The setting is Massachusetts. It’s early in the 1990s, and a circle of lawmakers and politicians are working together to politically capitalize on a brand new public sensation: fear-mongering around so-called “super-predators”, or young sadistic teenagers with the capacity to commit unthinkably heinous crimes. Struck with sensationalized images and stories of city gang violence, people ...
When the public becomes fixated on something, we all know how quickly facts get left behind for popular rumors, prominent special-interest agendas and ideologies. Sometimes, public opinion is just plain wrong. That’s just what happened to Eddie O’Brien according to Margo Nash, former bar counsel of the 1995 case of a 15-year-old boy that was ...
Prison should be a place where people who engage in unlawful behavior that hurts or infringes on the rights of other people go to rehabilitate. But if that person has committed a crime due to mental illness, they should be properly cared for by mental health care specialists, not by sitting in prison. Unfortunately, in ...
