This is the last in a series of four interviews, dating back to last week, with Brandon McInerney’s new attorneys, Scott Wippert, Robyn Bramson, and Josh Solberg. Here, Stolen Boy narrows the issues in trying to explore who this fourteen-year-old child, that the Ventura County District Attorney has deemed worthless to society, is. Tell us what you think.
Brandon McInerney’s attorneys: Josh Solberg, Scott Wippert, and Robyn Bramson.
Q: What do we need to understand about Brandon that we currently don’t understand?
BRAMSON: …Brandon is a fourteen-year-old kid. He’s not Mr. McInerney. And it’s funny to me in court how suddenly he’s Mr. McInerney. I don’t know any fourteen year olds who go by Mr. anything. It’s completely age inappropriate and completely ridiculous. It’s a fiction that we’ve created, that this child ceases to be a child because he’s in this courthouse, and the case is called, People versus Brandon McInerney… In juvenile court, he wouldn’t be called Mr. McInerney. He’d be called Brandon…
Q: There’s an organization called Justice for Juveniles that states, “Children are never adults.” Could Brandon’s case be considered a metaphor for such a statement?
WIPPERT: …I’m familiar with that organization… It’s fourteen and fifteen-year-old children, and that’s what we need to remember. It’s children. And as I look back to the things I did as a child, and my thought processes – it’s just amazing to think that just because the DA said so, now Brandon’s being treated as an adult. Or, just because he just turned fourteen-years-old, now he’s an adult. He’s not an adult. He’s a child. His brain has not fully developed, and he does not understand the consequences, as no child does. Children have to learn those types of things.
Q: What do you say to those who imagine Brandon having committed an evil act?
SOLBERG: …At least in the imagination of the DA, who is supposed to represent the public, he is irredeemable, maybe. Irremediable… That’s what their decision to charge him as an adult implies.
WIPPERT: Their filing decision implies that he has no value anymore. He is not able to be rehabilitated and be a productive citizen of society.
BRAMSON: Or they don’t care.
WIPPERT: Yeah, and if you knew Brandon you would absolutely not have that opinion. He is a child. You would see a child that you would want to take home.
Q: So you’re saying the overall facts and circumstances require Brandon’s case to be seriously considered for juvenile court?
WIPPERT: Absolutely. The difference in the juvenile system and the adult system is that the juvenile system is rehabilitative in nature. And the adult system is punishment. You do not get training, you do not get counseling, you do not get schooling in prison. You are housed with other animals, and that is what you’re treated like. In juvenile facilities they still see some redeeming qualities. They give you schooling.
Q: If Brandon were tried as a juvenile, would Larry King’s family receive justice?
WIPPERT: We’re not asking that Brandon be just allowed to walk free. I think that the punishment of fifty-three (years) to…spending the rest of his life in prison is too steep… We’re not asking that he go home with us today – although we want to take him home, because we know Brandon. But, yes, there has to be some consequence. It was a horrific act, yes. But he’s a child.
BRAMSON: …We get caught up in this justice idea, but I think a lot of times we’re confusing retribution with justice. And I think that’s what’s going on here. And I think when we start coming from a place of wanting to see retribution as a society instead of wanting to see people get better…and function and contribute to society, we got a problem. And I think we got a problem…
Q: What kind of child is Brandon?
WIPPERT: He’s a child… He’s not a monster. And what the district attorney and what a lot of the media is portraying him as is someone who committed the most heinous crime for the most wrong reasons. That being a hate crime, and there being some “gay issue,” or something of this nature. And if you really get to know Brandon, he is not a monster. He’s a good kid who obviously made a horrific decision, and a horrific act he committed. But that does not make him a monster. And he is the product, in large part, to his environment. And, unfortunately, now we’re in a place where we have to deal with him in adult court. And our whole goal is to have him treated like the child that he is. And have people stop saying that he’s a monster and that he’s an adult.
Q: Brandon’s previous attorney stated that he wanted to expedite the trial to be able to preserve the youth in Brandon for the jury, to present that child to a jury. Is the fact that Brandon is growing into a big kid going to affect him in front of a jury in this case?
WIPPERT: I think there’s no doubt it will. But it’s our job to make sure that we explain to the jury and paint the portrait that is Brandon at the time of this offense. And should we hasten this trial and push it just to keep his youthful appearance, and not do what is necessary and ethical? Absolutely not. I think we have really valid arguments on why this case should go back to juvenile court. He should be prosecuted as a juvenile. Are we giving up something in his youthful appearance? Potentially. But, I think it would be unethical, and, just morally wrong to push it just for that reason. To make sure that his youthful appearance is apparent. We will always have to paint him as the child that he was, but at the same time there are legal issues. And there are checks and balances that have to be made for the district attorney and the court…
Q: What else can you tell us about Brandon?
WIPPERT: …We’re trying to give you what information we can, but, at the same time, we don’t want to compromise our defense… There’s so much we want to tell you about Brandon, and his environment, and the situation at the school, and between him and Larry, and I just don’t think it’s the appropriate time for us to do that right now. But there will be a time, at some point…
BRAMSON: I agree. But I will just say generally, when you’re a kid, you’re a kid… You haven’t reached that point in your life where you are an independent thinker. And you have reached that point of maturity where you can sift through various ideas, and you can say, okay, I believe in this, or I don’t believe in that. You’re just exposed to everything, and you’re absorbing everything, without recognizing what resonates and what makes sense to you. I think that’s the case with every kid. Developmentally, I don’t think you can get there until adulthood. Which is why we (and the law) recognize differences between minors and adults. Because there are differences. It’s not that a fourteen year old is just a miniature version of a thirty seven year old. It doesn’t work that way.
Q: What scares you about this case?
BRAMSON: …The district attorney is concerned with public safety. But from a public safety perspective, does it make much sense to want to send this kid to an adult prison with these horribly violent, dangerous offenders…?
WIPPERT: Men.
SOLBERG: This kid with no prior record, no prior history… He’s going to go into prison with, like you said, all these hardened, imprisoned, criminal men. And he’s going to potentially spend a great deal of time there, and the greatest likelihood is that when he comes out he’s going to be a hardened criminal.
WIPPERT: Because that’s what they do in prison. You have to adapt. And people in prison have to be imprisoned. And they don’t offer them services and they do not treat them as children as they would in the juvenile system. And, again, he has the ability to learn, and to change. And his emotions are different than those of adults. And just the capacity to understand the gravity of your actions and the response, the consequence, isn’t there. If he does in fact go to prison, and if he ever does get out, which is unlikely, but if he does, yes, would he be safer to the public at that point than if he actually went through a juvenile system where they in fact try to rehabilitate him? Absolutely not. The best thing for this trial for public safety is to give him services and to help him learn from this horrible mistake in this decision he made.
BRAMSON: …And it goes back to the whole thing that we were talking about with just him being there. As a child, you absorb whatever it is. Stick a kid in music camp, they’re going to pick up some musical ability. You send a kid to cheerleading camp they’ll learn some cheers. Send a kid to prison, what do you think they’re going to learn? There is a culture in prison, and he’s going to live there for a very long time.
Q: Have you ever met a bad kid?
BRAMSON: I’ve never met a bad kid.
Q: This is a kid who’s done something bad.
BRAMSON: Correct
Q: Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?
BRAMSON: Absolutely.
Q: In these cases?
BRAMSON: Absolutely.
Q: Beatings. Rape. Suicide. Isn’t this what a child who is sentenced to an adult prison can come to expect?
WIPPERT: Unfortunately, yes. That’s what he’s looking at. Unless, somebody stops it.
THE END.
One Comment
You know Michael, for all the years I have advocated, it never occured to me what Ms. Bramson commented on. In juvenile Brandon would be addressed as “Brandon.” In adult court, he is addressed as “Mr. McInerney.”
Last I knew, “Mister” was a sir name for a grown man. God that just gives me chills and literally nauseates me. What a hypocritical society we live in!