TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Author: Trench Reynolds

  • Suspect’s attorney says charges are too much

    Terror charge too much, teen’s attorney says:

    Brent Clark’s attorney is bemoaning the terrorism charge and the fact that Clark is being tried as an adult.

    David Michael Cantor, the teen suspect’s attorney, said he has several concerns with this case.

    One of them is the county attorney’s decision to try Brent Clark as an adult. Another concern is charging him with terrorism.

    “I think it’s an insult to add a terrorism charge in this day and age to a case like this — a 14-year-old boy. That’s just politicking at the lowest level,” Cantor said.

    “With adult charges, he may never get into college, or a dormitory, they would ruin him simply because of an emotional problem,” Cantor said.

    Cantor describes his client as a good kid who was the victim of intense bullying at school. He said it was a cry for help and not an act of terrorism.

    College? Emotional problem? He held a girl at knifepoint. That’s not an emotional problem. That’s an act of violence. As far as worrying about college, he should have thought of that before committing a crime.

    If Mr. Cantor had any sense he’d tell his client to plead out and he may avoid serious jail time.

  • Mom says Mesa suspect was bullied

    Mom says teen accused in school terror plot is victim of bullying:

    The mother of Brent Clark is saying that her son was bullied. I wonder what took her so long.

    “What the public does not know is that we have discovered that he has been bullied at school for almost a year,” Danette Reed said. “No one is willing to investigate that allegation.”

    That’s all well and good but what does Clark being bullied have to do with trying to take a girl hostage at knifepoint? Why did he want to kill a girl who barely knew him?

  • Brent Clark’s victim speaks

    Mesa victim speaks out about attack:

    The girl who Brent Clark tried to take hostage has spoken to the media.

    A 7th grade girl walks home alone and when she gets to her apartment complex she said she was attacked by a classmate with a pocketknife.

    “He said he was going to kill me if I say anything,” said the girl who didn’t want to be identified.

    The boy let her go and she ran home and called police.

    But since that day two weeks ago she’s been getting sick, loosing weight and this week didn’t go to school.

    She claims it’s just something she ate, but her mom thinks its something else, a bad case of nerves.

    The accused attacker was a classmate. Clark and the girl had 7th hour Spanish together.

    As for girl who was attacked, she believes the boy might have done it, but she doesn’t feel like a hero.

    She just wants her old life back.

    As usual the victim had very little connection with the attacker.

    For added fun we have some attorney hilarity.

    The lawyer for Clark said charging him with terrorism goes way too far.

    Something that could ruin his life instead of teach him a lesson. He calls it politicking by the prosecutor’s office.

    Well, maybe he should have thought of that before he tried to kidnap that girl. And instead of teaching just him a lesson hopefully this will teach a lesson to other kids who have similar ideas.

  • Attorney defends adult charges

    County Attorney Defends Charge against Mesa Teen:

    The County attorney who decided to charge Brent Clark as an adult is having to defend his stance on the charges.

    “I thought that was the appropriate charge,” Thomas said. “How it ends being handled by the courts and what penalties are ultimately given to this alleged offender will be determined at a later date.”

    I agree. In order to try to prevent crimes like this from happening in the future, we have to let these kids know that there are serious and life-altering repercussions.

  • Sealed depositions may end study

    Sealed depositions may be end of Columbine study:

    Read the words of one Professor Del Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.

    Professor Del Elliott said Tuesday he doubts he will undertake a study into the causes behind the Columbine High School shootings now that depositions of the killers’ parents have been sealed.

    In the meantime, the nationally recognized expert on violence prevention said he expects the ruling will translate into more lives lost.

    “We’ve not had a chance to learn much about was going on in the lives of (killers) Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold that precipitated this event,” he said.

    “Unfortunately, it’s going to be repeated,” he added, “and maybe then we’ll learn more about the circumstances which lead young people to commit these kinds of horrendous acts.”

    I hope you’re paying attention Judge Lewis Babcock. I hope that robe can help you clean the blood of future victims off your hands.

  • Brent Clark’s mother speaks out

    Mother of teen facing terrorism charge speaks out:

    The mother of Brent Clark is saying that her son being charged as an adult is unjustified.

    Danette Reed told K-T-A-R she and her husband called the police on their son hoping to get him help in the juvenile system.

    The decision to charge him as an adult upset the boy’s mother. Reed says she believes her son was crying out for help and years in an adult prison are unjustified.

    Let’s see. He attempted to kidnap and kill a random female student, he was found with a loaded gun, and he planned on taking the entire class hostage.

    Nope, seems justifiable to me.

    And yes I am being glib.

  • Insanity defense for Zarate

    Zarate to pursue insanity defense:

    I’m surprised it took this long. Anyway, Anthony Fusco, the attorney for accused killer Jonathan Zarate, is going to be pursuing an insanity defense for his client.

    Jonathan Zarate’s lawyer, Anthony Fusco, told Judge Salem Vincent Ahto in Morristown that he plans an insanity defense and is in the process of hiring a forensic psychiatrist to examine the high school dropout. Fusco, a privately-paid lawyer, also plans to make a petition to the state Office of the Public Defender to help finance the cost of the evaluation.

    Your tax dollars at work.

    Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the insanity defense basically boil down to knowing the difference between right and wrong? If that’s the case Zarate’s actions of dismembering Jennifer Parks’ body after killing her, hiding it in a trunk for 24 hours and then trying to dump the trunk in the Passaic river leads me to believe that he what he did was wrong.

  • More ineffective legislation

    MySpace and Kentucky Sex Offenders:

    Put Kentucky down as another state that is deluded into thinking that sex offenders are going to comply with registering their online identities.

    Tuesday afternoon at the capital rotunda, the state met with a MySpace official to put an end to this ongoing problem with the help of a new measure called Senate Bill 65.

    The new law, requires sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses on-line.

    However if a sex offenders gives authorities a fraudulent e-mail address they will be sent back to jail.

    The new law will also help sites like MySpace cross-reference Kentucky’s sex offender registry with their own data base.

    I hate to sound like a broken record or a skipping CD for that matter, but this law is all bark and no bite. This will not stop sex offenders from using fraudulent e-mails. The threat of jail rarely stops sex offenders as it is. And again this does nothing about the sex offenders that have never been caught.

    Instead of making laws about MySpace how about making laws that keep sex offenders in jail longer?

    Thanks to Jessica for the link.

  • NY MySpacer arrested on rape charges

    Police: Teen raped by man met on MySpace:

    Everything that I tried writing about this article sounded like I was casting aspersions where I did not want them to be cast. Instead, I’ll just give you select quotes from the article.

    Monday morning, a 13-year-old Suffolk County girl climbed out her bathroom window and into the Jeep of a 20-year-old man she met on MySpace. He took her to his Bayport home and raped her, police said.

    It was the end result of a 6-week online romance that the girl’s parents knew nothing about, even though police say her father did “everything in his power” to monitor her activity on the Internet.

    “He was doing what any good parent would do,” Det. Sgt. Thomas Groneman, of Suffolk’s Third Squad said this Tuesday afternoon.

    Despite those efforts, however, the girl managed to gain regular access to a laptop computer that either wasn’t password protected, like the desktop computer in her home, or whose password she had somehow learned.

    For six weeks, she communicated with Zachary Rapoza, the self-titled “Bayport Kid,” according to his Myspace profile. On his Web page, he says he is a 2006 graduate of Bayport-Blue Point High School who played on the track and football teams. A profile picture shows him sitting in a chair with a blue football jersey, baseball cap and sunglasses.

    Suffolk police say Rapoza and the girl made an arrangement during her week of spring break to pick her up Monday morning at 8 a.m. in front of her home. Groneman said a relative saw her sneak out the bathroom window and then contacted her father, who was at his work.

    The father contacted her friends and visited places where he thought she might be. When he was unsuccessful, he called police.

    A short time later, his daughter contacted him.

    At that point, she was with Rapoza on a Long Island Rail Road train heading to Jamaica, Queens. Her father told her to get off of the train at the next possible stop — which happened to be Pinelawn.

    The two were waiting at the train station when police arrived. They were then taken to the Third Precinct for questioning.

    Rapoza was charged with second-degree rape, unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare of a minor. He is expected to be arraigned Tuesday.

    Rapoza has multiple MySpace accounts. I believe that this one is Rapoza’s main MySpace.

    Is it me or does this sound more like statutory rape then it does a full-on sexual assault? Still, when you’re 20 you don’t need to be picking up 13-year-olds that climb out of windows. In case you were wondering the age of consent in the Empire State is 17.

  • Castillo e-mail probably inadmissible as well

    Castillo e-mail can’t be linked:

    Just a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the computer evidence being suppressed in the Alvaro Castillo proceedings. Since the computers were ruled inadmissible the e-mail that Castillo sent to Columbine High School Principal Frank DeAngelis cannot be linked to Castillo.

    Again, the videos should be all the prosecution needs.