South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur"

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes In South Carolina a 16-year old boy, Alex Stone, was arrested and charged with creating a disturbance at his school, as well as suspended, for choosing to write: "I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business," in response to a class writing assignment. The story has attracted international attention.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AthanasiusKircher]

He was questioned by police without his parents. That's not acceptable. He shouldn't be punished for anything that arose from an illegal interrogation. He may have simply refused to cooperate.

I don't know anything about what happened in this particular case, but in general, your assertion about the law is not true. Minors may be questioned by police without parents present. However, what the Supreme Court has said is that police may have to adjust their standard of when to issue a Miranda warning, depending on the subject's age. The normal standard is that Miranda is not required for questioning when a reasonable person in that situation would feel free to leave at any point. However, minors may sometimes assume they must be more obedient to authority figures and therefore may not feel they are free to leave -- thus, in some cases the Miranda standard should be altered to take that into account. Minors may therefore need to be advised of their rights earlier, or offered an opportunity to speak with parents or counsel to help them understand their rights in that situation.

But there's no legal requirement in the U.S. that parents always need to be present for police to talk to a minor or ask him questions. You haven't presented any evidence of an "illegal interrogation."

Re:Just like Happy days..

[msauve]

"You might have missed the part where the story isn't from a newspaper that is claiming to have researched it and presented the facts. It is actually from a blog called the "mommy files," and they don't describe the actual charges, or interview anybody other than the student and his mother."

You definitely missed the part where they linked to their source article, which was on a Chicago TV station news site.

The rest of your post just sounds like the sort of BS a psych major might spew.

Re:Land of insanity

[easyTree]

You might want to watch the video for yourself. [youtu.be]

I'm particularly fond of the way they fabricate a justification to kill complete strangers who at worst would be guilty of defending their country from an invading force.