12-year-old guilty of murder

A judge found a 12-year-old boy guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced the 12-year-old murderer to remain in juvenile detention until he is 23. According to a Los Angeles Times report on Jan. 14, 2013, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Soccio commented that “the boy remains a threat to society. … I think he is a very dangerous boy."

Finding the 12-year-old Riverside boy guilty of murder was not an easy task for the judge, the Dist. Atty. Michael Soccio, or anyone involved in the case.

What made the case of the 12-year-old guilty murderer an emotionally challenging trial was the fact that the Riverside boy had lived a life of abuse and neglect.

The 12-year-old murderer’s father, Jeffrey Hall, was a West Coast leader for the neo-Nazi organization known as the National Socialist Movement. According to court records, Jeffrey Hall took his son to neo-Nazi meetings and activities that included coordinated events with hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan. During one of those events, the father and son team joined others for an illegal immigrant “patrol” along the Mexican border.     

 During the trial of the 12-year-old, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jean P. Leonard commented that the fact that Jeffrey Hall tried to indoctrinate his son into the hate group, that he tried to brain wash him, and that he exposed his 12-year-old son to guns, hate, and violence certainly contributed to the 12-year-old’s murder.

On May, 1, 2011, while Jeffrey Hall was asleep on a couch early in the morning, the then only 10-year-old “crept downstairs with Hall’s .357 magnum revolver and shot his father point-blank in the head.”

The 12-year-old boy’s murder of his father was only the culmination of a life filled with trouble. Not surprisingly, the 12-year-old boy who was found guilty of murder today had been “expelled from eight schools for violent outbursts, including an attempt to strangle a teacher with a phone cord.”

What does a boy have to do to signal to society that he is a walking time bomb?

What if this 12-year-old boy would not have been only guilty of murdering his father but 27 other people as in the Connecticut school shooting?

No discussion about gun control, mental health, or school safety measures can save the lives of any children or adults if society does not start to act.

How much physical or mental abuse does a child need to endure by a father or a mother before someone else takes action?

If there is no responsible action for a child in a family, in a school, or in society, it is no surprise that a 12-year-old is guilty of murder.                                                          details