I Plead Young and Dumb

Quantel Lotts grew up in home of fighters he was taught at very young age that if someone disagreed with him fighting it out with your fist was the quickest way to a solution. Quantel father grew up pressing the message in his kids’ head that if they were his seed they better be the toughest children on the block. When there would be family outing where his uncles and cousins would all get together the adults would make show by having their strongest boy or girl fight one of their cousins in order to see who had the most “Thugged out off spring.” Even within Quantel home when he misbehaved instead of his parents punishing him they would have one of his sibling box him with bare fist. Quantel’s mind was molded into a violence solves everything mindset at early age so at the age fourteen when his step brother got into argument over a toy the outcome for Quantel was programmed to be violent. Instead of talking the problem out Quantel turned to beating his stepbrother into submission yet Quantel went pass the normal physical bruises and the result in return ended with his stepbrother death. The courts sentenced this young boy to life in prison without a chance of parole. Because of lower social status and poor parenting Quantel became a child thrown into a world of adult punishment. A fourteen year old should not have to be condemned to die in prison for an accident that was caused by a lifestyle he or she had no choice in.
A child can be his parents’ product of positive enforcement or the victim to their negative influences. Quantel didn’t know better there were videotapes shown of him fighting at the age of nine with his brother yet the courts decided to focus on him being violent threat at young age instead of the parents laughing and cheering in the background. Children are walking clay; they can be easily molded into monsters or angels depending on their environment. Quantel had no priors and was never taken aside in class or had intervention by a teaching staff where they spoke to his parents and told them this needs to stop. Young teens experience widely fluctuating emotions and vulnerability to stress and peer pressure without the adult ability to resist impulses and risk-taking behavior or the adult capacity to control their emotions. At the same time, because a child’s character is not yet fully formed, he will change and reform as he grows up. Yet if the courts over look these differences between a fully developed adult and a mentally unstable child they strip away any chance for change. Correction programs as Juve or Problem housing are around in United States to help correct and give a second chance to these children yet many are overlooked and set straight to their deaths. The courts mix messages and prejudge in order to pretty much kill off the problems in our youth.
Interrogation in any form is a highly stressful environment where psychological techniques are used to obtain information. Quintal was afraid and confused while an adult much older interrogated him asking him question about his stepbrother. Quintal being from low class uneducated background combined with his limited understanding of rights, confusion about trial processes, limited language skills, and inadequate decision-making abilities, Quintal was torn apart in the adult criminal justice system. How was Quintal suppose to understand a system made for leading to false confession and strategies used to take more facts then needed out of the littlest situation. Quintal being from a poor families and did not receive adequate legal assistance to challenge his convictions and sentence and had no lawyer when the police contacted them. Quintal not knowing what to request for help and not having the social status was given a lawyer who did act or even realize their clients were just 13 or 14 at the time of the offense. Even with his stepmother pleading to the courts that Quintal didn’t understand cause he was never taught better, based on his interrogation and the act of murder of his stepbrother Quintal was lost from the beginning. Because of these adult-trying methods Quintal was sentenced to life in prison without even a quality lawyer support.
Quantel is now 29 years old has served almost half his life in prison. When he arrived in the Missouri prison, which would become his deathbed, he was so small his prison uniform didn’t fit. One of the jail attendants said that when he arrived he was so scared of everything and didn’t eat for the first week in prison. The warden himself said that when he looked upon Quantel on his arrival he could see that this child had no place in prison. Quantel was beaten, harassed, and was almost raped by an adult inmate within his first month of prison. He became a victim to more violence then he had ever experience and ended up committing minor nonviolent infractions in order to escape to solitary confinement. Quantel has spent most his time in a closet space afraid to interact with other inmate that he calls monsters. Quantel has also tried to commit suicide and when ask for his reasoning he said that death seems like a better option then waiting to die in a box. Quantel could of done 5 years in Juve came out and started a new life has a corrected citizen but instead e is a victim to justice system that chooses to claim the lives of the youth that were never given a second option.