The Death Penalty - Minnesota Style

This has been a frustrating day.  After laying down and getting a little perspective time with my dog:

I'm ready to address this mess.

This morning, I talked about the case of Lavauntai Broadbent.  This young 16 year old is dead.  He's dead because he attempted to rob a couple on Friday night in a St. Paul park.  He drew a gun in the process of the robbery, and demanded the couple's valuables.  He was then shot by one of the two people he was trying to rob, a person who was carrying a legal weapon via a Carry and Conceal permit.  He died on the scene.

Some facts:

• I never said this young man was innocent.  He was attempting armed robbery with a weapon.  If he was still alive today, he should be facing charges in a court of law.
• The individual who shot Lavauntai, will not be arrested.  In my opinion, he shouldn't be charged with a crime, because even I agree he didn't commit one.  Under current Minnesota law, he was within his rights.
• The gun Lavauntai had was never fired, at least that's what we've been told.
• As I said numerous times this morning, you can't presume Lavauntai was going to harm or kill anyone, but you also can't presume he would have just taken the valuables and left the victims alone.  Any speculation of the sort is purely hypothetical, and academic to the reality.

We can only deal with facts.

Minnesota, as a society, has approved the death penalty.  It's not called the death penalty, but rather Carry and Conceal, but it's the death penalty all the same.  In the case of Lavauntai Broadbent, he was instantaneously arrested, tried, convicted and executed for the crime of armed assault, without firing his weapon, by an individual who may or may not have any legal or police background.  This death sentence was handed down onto a 16 year old, instantaneously, by a regular citizen.

Carry and Conceal has failed miserably in Minnesota.  Not only has it not stopped or decreased crime (something that was promised it would do.  Look at a February post from this year on the blog, where I address that charade), it rarely has even had a chance to operate as it was intended.  What happened on Friday night in St. Paul was what Carry and Conceal legalized, instantaneous death penalty verdicts.

Most of the criticism I've taken has been expressed as such; self defense and the death penalty are two different things, and my labeling of what happened in the park being the death penalty is crossing a line.

The death penalty is not supposed to be legal in Minnesota, and is something which isn't supposed to be administered indiscriminately.  The death penalty, where legal, is supposed to be weighed heavily, in a process which is applied over years, with layers of reviews by law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, juries and appellate courts.  But with Carry and Conceal, we've given that power to individuals without a law enforcement, legal, judicial or appellate background, many with minimal weapons training and experience, and we allow them to enforce, in a split second, whether the person across from them lives or dies.

Self defense is a vague term.  Self defense doesn't have to be a bullet, as there are numerous ways for people to defend themselves, but in this case, self defense was administering an instant death penalty.  I'm saying it was self defense, but for some reason stating the punishment (the penalty for 16 year old Lavauntai's attempted robbery was death) angers some, likely because it sums up the punishment truthfully.  Lavauntai committed a crime, and was sentenced to an instant death, wrapped in a blanket of self defense.  That's just reality.

Depending on the circumstances, Minnesota had the harshest death penalty in the nation.  There isn't a state in the union, where the death penalty is legal, and where a 16 year old would be sentenced to death for an attempted robbery with a weapon which was never fired.  Not one.  He would, and should, go to jail, but no court in this country would have treated this as a death penalty case.  But in Minnesota, thanks to Carry and Conceal, that's exactly what it was.

And this was a 16 year old too.  A dumb, stupid 16 year old, who, thanks to Carry and Conceal, will never bother anyone else ever again.  The punishment, although legal, was WAY too harsh for the crime.

Carry and Conceal is a ticking time bomb.  How long until someone approaches a person in a park, asking for directions, and ends up dead because the shooter thought the cell phone the guy was reaching for was a weapon?  By labeling what happened to Lavauntai as self defense, it candy coats the incredibly harsh nature of what Minnesota has deemed as appropriate punishment.  How do we look at the shooter in the accidental case and insist he was a bad guy for instantaneously administering the death penalty while yet defending the death of Lavauntai?  Hindsight is not how these cases should be approved.

Apathy and bravado are not defenses either.  We need to think about what we are allowing here.  Just because you don't like calling it the death penalty, doesn't mean it's not.  Maybe we should rethink this entire law before we end up having a Minnesota Trayvon Martin, complete with people insisting the shooting was self defense, just like they did when they rallied around George Zimmerman.

Lavauntai Broadbent was committing a crime, the shooter was legally administering the death penalty through Conceal and Carry, and a 16 year old is dead...pardon me if I don't celebrate.