Jake+Maxey+4A

One day in the November of 1998, fifteen-year-old Anthony Laster asked an two dollars from another student at his middle school in West Palm Beach, Florida. When the student refused, Anthony grabs two dollars from his pocket. Due to it's zero-tolerance policy, the school had to report the incident to the police. The prosecutor, Barry Kirscher, filed three felony counts of extortion, strong-arm robbery and petty theft. For stealing two dollars Anthony was faced with a possible thirty years of prison and also spent the next few weeks (through Christmas) in the county jail.
 * The Case**

He has an IQ of fifty-eight (for a point of reference, Forrest Gump had an intelligence quotient of seventy-five). Also, according to close family friends, he "had the mind of a five-year-old." On top of that, his mother had died recently.
 * The Defendant**

Barry Kirscher has defended the ruling in the local press, stating that Anthony was a "schoolyard bully" and a "mugger", and that the actions should be treated as the promotion of school violence. Incidentally, you can click [|here] for something that, in context with this court case, will make your day.
 * The Prosecutor**

The court dropped the case after //sixty minutes// began investigating, especially when the news anchor at the time could not deliver the story without bursting into hysterical fits of laughter.
 * The Outcome**

Words like "unfair" and "fixed" do not come to mind when one thinks about this trial. Not when "stupid" is riding a golden unicycle commanding your attention. A mentally handicapped teen steals a two dollars because he didn't know better and the police department goes straight to DEFCON one. Plus, those of you who have chosen to make your day know that West Palm Beach has twice the national burglary average. How could a prosecutor, in a city where it is not uncommon to wake up in the morning to find that your bed has been stolen, go completely bat feces insane over a mentally-handicapped kid doing something silly? Was it a slow day? Was he high?
 * The Bit Where I Try To Make This Relevant**

Despite the absolute giggle-fodder I have made this case out to be, it still has an undercurrent of relevancy. This is a great example of people making too big a deal of something ridiculously small. Another example is when a school not too far from asheville high decided to ban hats on the grounds that they promoted gang representation, completely ignoring the fact that if someone wanted to represent a gang then they would not stop at headwear. But sadly these poor (and somewhat perplexed) children did not have //sixty minutes// coming to the rescue.

Mole, D, & White, D. (2005). //Transfer and waiver in the juvenile justice system//. Retrieved from http://www.cwla.org/programs/juvenilejustice/jjtransfer.pdf

(n.d.). West Palm Beach, Florida. //Wikipedia//. Retrieved (2009, November 10) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Palm_Beach#Controversies