offence has a max sentence of X, while some other horrific offence can carry a sentence as little as Y (where X > Y). I do love how we citizens love to second guess the actions (or inactions) of law enforcement without ever actually being in their position of making the decisions they have to make. Was this kid really going to do those things? Probably not but we can't really say for sure ("clearly there was no threat" is just an opinion). But if the police did nothing and then later he did it (or even something equally sinister) we would have been all over them for not seeing the warning signs or seeing and dismissing them.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Buzaga 13y ago

anyone feel like making an little web app for collecting all that instances that the ~terrorism-alarm~ is used against the common civilian, or in a way that doesn't have anything to do with the proper definition of the term? All this shit is really out of hand, even if for some reason he was actually making a threat and really felt like doing that, would he be a terrorist or just someone going through an episode, with a mental instability of sorts? For example, in the latter case, there'd be no political reason so would it be terrorism? although indeed someone that is dangerous should be looked upon, maybe contained even of course, this metaphorical person going through mental issues would also need to be looked after. This is civilian rights destroyed right there in it's embryo form. Also everything comes with the acceptance that 'terrorism' is the devil and you can do anything about it, then it's also a broad term and in every each and every country this globalized-american-reasoning is tapped for politics. People can't say anything they want in supposedly private web places, say you're pissed and you just feel like releasing it writing, or talking... Surprised we still haven't got news of Heavy Metal Bands sent to Guantanamo for their lyrics... and when someone comes after them for a banality like this, the context is not clarified. They're instantly jailed and left there even after it's an obvious mistake? Why? As an example for other's that may be 'having too much thoughts'? The dumb sheep around there are already in line with your new authoritarian state and they'll comment "well, he DID said that in his perceived private message exchange with his friend, he should know he can't do that" Demonstrators are labelled terrorists, pacific manifestations are, brasilian protesters were, Ocuppy NY was Moxie Marlinspike was threatened with the label for refusing to work in making surveillance state tools in an authoritarian regime, and in the oppressor regimes people are raising up, dictator calls them terrorists Some weeks ago a rumor spread in Brasil that some welfare for the poor would be ended, creating a big mess... President said it was a terrorist action, even with no one knowing where this rumor came from, ignoring the possibility of a viral happening(and also that no terrorist organization ever had Brasil as target!!!)

Ultron 13y ago

The thing is, what if the teen did commit that act a day/week/month later? Yes, the half million bail and physical abuse is wrong, but ultra-violent comments like this are from a psychologically disturbed mind. Something had to be done.

jccc 13y ago

A whole wall of posts about the law, the prosecutors, the bail -- not one about this seemingly ordinary teenage kid stripped naked, held in solitary, black-eyed and beaten to concussions in pre-trial confinement. The law is what the police, the prosecutors and the general public can get away with, and this prosecution is what we get when there is no skepticism or accountability at all for those who carry out "the law." But why is it that we never seem to care much about what happens to people in jails? Is it just a given now, something so commonplace that we just can't get worked up about it anymore? If we can't have accountability for police and DA's can we at least have some accountability for the variously careless, incompetent and/or sadistic Mayberry's who run our prisons?

tyrion 13y ago

(Aaaand sometimes I hear people saying the Italian's Juridical System sucks. Just saying)