Pity the poor pirate, a toiler of the sea.

Defense lawyers agree: Just an innocent fishing trip.

That squishy sound? It’s my head. Beating the desk.

I’m from an Irish, Roman Catholic family. A child-safe expletive favored by the adults in my family was “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

And when I learned they’re taking the fourth Somali pirate to New York for criminal trial, where he’ll probably be tried as a minor, at that – I wanted to indulge in just such an outburst. The article refers to him as the “suspect.”

This article includes a heaping helping of guilt:

He recalled an exchange with one of the pirates, who were aged 17 to 19: “I said to him, why do you do that?” The pirate, Ruiz said, responded: “We’ve got 20 million people in Somalia who are poor, that don’t have education. We don’t have no food.”

Now we’ll have the expense of trying him. We’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars defending him. IF he’s found guilty by a jury which somehow manages to remember that there are quite a few countries where people are poor, uneducated and hungry yet don’t commit piracy and ransom people for millions, we’ll spend hundreds of thousands more feeding and housing him. Finally, when he gets out of prison, in all likelihood we’ll grant him a visa to stay here.

He could have been legally tried in Kenya.

Cross posted at PH.

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And when this youth is found not guilty, because of his youth, or the mitigating circumstances of his crime, this will certainly stop others from doing the same, right?

As I said on another post recently, 16 years old or 40 years old…they can/will kill you.

If the pirates see a ticket to the US and a visa,too, the pirate leaders will recruit more and more youngsters to ply the trade. Drug dealers often use underage kids as runners for this simple reason…an adult would face hard time, a youngster might get a few months in juvie.

coldwarrior on April 17, 2009 at 12:55 AM

I’m all for this. When he gets out of prison, we’ll need his income to float Social Security. Quick, capture 40 million more pirate teenagers!

Nethicus on April 17, 2009 at 1:09 AM

We could just continue importing them from Mexico and Guatemala.

The part that I find so infuriating is we’re about to undergo a legal procedure where the United States is put on trial for our treatment of Somalia. And you can depend on it – that’s what’s going to happen.

Laura on April 17, 2009 at 8:48 AM

Gee, if teenager pirates knew they’d be taken to New York, they’d all surrender.

What a circus. I hope their are some adults in the One’s administration who’ll nix this. Holder may not want to go down in history as the court jester.

There’s no way this will turn out well.

erp on April 17, 2009 at 8:58 AM