Teens’ sentencing questioned
Re “4 teens get probation, house arrest in Long Beach attack,” Feb. 3
Judge Gibson Lee has chosen to avoid the maelstrom, which would have followed had he followed the Los Angeles County deputy district attorney’s request for a nine-month sentence at a juvenile probation camp for three of the convicted teenagers.
Can anyone avoid the natural speculation of role reversal, where white teenagers attack three black women, hurling racial epithets and causing severe physical and emotional injury? You would have the crushing weight of the entire civil rights leadership visited upon the judge. Lee was not up for that level of abuse.
RALPH M. CASILLAS
Los Angeles
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The teenage defendants who were found guilty of the brutal, racially motivated mob beatings of the three young women in Long Beach were lucky they didn’t kill their victims. Otherwise, in addition to the sentence of probation and house arrest, the judge might have also ordered that the defendants be sent to bed without their dessert.
ROBERT OSTROVE
Oxnard
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