By now you may have heard the tragic news of a teenage girl who was brutally beaten last Friday, March 8, 2024 near Hazelwood East High School in Hazelwood, Missouri, leaving her with a serious head injury. She is now hospitalized in critical condition, and it is uncertain whether she will survive. In the graphic video posted online, the victim - known only as “Kailee” - can be seen twitching and apparently unresponsive after having her head beaten repeatedly against the pavement by her attacker.
If you haven’t heard this story, it isn’t all that surprising. The story has received only moderate attention from the mainstream media. In the news reports that have circulated a key fact has often been omitted - that the attacker was black, and the victim appears to be white. The attack also occurred a mere 15-minute drive from Ferguson, Missouri, where in 2014 an 18 year-old African American teenager named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer, sparking widespread protests and riots, and making headlines worldwide. Ferguson was also the scene of violent protests and riots in 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. Both of those killings were almost universally and immediately characterized by the media and prosecutors as hate crimes, because of the apparent racial motivation to the killings.
One can imagine that if the races of the attacker and the victim in the Hazelwood High incident were reversed, the story would be headline news across the world, and it is very likely that there would be similar civil unrest in communities across the nation. Now let’s make something absolutely clear - it’s a very good thing that there aren’t any violent riots, looting, or destruction of property taking place over this incident. However, where are the peaceful protests? Where is the outrage from the ACLU and numerous other organizations that typically step into the spotlight when a black person is the victim of violence by a white attacker? Where are the statements from members of Congress and various prominent civil rights activists, demanding justice for Kailee and labeling this a hate crime? These familiar voices have fallen silent in this case, while a teenager fights for her life in a St. Louis ICU.
That is not to say that there isn’t anyone in Kailee’s corner. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey recently released a statement declaring that “[t]his evil and complete disregard for human life has no place in Missouri, or anywhere. … The criminal should be charged and tried as an adult. If the victim dies, that offense should rise to a homicide.” Valentina Gomez, a Republican running for Missouri Secretary of State, posted a statement on X/Twitter that read, “Kaylee was brutally killed. @AGAndrewBailey I EXPECT you to charge the killer with First Degree Murder, and everyone else as an adult for Aiding and Abetting. I call for the resignation of Representative @RepCori for defunding the Police, and @CityofHazelwood Mayor Matthew Robinson for failing to protect its citizens.”
Although most reports allege that Kailee is still alive, the video of the brutal attack looks an awful lot like attempted murder, at the very least. In the smartphone age, the evidence is hard to ignore. Nevertheless, the attacker was reportedly arrested on Saturday and charged only with assault. She is now being held as a juvenile in St. Louis Family Court. The nature of the charges is subject to change, of course, so it is still possible that she could face more serious charges, and be tried as an adult. But if she is not, questions will abound as to whether the actions (or inaction) of the prosecutor and judge are racially or politically motivated, just as the same questions were raised in the aftermaths of the Michael Brown and George Floyd killings. And that’s not good. If the majority of Americans lose faith in the motivations of prosecutors, judges, and law enforcement, our system of justice is severely undermined. Our entire judicial system is founded on public trust, after all.
Prosecutors enjoy a privilege known as “prosecutorial discretion”, which means that they get to decide whether to file charges, and which charges to file. And what’s more, even if there’s evidence that they acted with bad motives, withheld evidence, or otherwise acted unethically in the course of their duties, prosecutors have absolute immunity from civil suit. This absolute immunity is a judicially-crafted doctrine that stems from the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976), in which the Court held that a state prosecutor could not be held liable for damages in a Section 1983 suit for Constitutional deprivation of rights, even where there was evidence that the prosecutor had knowingly used false testimony and suppressed material evidence at a murder trial, resulting in the conviction of the petitioner. As egregious as this sounds at first blush, there is some logic to it. If prosecutors could be sued every time someone made an allegation of improper or unethical conduct, they would have to spend most of the time defending themselves in court rather than actually prosecuting cases. Remember, you don’t have to actually be engaged in unethical or illegal conduct to be sued. All these lawsuits would have to do is make reasonable allegations that, if proven true, could provide the plaintiff with a basis for a legal remedy. The bar is pretty low to survive a motion to dismiss, after all. But prosecutorial immunity provides an an absolute bar to civil litigation against a prosecutor, making dismissal swift and easy (with the rare exception of prosecutors who are successfully sued for misconduct that occurred outside the scope of their prosecutorial duties, such as when they act as an investigator or detective).
Is there some middle ground here, though? Could we develop a system in which prosecutors can be sued, but only for a narrowly-defined set of egregious offenses? Could such a statute withstand judicial scrutiny under Imbler? What do you think?
"White Girl Bleed Easy, " has been out for over 10 years. There's been genocide in white people world wide for 50 years. Day late, dollar short. This child's blood in in the corrupted judiciary's eternal soles. Hey judges, hell is extremely hot. You will have the agony of your flesh burning for all eternity, whilst is never be consumed. F you cartel house operators. Damn you.
It’s obvious this perpetrator, though 15, has no moral compass whatsoever. Her anger & rage is way over the top. This girl needs serious intervention & therapy in a prison setting to figure out how she’s going to manage her emotions. She can’t assault anyone she wants, whenever it suits her. She’s got a lot to learn. I hope she is punished to the fullest degree so all her friends standing there watching will hopefully be deterred from trying anything similar in the future. The victim will have lifelong consequences from this horrific crime. The perpetrators family should have to pay all the medical costs as well.