Texas justice, gone awry: Paris student gets 7 years for shoving hall monitor

Apparently blacknessis part of the crime there

How else would you explainthis?

There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.

The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher’s aide — was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.

Now, living two years in Honey Grove, I was fairly familiar with Paris. Not the most enlightened place in the world, but, even with its lynching history, probably nowhere near the worst place of about its size in East Texas today.

That said:

First of all it sounds like some people in Lamar County need to vote a judge out of office.

Second — East Texas cities wonder why they can’t more retirees and such to move there? Hello?