Boston Judge Sets Bail at $250,000 for 12-Year-Old Boy

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<p>This is utterly ridiculous. A Boston judge set bail at $250,000 for a 12-year-old disabled boy who possessed a hand-gun. The attorneys asked for $5000. What message is this judge sending? That poor, disabled children are just as capable as being menace to society as criminals whose bails almost never reach that high on average? The boy’s mother, who just enrolled in nursing school, cannot even afford this bail! Hell, who can when most people don’t make that kind of income and the crime does not justify it? This is just a mockery of the judicial system. I am lost in what kind of message the judge and the mayor are sending to the deviant youth. It is biased and unethical. </p>

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<p>But to Judge Paul D. Lewis, the case was fresh evidence of a world gone mad. He set 50 times the bail, $250,000 cash, for the South End boy yesterday morning. </p>

<p>The boy’s lawyer said he was developmentally disabled and had a clean record. Even police and prosecutors were stunned by the amount. </p>

<p>It was a striking decision in an otherwise routine case that exposed the frustrations and complexities of managing persistent urban youth violence that confronts the courts and families in need every day. </p>

<p>''These kids don’t take responsibility for anything," Lewis, 64, said in an interview after the court hearing. ''They’re fearless. It’s out of control. It’s beyond out of control." </p>

<p>The boy, whose name was withheld by police because he is a juvenile, was taken into custody yesterday at a Department of Youth Services pretrial detention center. His mother, a nurse’s aide, could not come close to raising the high bail, the boy’s lawyer said yesterday. </p>

<p>''I was shocked," said the lawyer, Mariann Samaha, who plans to appeal the bail. ''God, he’s 12 years old. He has no judgment." </p>

<p>But Mayor Thomas M. Menino supported Lewis’s decision. </p>

<p>''You have to send messages that we’re not going to tolerate guns on the streets," Menino said, adding that he thought many youths believe they can elude the justice system. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005&lt;/a&gt; /08/24/judge<em>sets</em>250000<em>bail</em> for<em>boy</em>12/</p>

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<p>How on earth did the boy get a gun in the first place?</p>