Morningside Park 1
Not enough advocates are talking about the murder of college student Tessa Majors, and more importantly the investigation and impending prosecution of Rashaun Weaver, the young Black boy charged with her murder.
While sitting in a bar in New York City over the weekend, I saw snippets of what appeared to be a familiar news story flash across the TV screen. Here we were once again with a young white girl that was attacked in a New York City park. Since December 11th, when Tessa Majors, an 18-year-old Barnard College freshman, was discovered severely wounded on the steps of Morningside Park, a media, criminal investigative, and political frenzy has ensued focused on bringing her killer(s) to justice.
In solving Tessa’s murder, the NYPD has investigated three young Black boys between the ages of 13 and 14 years old. After arresting and interrogating a 13-year-old suspect without an attorney present, Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., charged one of the other suspects, Rashaun Weaver, with her murder. The local news station announced that Rashaun, only 14-years-old, would be tried as an adult on two counts of second-degree murder and several counts of robbery.
My heart sank.
It’s a story we’ve seen unfold throughout the last 400 years in this country. The classic American-girl-next-door, the face of innocence’s life cut short by what is being grouped this time around as weed, criminal justice reform, and Mayor Bill De Blasio’s lax enforcement of the law by several current and former NYPD law enforcement leaders. In another common narrative, one Youtube video, even put the text “bring back the death penalty and fry the devils” over an image of Rashaun.
Despite much evidence to the contrary, particularly if you are Black, current culture espouses an ideology that doesn’t shame victims. As a result, much of the commentary and media attention surrounding this case has shied away from or buried some important elements. As a consumer of information, you are asked to:
- Never mind that it’s alleged Tessa was in the park to buy drugs. A piece of information that both Tessa’s family and Mayor Bill De Blasio do not deny, but have condemned anyone for discussing.
- Never mind that it’s alleged Rashaun only stabbed Tessa after she bit his hand during a violent struggle, the full details of the circumstances leading up to which have not been revealed to the public.
- Never mind that Rashaun’s father is also behind bars, when we know the negative impact of having a parent in jail.
- Never mind that, once again, we’re trying a young Black boy as an adult when we know that Black children are tried, sentenced, and incarcerated as adults at much higher rates than their white counterparts and that doing so hearkens back to the racist “superpredator” criminal legal practices of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, the “Color of Juvenile Transfer,” a report by the National Association of Social Workers found that 53% of the youth prosecuted as adults in 2015 were Black, despite making up less than 15% of the national youth population.
Do I believe the individual(s) responsible for Tessa’s death should be held accountable for their actions? Of course, but what does justice look like when you’re Rashaun Weaver and only 14 years old? If we look to Supreme Court precedent regarding sentencing of juvenile offenders for guidance, we will find opinions that have made the following distinctions between adult and juvenile offenders:
- lack of maturity
- increased vulnerability to environmental influences
- underdevelopment of prefrontal cortex and limbic systems, making juveniles more impulsive and reckless
- intent to kill the victim
Similar arguments have been made with regard to charging and trying juveniles as adults, as well, particularly those as young as middle schoolers. Legislatures around the country have been shifting their policies toward taking this line of thinking into consideration from raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to limiting the housing of youth in adult jails and prisons to limiting pathways of transfer to the adult system to restoring judicial discretion by limiting statutory exclusion and direct file. New York state, in fact, has made steps towards improving when children are charged as adults with a “Raise the Age” law passed in 2017. In a multi-year rollout, “Raise the Age” raised the age of criminal responsibility to 18, with several exceptions, including cases in which a felony crime has been committed that involves significant physical injury, display of a weapon, or sex offenses. If charged as an adult, juveniles will be tried in the newly created Youth Court, where adult sentencing will apply, but the judge is to consider an offender’s age. However, even when one of the aforementioned escalating factors is present, the District Attorney has the authority to request removal of the case to Family Court. In the most high profile and public case since full implementation of “Raise the Age” on October 1, 2019, District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. did not choose to make such a request for Rashaun Weaver.
In complex cases such as this, we have to ask ourselves where is the justice for Black boys like Rashaun? If we don’t, we will undoubtedly repeat similar mistakes of the past.
