Stolen Boy’s Weblog

I sit here and I look at these photos, and my head swells with sadness. Because all I see is a child, the sweet face of a teenager who is accused of murdering his father. Again, I encourage you to look at that face. We don’t yet see the trouble, the danger that supposedly lurks beneath the childish eyes. Joseph Giacona III  is just a child. He is not an adult. He’s tiny, soft-spoken, and he’s only fourteen years old. Yet, this kid is looking to spend the rest of his life in an adult prison.

Just a child.

You’ve probably read about how Joseph’s been charged as an adult, but did you ever have the opportunity to see the apparent lack of evidence against him. Joseph wasn’t even arrested until seven months after his father’s murder. But, of course, arresting this child and charging him with his father’s murder was one way for law enforcement authorities to calm public fear and cover any police ineptitude in their investigation for the true killer.

A child at play. 

I encourage you to check out the attached police reports. Determine for yourself if you think this kid is guilty, and if you think he should be tried in adult criminal court. Look at the way the crime scene was destroyed by initiial officers. And, please, tell me what would make a prosecutor so desperate to lock this child away forever, with adults, in a men’s prison. It would be a swift and short-termed experience before Joseph became swept away in the hatred and violence that runs rapid in the US prison industry. He would become nothing but another tragic child statistic. He is already nothing another tragic child statistic.

And then we read articles like the one put out by the MSNBC  where Oneida County Assistant D.A. Kurt Hameline outlines the reasons for charging children as adults. First, Mr. Hameline says Joseph took “no responsibility” for the murder, which, of course, makes perfect sense. The child has denied murdering his father, period. There was no gunshot residue found on him after the murder, and there did appear to have been other fingerprints found on the murder weapon (again, study the above police reports). Concerned family members have expressed their desire for the police to pursue other notable suspects, which, investigating police have thus far resisted. Besides, what child do you know accepts responsibility for anything? Try getting your kid to admit to the Crayon marks on the wall. Just doesn’t happen very often. Try getting an adult to take responsibility for anything. Just doesn’t happen very often.

Mr. Hameline also cited the fact that the murder was an adult crime. Well, not exactly, Mr. Hameline. Joseph Giacona III is a child, and, if Joseph is indeed guilty of the crime, then, it’s a child’s crime. But, besides that, how sophisticated is it really to pull a gun out of your father’s gun rack and blow his brains out while he’s lying down on the living room couch? Does this really make this thirteen year old an adult? I don’t think so. Children in New York belong in family court, not criminal court. Children are never adults.

Finally, Mr. Hameline says that the punishment likely to come down from family court would be far too lenient. Again, I ask, too lenient for whom? A child? How about an emotionally disturbed child? I ask, Mr. Hameline, did you by any chance read the doctor’s report that says Joseph was suffering from “extreme emotional disturbance” at the time of his father’s death. Is this the type of person these Draconian laws were written for - a child who is emotionally disturbed? Do we really want to lock him up for the rest of his life in the punitive adult prison system? Or, might we want to give this child the treatment he never received when he was free, on the outside? That’s what family court can do. They can rehabilitate. They don’t destroy. Not like adult prisons do. This isn’t about revenge. And, if Joseph is found guilty of the crime, and sentenced in family court, and if Joseph were to receive his therapy, prove rehabilitation, and then again be released back into society – no matter how long in takes – then we, as members of society could say that, yes, the system does work. One less child will be destroyed. Life gets better for all of us, who can now move on to try to save the next sacrificial lamb.