From Mystic To Jessica's Parents

[LadyBlue]

I was hoping that I could get a little more information on where Jessica went missing from, such as an address or an exact location of her grandmothers home and also the church that she attended and the address.

More information needs to be given out to the public so that we can possibly help to find her even though it's from far away. The only way that the public is going to be able to do anything, is if we are given some solid information.

I strongly suggest that you let someone put up a forum for Jessica so that people are able to talk about this case. I'm hoping someone from the family or someone with ties to Jessica's family will read this.

[LadyBlue]

By Michael Paranzino

One is being starved to death by court order as I write. The other was just found dead in a densely wooded area. Terri Schiavo and Jessica Lunsford are two very different victims united not just by geography, but by their common mistreatment at the hands of Florida’s legal system.

Schiavo, 41, had her food and water forcibly removed at a judge’s insistence on March 18. Circuit Judge George Greer claims there is clear and convincing evidence that Schiavo wants to be starved to death, based on a claim by her husband, who has children by his longtime girlfriend, that Schiavo casually mentioned to him that she would want to die if disabled in the way that she is. There is no written, audio, video or other corroboration of his claims.

This is the same legal system, mind you, that keeps serial killers alive for two decades after juries sentence these monsters to death. Yet there is a thirst, a lust, by the Florida courts to end this innocent woman’s life.

There is also a tragic absurdity in this case, coming as it is just days after 5 Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court decided that executing any 17 year-old killer— be he a rapist-killer, serial killer, torturer-killer, you name it—is a violation of the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments.” But whacking an innocent woman by starving her to death is perfectly ok, even mandated by law.

Imagine if someone tried to deny food and water to a cat, or a dog, or a laboratory rat—the outcry would be deafening, and it would be stopped. The Washington Post this week ran a 1,000 word piece on an internet site that promises to kill a rabbit if they don’t get a lot of money sent to them. People are sending money.

But a defenseless woman can have food and water stripped from her by a state court judge and no one can figure out what to do to stop it. In fact, the judge all but laughed at two Congressional Committees and their subpoenas. Does Congress matter or not? Whatever the outcome of Terri’s situation, her case speaks again to the need for the elected branches of American government to take back some of the power that judges have stripped from them. Maybe this will wake Congress up to the unprecedented judicial power grab that has been accelerating in recent years.

For little Jessica Lunsford, 9, her death came not from a willful court effort to see her killed, but by a persistent and concerted extreme indifference to her and other children, not just by Florida’s judges, but by its lawmakers and prosecutors. John Evander Couey, the man who has allegedly confessed to abducting and killing this little girl, has, according to the Associated Press, “an extensive criminal record that includes 24 arrests for burglary, carrying a concealed weapon and indecent exposure. In 1991, he was arrested in Kissimmee on a charge of fondling a child under age 16. Records don't show how the case was resolved.” In another case, he served just two years of a 10 year sentence before being sent back among innocent families.

If you think you are reading about the tragic case of Carlie Brucia, the 11 year-old girl killed last year in Florida allegedly by a man with 13 arrests and multiple convictions, your confusion is understandable. In fact, serial felons walking among us create new victims every day in this country, and no one in power seems interested in changing it. Holding great press conferences about it, yes; correcting it, no.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, two-thirds of felons released from state prison are rearrested for new crimes within just three years of their release. The longer you keep violent felons in prison, the fewer new victims are created. But nobody seems to care.

You can be sure that Florida’s makeup artists are already at work preparing the state’s lawmakers for their photo-ops and press conferences where they will promise to “remember Jessica.” But we’ve seen this episode one too many times before. They were going to “remember Carlie” too, but oops, 14 months later, nothing has changed.

The solution is as elusive as it is simple—long, mandatory sentences for violent felons; sentences that ratchet up dramatically for repeat felons and probation violators; civil commitment for sexual predators sentenced under our past and current regimes, (which pamper sex offenders); and judicial reform to rein in “judges gone wild.”<br>
Without those changes, victims will keep piling up, judges will keep protecting the depraved, and this cycle of violence will continue.

The writer is president of Throw Away The Key (http://www.throwawaythekey.org). He can be reached at P.O. Box 2544, Kensington, MD 20891, or by email at [e-mail].