"Please Help My Son!"

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johnnybsterile
Due to signing two petitions about animal cruelty recently on Change.org, I guess now I'm on their mailing list. Probably some of you are too. I recently received an email to sign a petition from the moo of a 19 year old who's gotten himself in a heap of trouble.

The petition:

Release My Son Justin Carter - Being Prosecuted For A Facebook Comment
By Jennifer Carter
Maitland, Florida

Sign Jennifer's Petition

My son, Justin Carter, was arrested on February 14, 2013 (yes, Valentine’s Day) because of a sarcastic comment he posted on Facebook about a computer game which was then taken out of context by a complete stranger! Please sign my petition to help release my son, Justin.

My son has been in jail for months because we can’t afford to pay the half million dollar bail money. It took a month before he was even questioned and he spent his 19th birthday behind bars. To this day, Justin has not had a trial. No weapons were found during a search of his apartment, and so we’re really confused and heartbroken that our family is being violated like this.

While stuck in jail, Justin has been assaulted a number of times. He has been locked in solitary confinement for weeks. I urgently need your help.

Justin’s a good kid. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, let alone a child. What I understand happened is that he was in an argument on the League of Legends website, which continued on a Facebook page, and someone on Facebook called him crazy and messed up in the head.

So he responded in a sarcastic tone by saying something along the lines of 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts'. His response may have been in bad taste, but it was written in a non-threatening way that didn’t translate well online. None of his friends or family would even question his intention as anything other than a poor choice of words. Things got out of control, but my son is not a felon and terrorist as he’s currently being charged!

The authorities’ over-reaction is ruining Justin’s life. And it’s setting a dangerous example trying to punish kids who often say strange things that I believe are protected under freedom of speech. The justice system’s abuse of Justin is wasting time and money that could otherwise be spent to help people who honestly need it!

I hope you will sign this petition. I’d like Justin to be released. And I would like a more reasonable law to be put in place so this doesn’t happen to anyone else again.

July 11 update: We still need your help. Thanks to an anonymous donor, Justin is now out on bail. I'm happy to have him out right now, but my son is still facing a felony terrorism charge and years in prison if found guilty. I have said all along that his Facebook joke was made in poor taste and understand why it raised some concern, but Justin has no prior record and he was clearly not actually threatening anyone. Please sign and share to continue supporting Justin's campaign. We need to make sure he's not labeled as a terrorist simply for making a Facebook comment. Thank you.



While I feel for this kyd, I can't harbor much sympathy for him here. He goes on Facebook and makes a comment like that and expects to get away with it. The sad truth is we don't have much "freedom of speech" anymore. This is thanks to current events that just seem to happen on a regular basis. Last year alone we had a guy shoot up several people in a movie theater, then only months later a twisted asshole goes into a school and shoots up a bunch of elementary kids. Then this year, the Boston Marathon bombing. People have to get their heads out of their asses. You can't say whatever you want to anymore, especially on social media websites. They can be (and are) construed as possible terrorist activity and the authorities WILL act. Yeah, this kyd was probably just kidding, but how do we know that? The authorities are reacting to posts like these as real situations because real situations are occurring! A few days after the anthrax scare a few years back, some local moron thought it would be a funny joke to mail his aunt baby powder and tell her it was anthrax. Well, he got his ass arrested and locked up. It wasn't funny anymore. People have to wake up and realize you have to watch everything you say and do, everywhere. Sign of the times. A hard lesson. Don't blame the system. Thank the 911 terrorists, James Holmes, Klebold and Harris and Adam Lanza. We live in a different world. The police are only doing their jobs.
jbs

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Tiquer
So some eighteen year old threatens violence on a public social media site, the police arrest him, and his mother is arguing for his release because he was arrested on Valentine's Day?
Is this story from The Onion?

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Presto
My husband makes very tasteless jokes about bombs sometimes, purely for reaction... I've told him if he ever does this in an airport or a border crossing or anywhere like that I'm going to say I don't know him and we'll be divorced when he gets out of jail. Since this is now my only reaction to this bomb joking, I've been hearing it less and less. Hmm!

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yurble
Didn't we talk about this kid before? We could say he's stupid, but maybe he's just tone-deaf to the current social climate. I think most of us could easily be in this position, which is I think what lead to the reminder in this thread. We know we aren't condoning violence, but in this age of paranoia, who can say it won't be interpreted that way by authorities?

I suspect that ever since people stopped regularly killing each other over disagreements they have been expressing hyperbolic revenge fantasies. It's a common way to talk and it helps people blow off steam without causing any real harm. When people stop saying things like "I wish he were dead" it either means we've gone back to just killing one another or we are so unfree that we are terrified of being thrown in jail for saying stupid things like that.

So is the kid stupid? Well, he clearly wasn't tuned in to the new world order with its culture of fear, since it doesn't look as if he planned to make a test case out of himself. But do I blame him? No, I blame the people who can't apply common sense and who are trampling on our civil liberties in the name of safety.

That said, I don't think he should get out of it because "he's just a kyd," "he's a good kyd" and the like. He should get out of it because it is fucking ridiculous, but it should set a precedent for future cases at the same time.

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lilin_unite

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yurble
Didn't we talk about this kid before? We could say he's stupid, but maybe he's just tone-deaf to the current social climate. I think most of us could easily be in this position, which is I think what lead to the reminder in this thread. We know we aren't condoning violence, but in this age of paranoia, who can say it won't be interpreted that way by authorities?

I suspect that ever since people stopped regularly killing each other over disagreements they have been expressing hyperbolic revenge fantasies. It's a common way to talk and it helps people blow off steam without causing any real harm. When people stop saying things like "I wish he were dead" it either means we've gone back to just killing one another or we are so unfree that we are terrified of being thrown in jail for saying stupid things like that.

So is the kid stupid? Well, he clearly wasn't tuned in to the new world order with its culture of fear, since it doesn't look as if he planned to make a test case out of himself. But do I blame him? No, I blame the people who can't apply common sense and who are trampling on our civil liberties in the name of safety.

That said, I don't think he should get out of it because "he's just a kyd," "he's a good kyd" and the like. He should get out of it because it is fucking ridiculous, but it should set a precedent for future cases at the same time.

Thank you.

To be honest, the stuff this kid was arrested for is stuff that half the people on this forum could be arrested for.

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lilin_unite
That is totally insane, and however we might feel about moo trying to use the "he's just a kyd" line, this is inexcusable whether he was 10 or 50.

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yurble

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lilin_unite
That is totally insane, and however we might feel about moo trying to use the "he's just a kyd" line, this is inexcusable whether he was 10 or 50.

Short-sighted and self-centered are the words that come to mind. She's trying to get him excused on the grounds that he's an exception to the rule, rather than arguing that the rules are wrong and need to be changed. That's typical breeder: not concerned about anything outside of themselves and their genetic extensions.

Hell, she probably applauded measures like this "for the chyyyldren" when her son was younger. (That's just speculation, but her entire argument for his release provides insight into how she perceives things.) People like this are responsible for the same attitude that led to her son's imprisonment.