THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Curtis Brandon didn't kill James Murray, but that was only by chance and the skill of paramedics and physicians. Brandon shot Murray in the heart when the pizza deliveryman was too slow handing over his wallet, then shared the pizza with a couple of friends while watching a rescue squad save Murray's life.
For this episode a judge sentenced Curtis Brandon on Monday to a total of 53 years. He would be parole-eligible in 14 years . . . except that he robbed at least one other pizza deliveryman and was sentenced on Tuesday to 32 additional years in prison. In December he will be tried for robbery of a third. If convicted on that charge, Curtis Brandon will be a three-time loser under Virginia law, and locked up for life.
Tuesday Curtis Brandon turned 17.
In the recent annals of serious juvenile crime - so serious as to be incredible to most - Curtis Brandon is an oldster. There were in the past month the 10-year-old and the 11-year-old in Chicago who threw a 5-year-old out a 14th-story window, and the 11-year-old hoodlum in Chicago who was killed by fellow teenage gang members, and the preteens in Hopewell who set a 3-year-old afire.
Nobody likes to write anybody off, and nobody can say these preteens are unalterably on the road Curtis Brandon took. But a childhood replete with psychiatric treatment and juvenile ``justice'' did not head off Brandon's violence. And we ought to start keeping track, publicly, of juveniles who commit serious crimes, their sentences and their rehabilitation or lack of it. For the community must decide how much harm it will tolerate in the name of a reluctance to punish children as seriously as their crimes or to stigmatize a child as incorrigible, a reluctance outdated by reality. Some children are incorrigible, and pizza delivermen, toddlers and the rest of the community have a right to know who they are and where they are, and to be protected from them.
It's one thing to acknowledge why so many children are at risk of criminality: poverty, poor parenting, whatever. It's quite another, and quite unacceptable, to put the rest of society at risk on behalf of a fledgling or full-blown criminal, whatever his age. Early prevention, assuming its effectiveness, came too late for Curtis Brandon. Root causes don't ease James Murray's pain.
Virginia is getting serious about juvenile crime: The General Assembly has only recently lowered the age at which an accused can be tried as an adult to 14. A judge or jury will know of a juvenile record before sentencing. With Gov. Allen's plan in place, parole - Curtis Brandon was on parole when he shot James Murray - won't be a sure shortcut back to the street. And three-time felons will be jailed until old age or death robs them of the ability to rob others.
There might be an additional step: Make the publication of a repeat offender's name, his prosecution as either juvenile or adult and the severity of his sentence dependent on the crime, not on his age. Revealing the name might add a deterring element of shame that prods a family or a neighborhood to intervene before things get worse. And it adds a preventive element, if not for the offender then for those who choose to help or to give wide berth.
The lives of Curtis Brandons are tragedies the world so far lacks the remedy to reverse. Meantime, the world can't leave the James Murrays at their mercy. by CNB