Over the loudspeaker at the Wal-Mart in Washington Township, New Jersey, a 16 year old kid could be heard :
”Attention, Walmart customers: All black people, leave the store now.”
And it’s appropriate that something so offensive, happening in a store with a history of being questioned about how it treats blacks, makes the news. This is a teaching opportunity. This is a chance for more discussion about relations, human beings, parenting. But it didn’t end there.
The boy, from Atlantic County, was charged by Gloucester County authorities with bias and intimidation and harassment in connection with the episode last Sunday. If convicted, he could face up to a year in a juvenile detention center, officials said. His name was not released because he is a minor.
“Witnesses said store officials took about 5 minutes before announcing that the statement was a prank and apologizing.”New Jersey law (N.J.S.A. 2C:33-4) provides that harassment occurs when someone:
Makes or causes to be made, a communication or communications anonymously or at extremely inconvenient hours, or in offensively course language, or any other manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm.
It easy to imagine some shoppers to be annoyed, in the generic sense of the word, by this prank. The language was offensive, though not course (I suspect they meant coarse, but this is Jersey). The kid didn’t announce who he was when he pulled this move, but then he didn’t actively conceal his identity either. They caught him on camera, and he was outed when he bragged about pulling it off.
No doubt people at the Wal-Mart were offended by this announcement. They had every right to be. And in a better world, that wouldn’t be limited to blacks who heard it, but to any right-thinking person in the store. Still, offended and angered by stupidity isn’t an element of the offense. If it was, most people would find their way into a jail cell at some point in their lives. Is there anyone who has done something stupid that angered someone?
Harassment statutes are deliberately vague and meaningless, as they are meant as a catch-all for conduct that people think should happen and have to be written in such a way as to cover a broad array of conduct. As bad conduct goes, this comes relatively close to something that, at least arguably, is covered.
But do we really want to put kids into jail, or even saddle them with a conviction, for pulling stupid pranks where no harm occurs? This remains a great teaching moment, both for the kid as well as the rest of us. Are we afraid he’s going to become a serial prankster, roaming from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart, trying to sneak onto the announcement system?
If he does it again, throw the book at him. This time, let’s turn one incredibly stupid act into something positive. And that doesn’t include the standard prosecutor announcement that this kid’s going down. Every stupid and offensive act does not require a prosecution.
H/T Randazza
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I caught one of the first articles on this, the gist of which was essentially “Someone made this announcement over the Walmart PA system and police and the DA are looking into it.”
So my natural expectation for the next update was that they would bring ridiculous trumped up charges against whoever did this.
Does this keed need a good talking to and possibly some public shaming? Absolutely.
Does he need to be jailed for what boils down to ‘unauthorized use of someone else’s intercom’? Hell. No.
But hey, here’s a chance for the DA or ADA to get a plea for disorderly conduct or something and notch another win on the resume, because that’s the only thing that really matters here.
So in closing, Prosecuting Attorneys need the tools to earn seats at the bench and whatnot, so move along citizen, nothing to see here.
Any rational person hearing this would have know it was a demeaning racial joke – no more, no less. It may reflect poorly on the kid who did it, but it does not endanger our democracy.
In contrast, the fact that a group of government officials in New Jersey would file criminal charges here is truly scary. If the kid replaced “black people” with “Republicans,” “fat people,” or “Mormons,” nobody would have considered prosecution. Similarly, if this happened in the deep South, and the kid were black and asked all “white people” to leave the store, prosecuting him would be viewed as outrageous, and would be termed by many as a racist decision by law enforcement aimed at intimidating minorities.
I have a difficult time thinking that this prosecution can withstand First Amendment scrutiny. Because the statute seems so overbroad, I did a quick review of the annotations. The Supreme Court of New Jersey says this law can only be applied in situations where the communication is done in a manner that “invades someone’s privacy” and may not be aimed at the CONTENT of the language. (State v. Hoffman (1997 NJ) 695 A.2d 236, 246.)
Under any meaningful application of this test, this prosecution is illegitimate.
This kid should be ashamed of himself. When he grows up, hopefully he will be. But so too should the prosecutors in New Jersey who took decided to criminalize racist jokes. And they’re supposed to be old enough to know better.
Let me get this straight:
A NJ teenager pulls a bonehead move with racial overtones and gets criminally charged.
A NY teenager falsely accuses four young men of rape and they spend a night in jail and she doesn’t get criminally charged.
Have I got this right?
This is another good opportunity to revive the discussion on corporal punishment as a penal option.
Agreed: Charging this kid with criminal misconduct is way overboard.
But how many–and how soon–civil suits are being filed against Walmart for permitting this to happen?
None. Hope this helps.
Scott,
As usual, excellent analysis.
Isn’t it funny that the prosecutor and the police chief, both of whom felt a need to hold a press conference over this, decided that they shouldn’t release the kid’s name?
As you identify, the kid requires some shaming. It seems like the response has been the exact opposite of what should happen. Instead of saying “the kid who did this is John Doe, and isn’t he an idiot?” and moving on… they decide to protect his privacy, yet arrest him.
It’s already an option, just not a SOLE option in most cases. I mean, sure, the judge might let you off with the beating the cops gave you while you were cuffed, but more likely you get that, 10 years in the penitentiary, plus whatever happenstance inmate-given beatings and shankings you might run into as well.
Plenty of corporal punishment in our justice system!