What does a 16-year-old figure she’ll get these days for a car jacking, robbery, conspiracy and a police chase through uptown that makes the nightly news and endangers the lives of parents and young childen on their way to the circus?
Apparently the answer in Mecklenburg County is now six months to a year in jail or prison. So writes Cherish Moise on her facebook page.
DAMN MI NI66a jayla an cynthia loccd up ima turn myself in on monday get dhz 6mnths to a year ova wit
Moise’s two underage female accomplices were caught by police, but Moise, 16, was still at large from Friday’s uptown police chase until she turned herself in Monday evening.
That’s still appallingly low, but I have to say that’s an improvement from the Gilchrist days, when the above, for a person without an adult record, would have resulted in all the serious charges dropped and probation, if that, on the misdemeanors.
For years, I spent hours a month digging through criminal files, and got a good idea of how many months, if any, one would serve for various crimes because the way the District Attorney’s office handled crimes was pretty standard. At the same time, I lived in some pretty tough transitioning neighborhoods, and was amazed at how good a working knowledge troubled teens and young adults had of the local sentencing practices of the District Attorney’s office. They were surprisingly familiar with — and accurate on– what they would “get” for certain crimes and committed them accordingly.
I’ve made a note on my calendar to check on Moise in the coming months to see if her predication, and thus the current working theroy on the street under the new district attorney, Andrew Murray, is accurate. While she didn’t clarify if she meant six months to a year probation or prison, I can only assume if she thought she’d get probation she wouldn’t have bothered to run.
Stay tuned.