Updates: Alyssa Bustamante Court Hearing
* Alyssa Dailene Bustamante returned to the court today for her second hearing since her arrest on October 23, 2009. She stood before the Cole County Court on December 8, 2009 where her lawyers entered a plea of "Not Guilty" for the 15 year old Missouri teen. The hearing lasted less than one minute, during which Alyssa was said to have kept very quiet, averting her eyes and keeping her head down. She is being held without bail at the Cole County Jail and another hearing date has been set for February 16th at 9am, when attorney's will confirm if they are ready to move forward with the trial.
(Click here to read the article)
(Click here to listen to the hearing)
Bustamante's lawyer, Jan King, is requesting that her case be transferred to a new county due to vast prejudice that has surmounted since her arrest. Missouri law allows not only for a change in venue but for jurors from other counties to be brought into Cole County to reside over the case. King submitted a magnitude of internet comments to support and impact his venue change request.
Web bloggers on sites like ABC.com and Fox News have rushed the airwaves with comments condemning the young girl and wishing her a "slow" and "painful" death. The majority of these "concerned" citizens are quick to blame the parents, many unfamiliar with Alyssa's family situation and ready to pass judgement based on headlines. These internet activists are even quicker to call her "evil", a "sociopath", "a demon undeserving of the air she breathes"...
I ask you, what separates these bloodthirsty bloggers from the tormented teen, who at the time was heavily under the influence while taking prozac for major depressive disorder? These "moral" people sitting behind their computer screens, who are so keen to see a severely depressed 15 year old child meet the electric chair, and who even go so far as to call for other heinous, inhumane methods to make her suffer nonetheless?! Because the victim was an innocent? Because she wronged first? What makes any of these desires for bloodlust appropriate?
Please don't tell me "an eye for an eye" or I shall be forced to quote Ghandi and launch into a tirade against quoting the bible just on the laurels that it is the bible. Let's not have God be your answer for wishing pain and suffering upon a lost and damaged adolescent. In my mind murder is murder and never is rightly so.
I suppose I should iterate that I am in no way defending or making less the horrible, unforgivable decisions that Alyssa has made. I just feel that there is more to be obtained from the psychological elements of this case than simply writing her off as a bad seed.
(Watch Video Interview w/Alyssa's Friend)
Was it her under-developed mind and lack of parental love that has not afforded her the proper functioning for consequence? Was it a deadly combination of depression, drugs, and alcohol? Or has this girl simply been masquerading, buying her time, and plotting her evil schemes, as the media-inducing headlines would have us believe?
*Pictures via ABC.Com and Associated Press
For one thing I think many people see "depression" as just being really sad and don't get how very sick someonewith depression may be. Also it is possible she might better fit another psychiatric diagnosis. There is no denying this girl was seriously disturbed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that there is more to learn from this case, and just throwing Bustamante into the bad-seed bin is to ignore a source of information about a community and humanity in general that begs to be understood. And that one can believe this without minimizing the horrific murder of a nine-year-old girl. Wanting to understand something is not the same as wanting to excuse it.
And, apart from this girl, what of her still-loyal friends? What is going on in their minds? Are any of them likely to hurt others and/or themselves?
We all affect eachother in so many ways and if it takes a village to raise a child perhaps it takes the same to damn one.
Thank you. You articulated exactly what I was attempting to convey. It is possible to question a situation-- to want to look further-- without excusing the severity of the actions or degrading the trauma that took place. Beautifully put.
ReplyDeleteI just watched the movie, which more than implies sexual abuse. I don't know if Alyssa suffered such torment, but as a child who did, the one line that struck me most in the whole film was, "I feel nothing." 31 years after my incest nightmare ended, I still feel nothing. When you live without emotion, you are unable to feel empathy for others. This is probably a large part of what enabled Alyssa to do the unthinkable things she did. Being a teenager, without the rational thought processes to conceive consequence, not only for herself, but for Elizabeth and her family, merged with the inability to feel empathy is HUGE in this case. She deserves punishment, and she deserves treatment. If she's left to sit in prison for 35+ years with no psychiatric treatment, she will reenter society the same, sick little girl who walked into prison, only she'll be wearing an adult body. I pray this is not the case.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete