Roe and Dred Scott

Man-on-Dog Santorum is taking a lot of heat for this statement:

Potential 2012 presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) doesn't understand how President Obama could not answer whether a "human life" is protected by the Constitution from the moment of conception: "The question is -- and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well if that person -- human life is not a person, then -- I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, 'we're going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

Jamelle Bouie is dismissive of Santorum drawing a straight line between slavery and abortion, writing:

Of course, it should go without saying that this is unadulterated bullshit. It's one thing to oppose abortion -- reasonable people can disagree -- it is something else entirely to compare the practice to chattel slavery, or worse, the Holocaust. Even if you grant fetal personhood, there is nothing in the "experience" of a fetus that compares to the extreme violence and depravity of slavery, and its effect on people -- children, teenagers, and adults -- with hopes, dreams, and desires.

On some level, anti-abortion activists know this; otherwise, they'd be in armed revolt. That they aren't is revealing; far from an accurate take on the situation, the abortion/slavery analogy is a fantasy for self-righteous ideologues, who want to believe that theirs is a great moral crusade, when in truth, it's nothing of the sort.

But while I agree that the moral equivalence is false, I also recognize that this is nothing more than my personal opinion. I'm not sure how many pro-life fanatics that Bouie or other progressive writers know, but I have known more than a few, now and going back to my childhood. And Bouie sells them short when calling this "unadulterated bullshit." Santorum may be doing this cynically. But most certainly there are millions of Americans who do believe it.

In fact, there's a lot of similarities between abolitionists and anti-abortion fanatics. Progressives don't like to admit this because we revere one group and loathe the other. But it's true. Like abolitionists, anti-abortionists believe in the deepest part of their soul that abortion is the greatest evil the world faces, an abomination in the face of God. Moreover, they believe that those who are pro-slavery or pro-choice are facing an eternity burning in the fires of Hell.

This is why I'm so ambivalent about John Brown and outright scared over how people use his memory today--those who love John Brown today aren't usually my friends.

Moreover, the idea that if anti-abortionists really believed their rhetoric that they'd be engaging in violent insurrection both misremembers the Civil War and doesn't provide a very subtle understanding of human nature. With the exception of John Brown, no abolitionists committed violent actions to overthrow the slave power before 1861. Moreover, it was the South who committed violence against the nation to protect slavery, not the North invading the South to end the peculiar institution.

For the vast, vast majority of abolitionists and anti-abortionists, personal violence is beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. They might support other people doing it. They might even give money toward it. But they are not going to pick up a gun themselves.

It does progressives no good to ignore the fact that anti-abortionists are in fact engaged in a moral crusade. It's not up to us to decide what is a moral crusade and what is not. I think they are crazy and that Santorum's statement is offensive, but that's beside the point. Anti-abortionists do in fact believe in their own rhetoric. For them, this is the greatest moral crusade since abolitionism. And we need to deal with this.

The Giffords Shooting and Its Aftermath

Just a few points here. Had I been around a computer when the shooting happened, I would have had about 10 posts on it, but I was at a conference. Now so much has been said. But a few points.

1. While Jared Loughner it seems was not a right-winger in any normal sense, it is still entirely appropriate to point fingers at the violent right-wing rhetoric dominating the nation. Not only because such language can embolden the crazy, but because that rhetoric is wrapped up in the very real policies loosening gun laws so that people can have enormous clips of ammunition.

2. On top of that, the right, going back to Reagan, have decimated funding for mental health institutions. Loughner clearly needed a lot of mental help. And while his crazy behavior got some attention from the people who ran into him, there was nothing they could do get him real help. William Galston argues for a return to involuntary commitment, something that civil libertarians have opposed. While such laws can be and have been abused, we do clearly need to take a more active role in committing people with violent tendencies, if just for observation. But Galston puts the cart before the horse, because who are the officials who are going to put people like this away and where are the beds coming from? With an ever-shrinking tax base for social services, institutions like mental health facilities lose funding and there's no money to hire the government workers you'd need to find the mentally unstable and process them through the system.

3. From a political perspective, the big loser is Sarah Palin. Truthfully, the whole Tea Party movement loses here because a lot of Americans are flinching in the face of the violent rhetoric that propelled them to power. Many Republicans are defending themselves vociferously. Some, such as Rush Limbaugh, claim that Loughner was a liberal and a Democrat, but this just alienates most people at this time. But no one lost more than Palin.

Perhaps she was right to be irritated that people connected her with the shooting, but then again, she's the one who had a target over Giffords' district. Her aide claiming that it was actually surveyor symbols just insulted our intelligence. But then the "blood libel" comment earlier today was just stupid. Not only does she not know what the term means, but it's an anti-Semitic reference used in discussing the attempted assassination of a Jewish congresswoman. Palin is of course getting slammed and rightfully show.

This also demonstrates how hopeless Palin's presidential candidacy is. How many Republicans slapped their palm against their forehead when they heard that? Some at least. And probably a lot of independents and almost all Democrats. What a joke.

Of course, she's the master at generating attention over the politics of resentment. But there's a big difference between Sarah Palin and, say, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan. Nixon and Reagan were successful because they could effectively tap into this anger while also fooling other voters into believing they stood for more. Palin completely fails at being anything but a mouthpiece of resentment.

As Ezra Klein states:

So that's Palin's substantive response: Politics has never been reliably civil, her critics are unfair to her and at least she's not shot anybody. All that is true. But you won't find "stop bothering me, this tragedy isn't my fault" in the chapter headings of any books on leadership. Palin could've taken this opportunity to look very big, and instead she now looks very small. And that's not the fault of her detractors or her map. It's her fault, and her fault alone.

Indeed.

3. Farley responds to this CBS poll question asking whether violence against the government is ever justified:

Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to take violent action against the government, or is it never justified?

Republican 28% yes, 64% no
Democrat 11% yes, 81% no
Independent 11% yes, 81% no

Kos is outraged, Farley not so much. And like Rob, I agree that certainly it can be justified to take violent action against the government. I can think of lots of reasons that might happen. But while that's a good theory, it's quite telling that at this point and time, you have 28% of Republicans who say this versus 11% of Democrats and independents.  It says that a whole lot of people would be more than happy to see violence against Democrats like Gabrielle Giffords, even if they aren't going to instigate it themselves. And that's really screwed up.

Classic Texas

British tourist shot and killed in Amarillo bar. What could be more authentic than that!!

In all seriousness, why would someone be a tourist in Amarillo in the first place?

Link of the Day: Hayden on Rudd

Former Students for a Democratic Society head Tom Hayden reviews former Student for a Democratic Society leader Mark Rudd's autobiography.

Of course, Hayden and Rudd were two very different animals. Hayden led SDS in its early years, was a veteran of the civil rights and free speech movements and, while a leftist, worked within the American system of government. Rudd was a SDS leader at its violent end and was a key player in the creation of the Weathermen. A fugitive, he lived underground for a decade before the FBI dropped most charges against him and most of the other members of the organization. He then went to teach math at a community college in Albuquerque.

Hayden's review is an excellent discussion of violence, social change, and the 1960s. Check it out.

The U.S.'s Unstated Role in the Mexican Drug Wars

A lot of people, in the media and elsewhere, have been talking about the effects the exploding violence in Mexico's "drug wars" may have (and already are having) on the U.S., but not a lot of people are talking about the ways U.S. domestic policy decisions have affected the drug wars. The NY Times/MSNBC have a great report up on gun smuggling that's worth watching in its entirety (warning: graphic images), in which they discuss (among other things) the effects of the American gun trade on the Mexican drug wars. Specifically, that 95% of the weapons used in the drug wars in Ciudad Juarez are made in America and illegal in Mexico. Thanks to the Republican Congress's lifting the ban on assault weapons in 2004, "anybody with a driver's license and a clean record" can get these weapons, and they're making their way into Mexico, leading to the escalating violence and body counts.

All of the talk in the U.S. of how the violence "might spill over the border into the U.S." is ignorant in its one-sidedness. The border isn't a one-way road where things and people come from Mexico to the U.S. As this report demonstrates, while we may be worried about how violence might spill over from Mexico, we've conveniently forgotten how our weapons and violence have spread from the U.S. into Mexico. Until we acknowledge this and work to make these guns more difficult to get in the U.S. or elsewhere, things like this will continue to happen, and Mexico may end up suffering even more for our policy decisions.

More on Angie Zapata and violence against trans women.

1. "It."

As Cassuto noted, when people objectify others, they find it much easier both to possess and to kill them. What he meant by objectification was not sexual, but literally treating a person as an object. Cassuto also pointed out that humans are never fully able to conceive of another person as a thing, and so they enter that space in between thing and human--they become monsters.

In most of these cases (Angie Zapata's and others), the transgender woman is doubly objectified--first as a woman that the person feels entitled to, sexually (the usual feminist definition of objectification) and then when they find out that she isn't exactly what they were expecting, she becomes a thing, and thus something that can be killed--"it."

It's that very monstrosity-through-objectification that is threatening, though, because if she were simply a thing, she would no longer be frightening and need to be killed. It's the fact that she's still at once the woman he was attracted to and yet not what he's 'supposed' to be attracted to that makes her monstrous, that requires her death, that creates this 'panic' that to some people actually justifies killing another person.

2. The media.

In the news, the trans woman is both acceptable victim because she is a woman, and deserving victim because she does not fit the box that we've put 'women' into. She's another step removed from the Natalee Holloways and Laci Petersons of this world--particularly from Peterson, who was so defined by her biology, her pregnancy, her fetus, always so obsessively named in the media.

It is appropriate for a woman to be a victim of violence, and even more appropriate for a woman of color to be a victim of violence--it's expected. News coverage of violence against women goes in a hierarchy, but trans women are at the very bottom of it, (well, trans women of color sex workers would be the very bottom) and that's just wrong. It's "not a typical hate crime"? Then what else is it?

Back to the monster theory for a second--do you think that people who commit hate crimes against those of a different race than them don't have a similar process in their brains that tells them people of this other race are less human than they are, different, Other, monsters, and thus killable? Is the so-called "irrational" reaction that made this man kill a woman less a product of his hate and fear than a Klansman's hatred for black people or a Nazi's hatred for Jews?

3. Sexual assault.

As I mentioned above, Angie Zapata was doubly objectified--first as a woman. The man who killed her stated for the record(!) that he found out she had a penis by grabbing her genital area. As if it's some male right to check for himself, right? To test out the goods?

Wrong.

So this guy not only killed a woman, he sexually assaulted her first, and then stole her car, and we're supposed to believe that somehow he's the victim in this case? I mean, if I grab some guy's cock, find out he's not circumcised, am I allowed to bash his head in and then drive off with his car because it offends me as a Jewish woman?

I doubt it.

Lisa has more.

Over 50 Rio de Janeiro Police Arrested

Monday, 56 cops from Duque de Caxias were arrested for their involvement in the drug trade (Duque de Caxias is a part of greater Rio de Janeiro), providing yet another example in which the police are as much (if not moreso) a source of the violence in the favelas as the actual drug lords are. The media is (of course) swarming all over this story, but failing to provide any real analysis, instead relying on the straightforward "X-number cops charged with Y crimes" without asking why they would turn to such activities (despite the arrest of over 120 officers in Rio alone this year, it's just some "rogue" elements, instead of a broader issue of low pay, poverty, and power coming together).

I previously commented on my skepticism that any authorities in Rio (the city or the state) would ever really do anything important about this issue, yet once again, governor Sergio Cabral has come out, saying this will not stand and future cases will also be dealt with harshly. I'm still not sure that this is going to amount to much in the way of policy-change in how Rio uses its police in the favelas, but given that this arrest of 53 officers follows the arrest of another 70+ in January is at least giving some evidence that the government has the will to combat corruption and violence within the police force. Of course, it's still just rhetoric, and any real policy has yet to come out. Likewise, the efforts to curb police violence thus far have only involved those involved in the drug trade, or those committing such heinous violence that it can't go unnoticed (as was the case with the dismemberment of José Silva last week, or when it became clear in June that two cops unprovokedly punched an unarmed guy in the face and then shot him dead in February) - they haven't extended to punishment for the shooting of civilians in gun-battles in the favelas.

I still agree with one commenter on Globo's webpage, who said the problem is at the top of the police force, not the bottom, and that these arrests were just "For the English to see" ("pra inglês ver"). Still, if Cabral (or other leaders of the government) start implementing policy that affects change throughout the police force on top of these arrests, things may start changing here. I remain skeptical, but the picture is different than it was just 10 months ago.

Political Violence in Guatemala

Despite the Guatemalan civil war (which resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead indigenous peoples in a state-led campaign of genocide, among other things) having ended more than 10 years ago, there are signs that things may actually be getting worse in many ways. While the murder campaigns against indigenous peoples have subsided (though the poverty and racism has not), political violence is at an all-time high since 1996. Clara Luz López, a candidate for city council in Casillas, was shot and killed on her way home, bringing the total of political deaths to 40 up to now, with another 11 days before the election (September 9). Things are so bad that Álvaro Colom, one of the top presidential candidates, has a doctor who specializes in bullet wounds with him at all times, and travels only by helicopter.

Much of the violence comes from the rising involvement of drug lords in politics. Eager to see their influence spread to the political realm, many involved in the higher levels of the drug trade have resorted to violence to intimidate or remove opposition. The fact that the drug lords have managed to gain so much power in the post-civil war period is just one more way in which the U.S. drug policies have failed. Drug producers and transporters have continued to remain steps ahead of the law, and combatting the production instead of the consumption has neither slowed down consumption nor production, instead creating even greater violence in Latin America and elsewhere, including Afghanistan, where heroin production is growing astronomically again. Yet we continue to ignore the problem, while Guatemala once again is descending into a climate of terror and fear. There's no telling how the election will go, or if this violence will abate, but things are definitely bad in Guatemala, and there's no proof they are going to get better anytime soon.

An Open Letter to Ang Lee

Dear Mr. Lee,

I see that your new film, "Lust, Caution" has received an NC-17 ruling from the MPAA. Evidently it has too many "pelvic thrusts" for the board, among other things.

By now you should know how the MPAA and the United States works. The fact that the female characters might enjoy sex or, God forbid!, have an orgasm, is deeply offensive to this nation. More offensive is the idea that a man would perform oral sex on a woman. That clearly violates the nation's values.

What you need to learn is what Americans find acceptable. Sawing a woman in two for instance. Totally acceptable. Other things you might do is torture a woman to death, have a woman thrown to her death from a tall building, or otherwise see women humiliated. That is OK.

If you follow my advice, you will at least get an R rating. If you can get a BIG STAR in your film, you'll even get a PG-13.

Terror and Repression in the Favelas

This week, O Globo, the newspaper of the largest media conglomerate in Brazil, started running a series on favelas. Globo is one of the leading figures in categorically treating favelados as "traficantes," regardless of whether they are actually involved in the drug trade or not.

However, it seems they are perhaps actually starting to look into the issue of violence, the police, traficantes, drugs, corruption, and paramilitary violence a little more critically at last, for the series is focusing on the 1.5 million favelados in Rio themselves (the link is just a report Globo released online of the report it is offering - in true Globo fashion, you have to buy the newspaper to read their story).

Instead of ignoring any non-traficante favelado, as it traditionally does, Globo instead investigates how the violence impacts the daily lives of those who live in the favelas and are just trying to get by. What is more, it is one of the most even-handed stories Globo has ever provided (though that is a skewed measurement), reporting on the lives of those who lost loved ones not just to drug lords, but also to police who frequently invade favelas and rather indiscriminately shoot. Globo even reports on how the actions of "bandidos" ("renegade" police that function almost as paramilitaries and that the media uniformly treats as a few bad elements, rather than a chronic problem with the military police) have resulted in deaths and increased violence in the favelas in some cases.

Globo really doesn't hold back the punches, either. In one of the most damning statements, the journal points out that the number of favelados "desaparecidos" between 1993 and June of this year is 10,464. 10,464 dead in 14 years. That's roughly 9,700 more than were killed during the 21 year Brazilian dictatorship. That's 7,000 more than died in Chile under Pinochet. Brazilians generally don't even bat an eye when a favelado's death is reported (if it's reported), but when seen in the large number, it can't help but startle anybody, given the sheer number. Globo has no problem categorically saying this is worse than the dictatorship (and, strictly in terms of deaths, the numbers make it hard to argue otherwise, especially since these are the deaths under a liberal-democratic federation, and not a military government). Indeed, the series title itself is "The Brazilians that still live under the dictatorship" ("Os brasileiros que ainda vivem na ditadura").

Certainly, there are problems still within the reporting. While the police (including rogue cops who go into the favelas and kill for what basically amounts to sport) are present, Globo can't stay away from the subtle but important twist of always mentioning the traficantes first, in turn treating the issue as a cause-effect relationship ("if there were no traficantes, there would be no bandidos"). This approach refuses to put on a level playing ground the violence the police carry out and the violenc acts the traficantes commit. What is more, while this series will doubtlessly reach millions of people, the likelihood of this series marking a watershed in how Globo reports the violence and life in the favelas is minimal. After this series, the "journalism" in Globo, as in every other major media source, will go back to completely ignoring the favelados save for the traficantes, real or reported. I could be wrong, but I doubt I am, and if Globo does prove me wrong, that's fine with me. Still, this has the potential to be an important step in slowly shifting how the media, and in turn society, view the favelas as nothing more than dens of criminals and lazy (black) people who do nothing for society (save for, of course, cleaning the houses of the middlle class and elites for generally unliveable wages). For once (and who knows when I'll have the chance to say this again, if ever), O Globo deserves applause for taking this action and reporting this story, warts and all.

More on the Favela Violence

Not to put too fine a point on what I've been saying recently about calling favela residents "traficantes", but today's passage in the New York times (an AP report, and not Larry Rohter's reporting) really reinforces what I said. Favela-resident community organizer Edmundo Santos Oliveira points out,

"For the police, everyone is a drug trafficker, especially after they’ve killed you.”

More Violence in the Favelas

Today, over 1300 military police officers invaded one of the larger favelas in the northern part of Rio, allegedly killing 19 people in their ongoing version of the "war on drugs". (It's worth noting the MP here is simply armed, militarized police; it is not the police of the military in the way that American MPs are). The number of dead has wavered back and forth in the media throughout the day, though most accounts now seem to be settling on 19, including 13 alleged traficantes, and it seems there were 6 more dead. News reports here claim that the six were weak links in the traficantes' chain that the traficantes themselves killed. The police occupied the favela and found a signifiant weapons caché near the top of the favela (most all the favelas in Rio are spread out along the mountains and hillsides that pop up in the city).

The media are declaring the move a huge success, and the use of 1300 military police officers is certainly unprecedented. To be honest, I'm not quite sure who has decided to step up the efforts against the favelas so fiercely. Unlike in the U.S., the governors of the states in Brazil and the president are much more aligned, and work together far more here than in the U.S. Thus, this could be an order coming from Lula himself, from the military, or from Rio's governor. I'm not really sure what they hope to accomplish with this. Arguments that it's not about the upcoming Pan-American games may be true, as the state has increased pressure on druglords in the favelas since a string of violence at the end of last year temporarily shocked the city. However, such arguments may be false, though, since the efforts have really increased in the last few weeks.

Unfortunately, I doubt today's capture of arms and the dead of 13 "alleged" traficantes (I've commented before on how the media uses that term indiscriminately to dehumanize favelados). The police cannot stay in the favela forever. As soon as they leave, it is probable that either some other members of this favela (Alemão) will fill in the previous traficantes' void, or that some neighboring favelas' traficantes may try to move in on the turf (turf wars between favelas and their traficantes are very real in Rio).

As is often the case, the poor majority of favelados who simply live there with little economic recourse are still the victims in all of this. The occupation in the name of crime-fighting has left many innocents wounded in the crossfire and unable to return to their homes. Even worse, as a precursor to today's action, police throughout the city have been concentrating at the entrances to favelas and strip-searching "suspects", yet generally targeting the elderly and the children residents of the favelas. I'm not going to pretend that it's impossible that these groups, and particularly teens, could be used to smuggle drugs or arms, but the fact that pre-teen children and the elderly are being arbitrarily strip-searched when they try to return home is inexcusable.

Yet, once again, Rio doesn't seem particularly upset by this. The media refers to the actions ("Hurricane 1" and "Hurricane 2" - all good military maneuvers must have their names) as simple "searches" of those going into the favelas, reducing the severity by neglecting to mention the searches involve stripping. Only through a recent conversation my wife had with the main contact for human rights in Rio did I learn of the severity of the searches. Yet this doesn't make the news. Instead, there are some benign "searches" vaguely referenced in the media, buried deep in the news, yet when 13 traficantes and 6 alleged associates are dead, the media here is trumpeting the good news. All the while, innocent residents of the favelas continue to suffer and be ignored, as has been the case too often. Until Brazil can address the issues of poverty and the obscene gap in wages here, the favelas, and the comments they make about this country in terms of equality and race, will never go away.

Right-Wing Bloggers on Virginia Tech

It's certainly depressing to see the right-wingers immediately revert to racism to discuss the Virginia Tech murders.

Prometheus 6 points us to Debbie Schussel proclaiming that upon hearing the killer was Asian that a "Paki" was responsible. When her idiocy was pointed out to her, she replied, "Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students." Nice. Prometheus also links to this post claiming that the shooting, "immediately suggested someone with a level of military training that only South Korean males can generally be expected to have." What????

Meanwhile, Treason in Defense of Slavery Yankee, among others, has a series of posts saying that the way to get around instances like this is to have no gun control at all and allow everyone to carry concealed weapons. He actually claims that when he was in graduate school at East Carolina, he knew many people who walked around armed and that this made him feel safer.

Now, TIDOS Yankee has said a lot of stupid things, but as a college teacher who has had more than one confrontation with students in his short time, the idea of facing a crazy student with a gun is frightening. I'm sure TIDOS and his friends would simply argue that it was my fault if I too did not carry around a handgun and used it on my student when threatened.

God save America from these people.

Crime and Punishment in Brazil

Rather gruesome news from Rio today. In one of the poorer parts of the city, an 18-year-old kid and his 17-year-old friend carjacked a lady in the suburbs. She tried to get her 6-year-old son out of the back seat, but he got tangled in the seatbelt. The 18-year-old proceeded to start the car and gunned it, dragging the 6-year old for 7 kilometers and killing him, presumably by decapitation (the head was found in a separate location than his body).

This has sent shockwaves throughout Rio. The gruesome nature of the boy's death has revolted everybody (even the perpetrator's parents helped to track him down). The boys have been arrested, but there is outrage over the prospective criminal punishment, too. In Brazil, not only is there no death penalty (a good thing); the maximum prison sentence for ANY crime is 30 years (a bad thing). And as for the 17-year-old, he is automatically classified as a delinquent, and is facing a maximum of 3 years in a juvenile detention center.

I'm not a lawyer, but there are a couple things worth discussing. First, there is the maximum jail sentence of 30 years. As I've said, it's great that there is no death penalty here (or anywhere in Latin America, though cases like this have and do create a knee-jerk demand for it sometimes). However, with the 30-year limit, some truly heinous crimes by repeat offenders will still only amount in 30 years of jailtime. There is no way to give a longer sentence, period. Thus, a serial killer who potentially kills 17 people faces the same sentence as somebody who kills one person. Obviously, by many standards of justice, this would ideally be re-adjusted, perhaps (and I draw only on my own knowledge here) akin to a system in the U.S., where crimes like armed assault, armed robbery, or rape can get you in the 30-year range, while murder can get you 30 years or life, depending on your past, your present, etc. However, while I know some Brazilians who think there should be a re-calibration of sentencing, it obviously can't be fixed so quickly, because A) changing the sentencing would require basically reformatting the entire penal code, and B) the jails are already so overflowing, and the police are far from lenient in the number of arrests and treatment of prisoners, so this is rather unlikely anytime soon.

The second issue at hand here is the fact that, in Brazil, there is a hard-and-fast adult/underage age of 18. If you commit a crime at 18 years of age, you're tried as an adult; if you are even one day under 18, you are tried as a juvenile. There is no variation and flexibility like there is in the U.S. To me, this is an idea that may sound decent at first but reveals itself to be rather useless and even offensive at the end of the day. Certainly, by sticking to the hard-and-fast rule, you don't have cases like wrestling death of 1999, where a fourteen year old was sentenced to jail for life (Dave Chappell hit it on the head in his standup, where he related this case to the R.Kelly allegations, in which the public decried allegations that Kelly peed on a 15-year old "child," even while trying a 14-year-old "adult" for murder. As Chappell put it, "If you're old enough to murder, you're old enough to know if you want somebody to pee on you or not"). More recently, we have the Genarlow Wilson case resulting in unfair sentences for youth.

However, once again, by the same token, there are cases like today's in Rio. Because a 17 year old consciously committed a heinous crime but is one year younger than his friend, he will only face 3 years in a juvenile detention center (no walk in the park, certainly, but I think most would take that over 30 years in jail). Certainly, judges and prosecutors in the states can and do abuse the power to decide which young people will be tried as adults, and which will be tried as juveniles. However, given the restrictions of the hard-and-fast rule for 18 in Brazil, one also sees the benefits of some leeway in terms of crime and age. However, such reform is unlikely to arrive anytime soon (if at all).