Posted on 03/31/2007 10:21:01 PM PDT by lqclamar
A 14-year-old girl has been sentenced to a state juvenile correction facility “for an indeterminate period not to exceed her 21st birthday” for shoving a 58-year-old teacher’s aide.
The incident occurred Sept. 30 at Paris High School, while the aide was on hall monitor duty. The girl has a history of problems at school, according to court testimony.
County Judge Chuck Superville said the girl must spend a minimum of one year at a Texas Youth Commission facility. How much longer she will stay depends upon her progress, the judge said.
A three-man, three-woman jury listened to testimony Thursday and Friday before being handed the case about 3:30 p.m. Friday. The jury deliberated just 10 minutes before reporting it had a verdict: “We the jury find it true that the respondent ... did engage in delinquent conduct by commission of an assault on a public servant as charged in the petition.”
Superville discharged the jury, and the trial moved into the punishment phase, which continued for about two and a half hours before defense attorney Wesley Newell and the Lamar County district attorney’s office rested about 6:15 p.m. Friday.
School officials said they have dealt with the girl, who is now a high school freshman, many times on disciplinary issues dating back several years.
Newell argued for probation, and Superville had gone on record that sending a teenager to the TYC was something he generally would do only as a last resort.
Prosecutors argued against probation, saying that the girl’s mother is perhaps her biggest problem and that the girl has no hope of getting better as long as she’s in the same home as her mother. District Attorney Gary Young said the mother’s response to any problem at school was to paint school officials as racist.
During the punishment phase, a half-dozen or so teachers — both white and black — from the high school or from Paris Alternative School, where the girl was transferred after the incident last September, described the girl as “openly defiant, generally did not follow rules.”
Michael Johnson, a teacher/coach at the alternative school, said after a teacher “wrote her up” for violation of rules, the girl told him “I’m going to bust her in the nose.” She wanted to go home, but he made her go to the office with him, Johnson said. He said she told him, “You don’t know me very well, because I’ll burn this school down.”
Johnson, who is black, said the girl’s mother berated him, calling him the equivalent of an Uncle Tom.
The jury had three women, one of whom was black, and three men.
PHS principal Gary Preston said the school district made available every resource it had “but regularly got road-blocked with non-support of her mother.” He said he knows of nothing more that can be done.
“I think (the girl) is capable, but she is enabled by a mother who won’t support the attempts to help her. ... Up until now, I think it has been very harmful for her to be in the same home with her mother.”
The girl admitted pushing the teacher’s aide, Cleda Brownfield, but said she did so only after Brownfield shoved her first.
The Sept. 30 incident occurred about 15 to 20 minutes before regular classes were to begin at 8:30 a.m. at Paris High School. Brownfield was the hall monitor in a building where some students were having meetings and others were being helped by tutors.
The hall monitor’s job is to lock the doors about 8:05 a.m., keeping all other students out of the hallways until 8:30 a.m. to keep disruptions at a minimum. Brownfield said she was on her way to lock the door when the girl walked in. When the girl was told she couldn’t come in, she protested, saying she had to go to the restroom, Brownfield testified.
She told her she’d have to use a restroom in the cafeteria across the courtyard, and the girl finally left, she said. Minutes later, when another student was admitted into the building for a meeting, the girl insisted that she also be let in. When the girl told her, “I’ll knock your block off,” and moved to come in, Brownfield said, she put up her hands in a defensive posture, and the girl responded by shoving her hard.
A teacher, Jerry Fleming, was nearby and the girl complained that he had a pencil in his hand, causing a cut on her hand when he put out his hand to restrain her. He also stepped on her shoelaces, causing her to fall, and she bumped her head, she said.
School resource officer Brad Ruthart testified he was on duty in the parking lot when he was summoned to the building because Brownfield “had been assaulted by a student.” He said he found her in the lounge and the student seated outside the principal’s office.
Brownfield “was crying, very upset, holding her arm. I asked her if she was OK, and she said she was not. I felt she needed medical help. She was so upset she had difficulty talking,” said Ruthart, a Paris police officers who works as a school resource officer for PISD.
The girl “was very calm, didn’t appear to be a threat,” Ruthart testified. During the next half hour, he talked to the various teachers who were either involved or had seen part of what happened. He also talked to the girl and to several of her friends, all of whom insisted that Brownfield shoved first.
“I thought it didn’t seem like something Brownfield would do. From what I knew of her and from what others were saying, it didn’t add up,” he said. Ruthart said he had known the teacher’s aide for several years and described her as “mild-mannered, soft-spoken, a grandmotherly type.”
The girl’s mother testified late Thursday afternoon that she got dressed and drove to Paris High School after receiving a telephone call that her daughter had been involved in an incident.
“She was sitting in the office with two other girls, crying. She had a knot on her head and a cut on her hand,” she said.
She talked with Ruthart and Preston, she said.
“I was upset because my daughter was sitting there hurting, and nobody was doing anything to help her. I asked them why nothing had been done to treat her injuries,” she said.
Newell asked if she got any satisfaction from them.
“No, they could care less,” she said.
She took her daughter to the hospital emergency room, where she was treated for a contusion on her head, a laceration on her hand and a sprained neck, she said.
About an hour after the incident, Brownfield was removed from the school on a stretcher and was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
The girl’s mother said her daughter has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and was trying to get into the building that day so she could get medication from the school nurse.
Brownfield testified the girl made no mention of needing to see the nurse and that if she had, she would have been allowed to do so. Ruthart said the girl also said nothing to him about having wanted in the building to see the school nurse.
Read the story- she wasn't sentenced to 7 years.
A combination of Shaquille and anaconda?
The terrorist have won
the girl’s mother is perhaps her biggest problem
Put the mother away, problem solved.
She was about 14 and was put away till her 21st birthday. How many years is that? Jimbo...
The trial evidence showed that the victim had to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher. So much for "wasn't injured."
From what I read, the victim injured the girl.
Trial testimony indicated that Shaquanda Cotton cut her hand on a pencil being carried by a teacher who tried to restrain her as she was shoving the hall monitor. Her injury was minor and self inflicted.
The problem is that the punishment doesn't fit the crime. 7 years for pushing someone?
You're being deceptive. She didn't simply push someone. She pushed a teacher's aide causing sufficient injury that the teacher's aide had to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher. That's felony assault. She also apparently had a history of threatening violence against teachers and threatened once to burn the school down.
And when the judge gives another teen of a different race probation for burning down a house... Give me a break.
I see you've been reading the Black Panther's talking points. The other teenager got probation because she accepted the plea deal offered to reduce her charge to a misdemeanor. The SAME PLEA DEAL was offered to Shaquanda Cotton, but her mother refused it insisting that her child was the victim of a racist conspiracy.
"Before trial, the Lamar County and District Attorney's Office (prosecutors) offered a plea bargain reduction from felony to misdemeanor assault and 2 years juvenile probation, which the mother and defense attorney turned down...This juvenile did NOT receive 7 years in prison. She was given an indeterminate sentence to the Texas Youth Commission, which means her conduct and cooperation with their behavior rehabilitation programs determines when she gets out. Minimum time to complete the programs for this level of offense is one year. She entered TYC in March 2006 and could have been out March 17, 2007, if she was being cooperative.
Of course I'm sure babygene is going to dismiss both of those facts as propaganda put out by "the man" whose behind this "conspiracy."
Don't worry. She's released. Hopefully in YOUR neighborhood.
Wonder why no one from the NAACP offered to take this girl home to live with them.
lqclamar, is there a news story you could reference that says the white teenage arsonist accepted the plea deal. Every story I've read says she was "convicted". Thanks for your help.
"Young said his office had recommended the white student convicted of arson be sent to TYC. But Lamar County Judge Maurice Superville, the same judge who sentenced Cotton, opted for probation, in part because the white girl had relatives who offered to look after her. Young said Creola Cotton did not cooperate with probation officials and declared she would refuse to do so because her daughter was innocent."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4676774.html
It's sloppy reporting like most MSM, but it sounds like the DA originally filed arson charges against the girl. That means it had to be reduced on some sort of plea deal that included probation. Probation for juveniles requires parental cooperation. Cotton's mother refused to cooperate and rejected the deal.
[District Attorney] Young said his office offered to give Cotton two years' probation in exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor. Cotton's mother denied an offer was ever made. The girl's trial attorney, Wesley Newell, confirmed Young's offer of probation but he declined to say why it was not accepted.
Both the DA and Cotton's own attorney admit that she refused a plea deal for probation, but the lying piece of garbage mother claims this never happened.
Thanks for that reference.
Cherry is one of the main agitators behind this movement and a certifiable bigotted nutcase. Quote of her from an interview she gave:
Cherry, who monitored the trial, said the case was highlighted by Paris High School officials cover ups, half-truths and the “loaded” testimonies and documentation from “Plantation Negro” and white teachers that improperly framed the 14-year-old as a troublemaker and a threat to the school and the community.
When this thug kills someone I hope the family of the victim sues the pants off the NAACP and anyone else who helped to put the thug back on the street by screaming racism.
“That is supposed to be the American system. You don’t go fight. You talk about it. if you’re not satisfied, you file a complaint. That’s supposed to be the American way,” Cherry said.
“If you’re white,” Cotton added.
The defense position has always been that a school employee shoved the girl first. Cherry and Creola Cotton say the teacher’s aide faked injures so charges could be trumped up against the 14-year-old.
Cherry and Creola Cotton say this is outrageous.
“It’s unfair that Shaquanda gets an unfair sentence up to age 21 for actually just touching a teacher to keep her from continually pushing her. She did that kind of crime and you have a little white girl the same age as Shaquanda was who goes down and burns down a house (and is) just repeatedly in the court system and he chooses to give her more probation. She was already on probation,” Creola Cotton said.
Officials at Lamar County Attorney’s office say they pushed for the same sentence for the 14-year-old arsonist, who is white, as they did for Shaquanda Cotton.
“It’s concerning Shaquanda Cotton and the fact that black people and Hispanics are not treated the same in Lamar County. We just don’t feel that we get the same treatment. We do not want special treatment; we want equal treatment, that’s all,” Cherry said.
***
Cherry alleges that Shaquanda’s frequent disciplinary write-ups, and the insistence of school officials at her trial that she deserved prison rather than probation for the shoving incident, fits in a larger pattern of systemic discrimination against black students in the Paris Independent School District.
In the past five years, black parents have filed at least a dozen discrimination complaints against the school district with the federal Education Department, asserting that their children, who constitute 40 percent of the district’s nearly 4,000 students, were singled out for excessive discipline.
When you have 'parents' who don't discipline their own children what do you expect?!!! Then they defend them when they act like thugs. Maybe they should keep them home and TEACH THEM themselves! I wouldn't want 'Whitey' brainwashing my black child. /sarcasm
This is the kind of disrespectful crap that I put up with every day from students who have been taught to scream racism to solve every problem that comes their way, whether they caused it or not.
Why send her to a TYC? She sounds like she is all ready for prison. Give her an arson and robbery AP exam. I'm sure she'll pass with flying colors.
Billed to the Paris, TX taxpayers or your truly?
The girl’s mother said her daughter has Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and was trying to get into the building that day so she could get medication from the school nurse.
No question who pays for the phony ADHD paycheck--you do, as well as the taxpayers of Texas.
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