Prosecutors
Veteran Prosecutor Takes On City’s Worst Juvy Offenders
Posted Jan 2, 2008, 02:50 pm CDT
By Molly McDonough
A veteran prosecutor in Tennessee known nationally for her victims' rights advocacy is shifting her energy to prosecuting Nashville's worst juvenile offenders.
For 51-year-old Kathy Morante, the new direction in her prosecutorial career has been a challenge, the Tennessean reports.
"It's already been very frustrating," Morante tells the paper. "There's no satisfaction in that I am putting a child away—a 15-year-old, a 17-year-old—for the rest of their life."
Morante, who did the brief writing in the landmark victims' rights case Payne v. Tennessee, says she remains motivated to give the victims a sense of justice.
"I'm not going to be able to solve the problem of a why a 14-year-old walks in a market and shoots the market owner," Morante is quoted saying. "The most I can do is give the victim some sense of justice."
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Posted by Tony Colleluori - 9 months, 1 week, 1 day, 8 hours, 14 minutes ago
How sad that the most Ms. Morante can come up with in order to give a victim justice is that she will put a child “away for the rest of their lives.”
If she is really unable to determine why children kill, is she really fit to be the person who deals with these types of crimes?
There are complexities in every murderer. The juvinile murderer is not only the least responsible but also the most rehabilitatable. Of course given what you quote from Ms. Morante, she will be unable to visit that reasoning.
By the way Ms. Morante, while putting a child away for a period may make the “Victim” feel better for a while, it makes no sense of the death and it brings back nothing but a sense of at best remorse for the individual who you have wearhoused and at worst a sense of vengence and jealously that the person is alive and living off the rest of us rather than being a productive person the way the real victim was productive. Rehabiltation is truly the victim’s justice in cases such as the ones Ms. Morante is speaking about. She offers her victims nothing more than an empty shell nothing to show for the life that was taken. For that, and for offering no solution she ought to be ashamed.
Oh well I guess 2008 will hold few improvements when it comes to juvenile (in)justice.