In an LA Times story about the ongoing trial of a child who shot and killed his neo-Nazi activist father Jeffrey Hall, regional director of the National Socialist Movement: "According to the Press-Enterprise, the boy said he didn't think he would be pubished because he watched an episode of the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds. In that episode, he said, a boy killed his abusive father and was not arrested." .

  • SAMO1415

    pubish (verb):  to cover in other people’s pubes as a form of pubishment.

    • Robert Cruickshank

       There’s a “Bush Administration” joke in here somewhere.

  • SuperMatt

    CSI is definitely the worst crime show I’ve ever seen.  Every single criminal is either shot dead or confesses.  The law doesn’t matter in the slightest in the show.  I can feel my brain cells dying as I watch it.  Of course, I’ve only seen 2 episodes, but that was all I could stomach.

    • petertrepan

      I hate the whole genre. Grisly crime happens. Jaded detective walks in and makes some smug joke. People are interviewed. Everyone turns out to have sinned in the eyes of God. One person in particular turns out to be a sick individual. Detective corners them, and they confess. Detective says “You are a SICK individual!” Viewers roll happily on their couches as they share in the righteousness of moral judgment and agree that this is a sick, sick world, except for them. It belongs in the same category as Jerry Springer.

      • http://www.facebook.com/matthuw.sjuosa Matthew Souza

        These shows also make everyone falsely think that they are qualified to be a detective.  They also have been used to create smarter criminals that know what to watch out for and how to better cover their tracks.  

        • Mladen Kalinic

           Nevermind the fact how they glamourise brutal crime crime sceenes. It’s like it’s a fashion shoot “Ok people, let’s do this!”. WTactuallF. Like anyone in real life would dare to make a documentary about something like that in that format.

          • Anne Noise

            “The corpse isn’t smizing or tooching at all!”

        • gijoel

          ” They also have been used to create smarter criminals that know what to watch out for and how to better cover their tracks. ”

           Ha ha ha. That’s like saying Grey’s Anatomy will make me a brain surgeon. Seriously, I once saw a CSI Miami episode where they separated an assassin’s dna from dried sweat on a leaf. And all in the time it takes to make a smoothie.

          • ocker3

             CSI Miami is the worst offender in the group

          • nettdata

             You…. can shut up.

        • benher

          And juries dumber! I’d have to google the source article, but jurors are having increasingly ludicrous expectations from prosecutors due to over exposer to CSI and it’s mantra of  ”You can lie… but you know what can’t?  DEE ENN AYYY!!!”

        • http://mattdm.org/ Matthew Miller

          Your statements are contradictory. Why would the shows work for educating criminals but not everyone else?

          • DevinC

            It’s possible to misinform the public but lead criminals to take useful precautions, like wearing a hairnet in the mistaken belief that DNA can be extracted from hair alone, or cleaning up a crime scene because they have an inflated belief in the powers of the almighty CSIs.

            That aside, it’s just as likely an intelligent criminal would be deterred.  As far as I know, there’s only anecdata.

      • benher

        Don’t get me started! Being forced to watch no less than 6 seasons of this abismal show (because marriage is compromise) has destroyed any dying remnants of faith that I had in American Television (and without Breaking Bad it would no doubt have stayed that way).

        What bugs me is the lights – I mean, They must have their own LED factory on tap somewhere in China to produce the goofy colored lighting for that show. Every crevice of every cabinet glows purple green and or blue.

        And as you said, the moral grandstanding is more vomit inducing than Iraqi-War-Justifications circa 2002/3. 

        • Colin Curry

          Hang on a sec, your partner forces you to watch this crap? Stand up to him/her and say “I’m not watching this” next time.

          • http://twitter.com/EleOcho L8

            I bet he/she can’t because sex. And homemade cookies. But mainly sex while eating homemade cookies.

          • Ashen Victor

             I´m not going to ask where you dip the cookies…

          • benher

            Sadly, all true. As if I could get aroused after that. The NYC/Miami crossover was the worst. I keep scrubbing my brain, but it just won’t disappear.

      • jackbird

        The Vincent D’Onofrio episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent frequently turn this inside out – the detective can only solve the murder by empathizing with the killer’s motives.  The Chris Noth ones appear to be an attempt by the writers to do exactly as you described above with the most twisted shit they could possibly think of.

      • Anne Noise

        You forgot the part where someone says, “Enhance!”

      • IconoclastTwo

         It really baffles me how the entire genre manages to be successful. I don’t think it’s quite as bad as the reality TV clones, but I think it’s pretty much unwatchable.

    • benher

      2 episodes is more than enough. 

      Don’t let them do to you….. what they ddiiiiiddd tttoooo mmmmeeeee!!!!

    • blueworld

      But the article says it was an episode of Criminal Minds, which is the BEST crime show ever. Says me.

  • http://www.facebook.com/trevor.goldwater Trevor Goldwater

    I’m more offended by the pure lack of proofreading the LA Times apparently does than my a child killing someone.

    • TooGoodToCheck

       proofreading fail irony.  should be “than by”, not “than my”

      Usually I wouldn’t say anything, but you seem pretty in to proofreading.

      • SAMO1415

        Apparently his a child could get away with murder.

      • marukosu

         You mean “pretty into”, but good point nonetheless.

        • TooGoodToCheck

          Huh.  I actually had to look up the rule on that one, but you are correct.

          I used googlefight to try to figure out how common each usage is, and the results are seriously weird.  Comparing “I am in to X” vs “I am into X”, the error usually wins.
          http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=I+am+in+to+proofreading&word2=i+am+into+proofreading

          Overall, “I am in to” beats “i am into”, at a shade under 2 to 1.  And yet once you add the word “pretty”, suddenly the correct into is leading at 4 to 1.  WTF?  Do people who know english better also use the modifier “pretty” more?  Does the inclusion of the word pretty somehow remind the writer that into should not be broken up when it means interested?

          So strange.

          • bardfinn

            “Into” is correct. “Are you into sobbing into a handkerchief?” Is far less awkward than “Are you in to sobbing in to a handkerchief?”. First sentence uses “into” as the slang and traditional, second sentence flails and then drowns. One sobs in a handkerchief, or into a handkerchief, and /technically/ you could sob /to/ a handkerchief, but …

      • SamSam

        Muphry’s Law.

        • Anne Noise

          TIL.

  • CoffeeJedi

    Give this kid a medal, and a parade, and a puppy, and some ice cream. Seriously though, I really hope he gets some counselling and therapy but doesn’t go to jail, it would be tragic for him to lose his adolescence after already losing his childhood.

    • tomxp411

      Honestly, I think TV networks need to be more accountable about what they present to the public. When they “educate” the public with inaccurate information and bad science, they should be forced to play disclaimers after every commercial break, like they do with broadcast shows that carry adult content.

      • ChicagoD

        In fairness, if they televised what these procedures were really like they would never, ever have decent ratings. Notice that Court TV is now TruTV with entirely different content? You know why? Court is like C-SPAN without the exciting parts.

        • DisGuest

           They destroyed that channel.

  • ChicagoD

    Well, arrested is not convicted. I don’t know all the facts, but this kid could still walk. Not that his problems will be resolved if he is, but there is no guarantee he will be convicted.

    • acerplatanoides

      Case study: does life imitate art?

  • http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait

    my god, TWO typos in that short LA times article.

    • http://anomicofficedrone.com/ AnomicOfficeDrone

       Sounds like they’re improving.

  • mrtut

    Pubished by the pubic at large?

  • OoerictoO

    really?  everyone is blaming the show?
    how about: “idiot doesn’t fall far from the tree” or similar.
    no matter what i feel about one fewer bigot on the planet..

  • The Rizz

    If the kid was actually being abused by his father, and was convinced that his only option was to murder his father, THEN HIS ONLY OPTION WAS TO MURDER HIS FATHER. Saying “he could have done blah blah blah” isn’t always true, especially for children; they believe what their parents tell them, and don’t know to believe anything else. The kid was being frequently beaten (according to the article), and when finally given a way out (kill your torturer), he took it as his only option.

    • elix

      I’m kind of on this line of thinking. Murder is wrong, but if the facts are truly as they’re being presented here, this seems to be much less wrong than many other murder scenarios.

  • rocketpjs

    If I was captive to a person who had total control of my life (in the way parents do, for better or worse), and that person routinely beat (i.e. tortured) me, I might kill them to escape as well. If the torture went on long enough most of us might just kill them period.

    Nobody would blink if a kidnapped person who was tortured regularly killed a captor while making their escape.  The only difference here is that it is a child killing a parent and we still have leftover nonsense about ownership when it comes to children. 

    We don’t own our children, we are responsible for them.  That responsibility comes with a lot of authority and power, which some abuse horribly (while many others merely fail miserably).  Many people confuse ‘responsible for’ with ‘do what I want’, in our own lives and those of others.

    Of course, responsible prosecutors need to make sure the abuse is real and they aren’t being played by a junior psychopath, but if it was a real abusive situation then the kid needs help, not punishment.

    • jhoosier

      Well, he’s being tried as a juvenile, at least, so hopefully if he is convicted, it will entail a good amount of counselling and help.  The article says the defendent claims he was beaten, and prosecution claims the father’s white supremacy didn’t have anything to do with it.

      Obviously though, we can’t conclude too much from just the evidence given in the article, so I’ll just say that whatever happens, I hope the boy and his family get help.

  • starfish and coffee

    Not to trivialise the suffering the boy must have gone trough, but I am grinning so much at the idea of a xenophobe killed by his own kid.

  • Guest

    Let’s lobby for a prime-time rerun of that episode!

  • LulamaeBroadway

    It’s such a fascinating case!  Is the kid  hero who killed a neo-Nazi?  Or is he a sociopath who killed his father?  And if the later, was his sociopathy due to nature or nurture?  Is the kid an empowered victim,  Dexter or Bundy?  And if the Dad was such a horrible human, does it matter if what was going on the brain of his killer?

    • C W

      “an empowered victim,  Dexter”

      Dexter has gone “whoopsidoodles!” and murdered innocent people, naturally.