A time best forgotten

[JamesVincent]

Apropos of nothing I ran into an article that brought back some pretty bad memories. I went to Meade Sr. High, Ft. Meade, MD. The school, at the time, was rated one of the worst schools in the country, between the violence and the drugs. Even in a school that bad there sticks out some pretty bad memories.

http://nypost.com/2012/05/10/slain-girl ... r-jordans/

On a winter’s night in 1998, 14-year-old Marleny Cruz struggled in vain against a brutal rapist, scratching him as he strangled her in a deserted Bronx park.

Thirteen years later, the DNA collected from beneath her corpse’s fingernails has led to the arrest in a Pennsylvania prison of James David Martin, a now 40-year-old monster who has served nearly his entire adult life behind bars for a string of crimes — including two other strangulations.

At age 17, Martin had choked the life out of a 15-year-old basketball buddy at his Maryland high school to steal the victim’s $115 Nike Air Jordans, a pair of sneakers that didn’t even fit him.

I was passing acquaintances with both the victim and killer, had several friends who knew them both well. The crime was so horrific that Sports Illustrated used it as their cover story back in 1990, the year I graduated and Michael Jordan himself made a statement about it. He killed him literally across the street from the school and did it while some of us were at the school, I was there for a jazz band practice IIRC.

This would be another good reason for mental illness to be taken seriously.

http://www.si.com/vault/1990/05/14/1219 ... s-to-blame

For 15-year-old Michael Eugene Thomas, it definitely was the
shoes. A ninth- grader at Meade Senior High School in Anne Arundel
County, Md., Thomas was found strangled on May 2, 1989. Charged with
first-degree murder was James David Martin, 17, a basketball buddy
who allegedly took Thomas's two-week-old Air Jordan basketball shoes
and left Thomas's barefoot body in the woods near school.
Thomas loved Michael Jordan, as well as the shoes Jordan endorses,
and he cleaned his own pair each evening. He kept the cardboard shoe
box with Jordan's silhouette on it in a place of honor in his room.
Inside the box was the sales ticket for the shoes. It showed he paid
$115.50, the price of a product touched by deity.
''We told him not to wear the shoes to school,'' said Michael's
grandmother, Birdie Thomas. ''We said somebody might like them, and
he said, 'Granny, before I let anyone take those shoes, they'll have
to kill me.' ''

[Hyrion]

This would be another good reason for mental illness to be taken seriously.

Sadly, as much as we'd like to believe - give the individual the benefit of doubt - that all such crimes stem from mental illness I believe the reality is that some people have simply chosen such a path and have no intention of deviating from it no matter what the cost.

In such instances, the only choice Society has to keep itself safe is to keep such individuals away.

Should he receive psychiatric counseling if he chooses? Absolutely. And that should be an available option for anyone in prison. That's something, I humbly believe, would be a well-spent portion of tax dollars for those incarcerated.

Perhaps with the counseling he might even eventually feel responsible for what he's done and that will help him come to peace with himself (assuming he's not at peace with himself) even if he can't come to terms with the environment of his upbringing.