Posted on 01/29/2008 7:37:00 PM PST by jdm
~excerpt~
FAYETTEVILLE, Arkansas (AP) -- A federal jury convicted a 23-year-old man on an obscure weapons charge Tuesday, apparently unaware that 10 years ago he and another boy killed four classmates and a teacher in a schoolyard ambush.
Mitchell Johnson, who killed classmates and a teacher 10 years ago, was convicted of a gun charge Tuesday.
Mitchell Johnson faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in the next 45 days on a count of possessing a firearm while being a drug user. Through his attorney, Johnson declined to comment Tuesday.
Johnson was arrested on New Year's Day 2007 after police stopped his van and said they found a bag of marijuana in his pocket and a 9 mm pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun in two bags.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
so, he was on the street? whaaa???
who would the victims sue, were he to strike again, for letting this menace to society out on the streets as if...nothing had ever happened?
He killed 4 people 10 years ago and he was out on the streets with a gun? Unbelievable!
So how the f*** does he get an adjudicated record and get to own firearms??????
I seem to remember people had conniptions about him being released. But he was that 14 year old that killed all those kids in schoool, and because he was so young, Arkansas had no provision to try him as an adult. He was released as a 21 year old.
Happy to see the system has a chance to rectify their error, and nobody else has been killed in the process.
"The system" got lucky -- in spite of itself.
"Nobody"....that we know of, at least. Doesn't mean he hasn't messed up other people's lives in other ways.
And so, with a ten year sentence, he'll be back out on the street in what, 3-5 years? In his demented prime?
2 youths aged 11 and 13 were arrested, Mar. 24, in the killing of 4 schoolgirls and a teacher outside a Jonesboro, AR, school; later committed to a juvenile detention center.
Assuming the jurors remembered the incident from 1998 (it got a lot of media attention at the time, and they're in the same state), they wouldn't have known the name of the 13-year-old involved...or suspected that the 23-year-old man being tried had been responsible for the earlier atrocity.
Where to start....
With prosecutors like this, there is no need to waste money on public defenders.
Federal, no parole. He can earn a few months off his sentence for 'good behavior'. I think you can get up to 15% off, so a 10 year sentence would be about 8.5 years. That's still more than he got for the killings.
Possible correction. Another source suggests that the correct number for federal inmates is 87.2%, not 85 percent, so he’d serve a few weeks longer.
We knew he was living somewhere in NW Ark area. Glad they got him.
and they want to keep guns out of the hands of honest citizens....
ping
Too bad he couldn’t be tried as an adult when he was 13 years old !
This is beyond the pale. I don't understand how the vicitms of his crime do not take justice into their own hands. I was given a 12-ga shotgun for my 14th birthday and certainly understood the lethality of guns. This scumbag was 13 when he butchered those people, after viciously using a fire alarm to lure them outside.
If it got out that the jurors remembered the Jonesboro shooting and discussed it in deliberations, it would be a mistrial. The publicity would almost guarantee a change of venue and might make it impossible for the guy to get a fair trial in the state. Any competent defense attorney would argue jury bias in the second trial, and it would be a convincing argument.
The mistral part, if it were known; true, but the, ‘gee he shouldn’t have a gun when he’s doing drugs part’. Makes it sound like the guy doesn’t care about prosecuting either.
Did Mitchell Johnson or the other guy ever say why they killed five people or they were sorry?
THIS is an example of the sort of government tyranny that the Second Amendment is intended to deal with. When anti-gun types try to tell me it’s unrealistic to expect that our government will ever become so tyrannical that we need to fight it off with guns, I point to this sort of thing. There are huge numbers of violent criminals who have been tried and convicted, and then deposited back on the streets by order of the government, to kill and maim and terrorize law-abiding citizens. Sure feels like tyranny to me.
Old habits die hard, especially with psychopaths.
Anyone still want to abolish the death penalty? If so, you can room with this guy.
I think we’re probably on the same page on a lot of issues including the clarity of the second amendment when it comes to individual rights to keep and bear arms.
I live in NJ where the politicians have turned this state into a socialist sandbox well deserving of an armed insurrection. Unfortunately, it’s not legal here and they have all the body armor, machine guns, tanks, planes and all the other cards that trump the fairly simple guns that the State “allows” us to own. I also have a feeling that anyone here taking part in an insurrection would be very lonely.
Just a few thoughts. I hope things are different where you are.
One of the problems he kept coming across is when people found out where he was working, they'd call the employer and he'd inevitably get let go. I'm not a bleeding heart, but I didn't feel bad. Let the guy work a crappy job and at least stay out of trouble, yanno? If you can't work, you'll find trouble...which is possibly what some preferred happen, anyway.
didn’t should have been did.
Great, just what this country needs, another gun law........
A kid gets into trouble for shooting a BB gun in his backyard and he should lose his gun Rights forever on your say so?
Go ahead and quit the NRA. We don’t need you.
But “insurrection” against the sort of tyranny I referred to doesn’t involve taking on the government’s tanks and planes, etc. It involves shooting the violent sociopaths they keep releasing back onto the streets, one by one.
ping
The same way all criminals get guns. THEY DON'T BUY RETAIL.
That’s it, we need more gun laws!!! Not that there’s a problem with a murderer getting out in under 10 years, WE NEED MORE GUN LAWS!!!!!
I beleive that the GCA of 68 and other US Code laws already restrict juveniles adjudicated as guilty of a felony, but not as adults, from possessing firearms-goes along the same lines as adjudicated defective and barred from firearms.
Intersting to see exaclty how this stacks up in a legal viewpoint, however.
God Bless
TESTIFY My brother!;)
Mitchell Johnson, who killed classmates and a teacher 10 years ago...
Life or let the citizens have him.
“State courts sent Johnson and Golden to a juvenile prison until their 18th birthdays. Federal prosecutors then got them locked up until they turned 21. Johnson left prison with an “adjudicated” record — meaning he could own firearms.”
________________________________________________________________________________
Incredible, he was out and working at a local Wal-Mart. Juvie records sealed and free as a bird. Betcha the families of his victims don’t feel so carefree.
Well, insurrection generally means tea parties and the inevitable consequences which, nowadays, is not Brown Bess flintlocks but tanks and planes.
OTOH.....I think the word you want is “Justice” and that sounds just fine and meaningful to me.
A BB gun is not a firearm.
So you’re OK with a mass-murderer getting to own guns, because he was 13 at the time? Surely, a child could never be so calculating as to pull a fire alarm in a school to ensure a supply of targets coming out the doors? This case proves that a 13-year-old can be a psychopath. Psychopaths should not own firearms.
Hence my outrage that our criminal justice system does not ban ownership of firearms by juvenile mass murderers
The problem is, what is a gun crime? When I was young we used to take our guns to School and leave them in the trunks of our cars so we could go hunting right after School because it got dark so early. Was that a gun crime? If a juvenile, without an adult, is shooting a handgun at targets in the country and someone calls the cops is that a gun crime? I agree with you in principle but with the idiot zero tolerance mentality these days they would be denying people their second amendment rights for petty things.
Since you like hypothetical gun arguments, try this one on for size. If a 16-year-old gang banger blows your wife's head off in a botched gas station robbery, would you be ok with him getting released from juvenile detention at age 21 and being able to buy a gun legally at the local Wal-Mart?
Do you really think I had a kid shooting a BB gun in mind as a criteria for a lifetime ban on gun ownership, or was that just a silly post?
Let me constrain a proposed ban to those juveniles convicted of a homicide. Is that ok, or do you need a mass-murder before you would keep Mitchell Johnson away from a firearm?
What do you say, Mr. 2nd Amendment? I'm sure Mitchell is accepting donations to his legal defense fund. Send him some cash so he can beat his current rap and buy some more guns! You'll sleep better at night knowing he can own a firearm again. Get him an NRA membership while you're at it.
Let's say he had stayed in prison for 50 years, and got out at the age of 63, do you think he should be allowed to go buy a gun at Wal-Mart whe he gets out at age 63?
My point is that a mass-murderer, no matter what his age at the time of the crime and no matter how long he is in custody, should NEVER be allowed to legally own a firearm upon release from prison.
Unless you killed several people when you were a kid, this law would not affect your going out and buying a gun, now would it? So what precisely is your objection?
You’re right, how terrible for the families, but what is most important to several posters here is that his ability to legally own a firearm was not infringed.
I'm not advocating a silly "assualt weapon" ban, but I don't want a scumbag like Johnson to own anything more hazardous than a rubber-band gun.
First he committed a heinous crime, tried and sentenced. He was released by the State to legally RKBA.
Re: “HIS ability to legally own a firearm “
It was the blanket statement you made that ruffled feathers. If a juvenile uses a gun in defense of self, family or property, and is convicted (and with gun laws as they are in many jurisdictions, BB guns or self-defense may be may be a conviction) should he forever be banned from lawful RKBA?
Anyway - he got sentenced to the 5 year minimum for a gun crime. The Governor pardoned him after a few weeks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.