Post by _Code on Jan 28, 2006 12:21:30 GMT -5
Link
C&P Goodness:
Opinions?
Thoughts?
Was he too strict?
Really interested to hear Snow's take on this especially, but all opinions welcome. Its time for another good debate
Go!
_Code
C&P Goodness:
The judge had chastised nine students caught drinking at a Troy high school prom last spring. That would be the end of it, he figured.
It was, until Judge Michael Martone stumbled across a Web site weeks after the students had been sentenced to probation. Leering back at him from his computer screen were some of the same students from Troy Athens High School, now in college.
On the site, they were giving him the finger. They were toasting him with cups of beer and chugging shots of Jagermeister liqueur. They were posing with beer cans stacked almost to the ceiling, and retching into toilets at Michigan State University.
The Web site's headline said: "F U Martone. ... Night after court/ Hahaaa."
Martone was astonished.
The girls -- two of whom were honor students -- were from a top high school known for its drinking-prevention programs and where Martone had addressed the student body just days before the prom.
About seven months later, a few sips of booze before a prom had turned into a traumatizing ordeal for three families, led to jail sentences for three girls and left Martone, a nationally recognized crusader against teen drinking, wondering, "Why didn't I get through to these kids?"
Martone, noting that 3,000 underage drinkers die each year from alcohol-related deaths, said he reacted the only way he could. But some parents questioned whether his actions were justice, or overkill.
Ultimately, it was the students' brazen use of the Internet that would be the tipping point.
Prom night turns sour
On a spring evening last May, minutes before the prom, limousines lined up in a park in Troy where parents snapped photos of their daughters in gowns and sons in tuxedos. Among them was senior Mary Meerschaert, soon to be listed under summa cum laude at the school's honor ceremony.
After the photos, Meerschaert climbed into a white Hummer limo with 17 friends, including her soccer teammate Rachel Stesney and Amanda Senopole, whose grade point average was just a fraction lower than Meerschaert's.
As the limo pulled away, Meerschaert said she realized: "Four of the kids had drank before the pictures and no one knew. We got in the limo and they were wasted.
"And then they started taking out bottles. ... There was a flask or two, and another bottle. It was just being passed around. ... Most of us just sipped. I think it was Southern Comfort," she said this month.
When the limo arrived at the prom, pulling up to Petruzzello's Banquet Hall in Troy, one girl staggered into the parking lot. School officials quickly pulled her aside for questioning.
Meerschaert and the others thought they were safe.
"We sat down and started eating dinner," she said. "After 15 minutes, our adviser came up to us and said, 'We want to see you in the hall.' They had our whole limo out there."
Police administered breath tests. Meerschaert was one of nine students ticketed for drinking, those involved said.
"I blew a .02," she said -- the minimum needed for a violation under Michigan's zero-tolerance rule for minors. She said one officer offered her a break.
"He said, 'I'll give you another test later so that you can be under .02.' But our principal said no, 'It's school policy. We have to call your parents.' "
Honor status stripped
The next day, Meerschaert's parents were shocked to get an e-mail from the school. Their daughter had been suspended for five days, along with eight others, her family said.
That was the first school sanction. Meerschaert said she and Stesney also were suspended from the soccer team for two weeks, then allowed back for the season's final few games -- but only after they wrote apologies to their teammates and the team voted to bring them back. Stesney could no longer be team captain.
Added to that punishment, Meerschaert and another friend, Amanda Senopole, were banned from wearing the decorative white stole of the National Honor Society over their graduation gowns.
Meerschaert's mother, Polly Meerschaert, said she e-mailed the school and asked to appeal. But a panel of teachers held firm. So the Meerchaerts decided to yank their daughter from all graduation functions.
Troy Athens Principal Catherine Cost allowed a compromise.
"The concession was that Mary could have her stole just to take home, so that we could take her picture in her full cap and gown. But she had to turn it back in and she could not wear it across the stage at Masonic Temple," said Polly Meerschaert.
"I tried to make a teachable moment out of this -- with the school system, with the judge," Polly Meerschaert said last week. "But that didn't happen. These people were only interested in punishment." .
The girls' next punishment would be administered in a courtroom.
Martone's mission
Days before the prom incident, Judge Martone of Troy's 52-4 District Court had paid a visit to Athens High School, his fifth time in five years, to address the Class of '05.
Martone, 58, has devoted his career to battling under-age drinking.
In 13 years on the bench, he has given speeches on drinking's dangers to more than 150,000 students across the nation.
Other judges have praised and emulated his crusade, especially his dramatic school assemblies in which Martone holds actual court sessions, marching guilty adult defendants off in handcuffs to the gasps of students. He follows up with warnings about the risks of alcohol poisoning, bringing up tearful parents of teens who have died from drinking, making gyms and auditoriums quiet as a cathedral.
So, it was an unhappy coincidence that, after Martone had given his prom warning to the Troy Athens assembly, some of those students appeared before him to be arraigned on charges of being a minor in possession of alcohol, a misdemeanor.
Before they trudged away, he issued a warning that would haunt them: "There's to be no alcohol."
That means they not only can't drink again, but they must stay away from wherever alcohol is served or consumed.
For the girls, that order would be difficult to obey. Two -- Meerschaert and Senopole -- were headed to MSU, and they soon would hold parties for their visiting friend, Stesney, who was headed to the University of Detroit Mercy.
First, though, came sentencing for the prom incident: probation, fines, court costs, community service and alcohol-education classes. .
Off to college
Once at East Lansing, the partying began -- in students' rooms and dorm game rooms, and at tailgate parties before football games.
That's when Meerschaert began passing around a digital camera.
Soon, her computer skills would have her creating the Internet photo gallery. More than 400 digital photos showed some students appearing passed out, others using special tubes to gulp beer, couples playing a drinking game called "beer pong," inebriated girls sitting on toilets -- all of it tagged with captions, many of them profane and aimed at Martone. Stesney, visiting from Detroit, and Senopole, Meershaert's roommate, were also shown drinking at parties at MSU.
Meerschaert, now 18, later told Martone she did it because she felt "betrayed by the legal system."
The site had been up a month when Martone surfed the Internet, seeking a news release on one of his prevention programs. By entering his own name into a search engine, he landed on Meerschaert's site instead. Almost immediately he recognized faces from Troy Athens and the prom incident, he said.
That triggered what he calls his most trying time as a judge. He was hurt, frustrated and disillusioned, he recalled.
"They made a mockery of the legal system," he said this week. "I had to do something."
The Web site, shown to police and probation officers, immediately became legal evidence for charging the three young women with contempt of court "for disobeying my direct order not to consume alcohol," Martone said.
Facing Martone, again
The students were brought before Martone again. He lugged the evidence into court, inside his laptop.
On Dec. 23, Meerschaert, the Web-site creator, joined Stesney in court, ready for their new sentences. This time, Meerschaert appeared without a parent or a lawyer. She said last week that she did so because she wanted to face Martone on her own, to show her remorse and willingness to accept responsibility for her misdeeds and to try to explain herself. She was deeply ashamed, she said.
She'd written a letter, asking for leniency. She handed it to the judge.
"It was sad," he recalled. "In it, she said she wants to be a criminal justice major. I told her, perhaps you might want to consider another line of work."
Martone began questioning Meershaert about her Web site, why she created it, and what some of its symbols and profane words meant.
In an exchange of about 45 minutes, Martone reminded her to be honest, as Meerschaert first evaded some questions, then admitted that her Web site did use profanity aimed at Martone, and that she had a drinking problem.
He sentenced her to 30 days in the Oakland County Jail. She was marched off in handcuffs, to spend Christmas and New Year's Day behind bars.
Martone then sentenced Stesney to 15 days. The two become cellmates.
Their parents were stunned.
Stesney's mother, Cheryl Stesney, who would not let her daughter comment for this report, said Martone "let his anger get out of control. He was just so hurt and embarrassed by that Web site."
Polly Meerschaert agreed. "I do feel this is all about vengeance. I won't say my daughter didn't make a mistake. But the minute it became personal, the judge should've removed himself," she said.
Last week, with Mary Meershaert out of jail early for good behavior, family members and friends shuttled her to her part-time job, classes at her new school, Oakland Community College, and her courthouse appointments for breath tests and probation meetings. Her parents have yanked her out of MSU -- out of its culture of drinking, her mother said. She is barred from driving until mid-February.
Yet, Martone doesn't waver about his decision to impose jail time.
"I told them, 'If you think this gives me any pleasure, you're wrong.'
"You know, it's just a crying shame. I work my butt off trying to help kids like this, trying to figure out what works. And then they do things like this."
Michele Compton, chapter head of MADD in Oakland County, said Martone is stern but principled.
"We know that with kids, you really need to be in their face, and same thing with their parents," Compton said.
A lighter sentence
Last week, the last of the friends, Senopole, now 18, appeared before Martone to face a new sentence.
Utica attorney Christy Puduk represented the teen. Although not forgiving the partying, Puduk said she wondered if jail time was appropriate.
"These kids, I will say, weren't putting anyone else at harm. They weren't driving," she said. In court, Senopole stood before Martone.
"I have a new roommate now. She doesn't drink," she said.
She also said her fall grade point average at MSU had been 3.6. She pledged to Martone that she would introduce her dormitory to the alcohol-education program B.R.A.D., named after Brad McCue, the student from Clarkston who died at MSU in 1998 after drinking 24 shots of liquor.
Martone looked down from the bench and said, "I think you're sincere. And your attorney says you're sincere." He then doubled Senopole's hours of community service, to 100, but gave her 10 days of jail time -- fewer than the other girls -- and let her serve them one at a time, on weekends, "so it doesn't interrupt your studies."
Outside the courtroom, her father, Tom Senopole, said quietly, "Judge Martone's a fair man. ... She was just in the wrong crowd, wrong time, wrong place."
Of the nine students who drank before the prom, two others have served jail time as well, for later alcohol infractions. But only the three women created evidence that landed in the judge's laptop.
Polly Meerschaert said the experience has taught her that parents can't be too careful.
"Peer pressure is tremendous," she said. "Years ago, kids didn't think twice about getting a buzz.
"Now, I'd say to parents, 'Check the purses. Check the limos. Talk to the limo driver. Find out who else is going.' I would second-guess everything."
It was, until Judge Michael Martone stumbled across a Web site weeks after the students had been sentenced to probation. Leering back at him from his computer screen were some of the same students from Troy Athens High School, now in college.
On the site, they were giving him the finger. They were toasting him with cups of beer and chugging shots of Jagermeister liqueur. They were posing with beer cans stacked almost to the ceiling, and retching into toilets at Michigan State University.
The Web site's headline said: "F U Martone. ... Night after court/ Hahaaa."
Martone was astonished.
The girls -- two of whom were honor students -- were from a top high school known for its drinking-prevention programs and where Martone had addressed the student body just days before the prom.
About seven months later, a few sips of booze before a prom had turned into a traumatizing ordeal for three families, led to jail sentences for three girls and left Martone, a nationally recognized crusader against teen drinking, wondering, "Why didn't I get through to these kids?"
Martone, noting that 3,000 underage drinkers die each year from alcohol-related deaths, said he reacted the only way he could. But some parents questioned whether his actions were justice, or overkill.
Ultimately, it was the students' brazen use of the Internet that would be the tipping point.
Prom night turns sour
On a spring evening last May, minutes before the prom, limousines lined up in a park in Troy where parents snapped photos of their daughters in gowns and sons in tuxedos. Among them was senior Mary Meerschaert, soon to be listed under summa cum laude at the school's honor ceremony.
After the photos, Meerschaert climbed into a white Hummer limo with 17 friends, including her soccer teammate Rachel Stesney and Amanda Senopole, whose grade point average was just a fraction lower than Meerschaert's.
As the limo pulled away, Meerschaert said she realized: "Four of the kids had drank before the pictures and no one knew. We got in the limo and they were wasted.
"And then they started taking out bottles. ... There was a flask or two, and another bottle. It was just being passed around. ... Most of us just sipped. I think it was Southern Comfort," she said this month.
When the limo arrived at the prom, pulling up to Petruzzello's Banquet Hall in Troy, one girl staggered into the parking lot. School officials quickly pulled her aside for questioning.
Meerschaert and the others thought they were safe.
"We sat down and started eating dinner," she said. "After 15 minutes, our adviser came up to us and said, 'We want to see you in the hall.' They had our whole limo out there."
Police administered breath tests. Meerschaert was one of nine students ticketed for drinking, those involved said.
"I blew a .02," she said -- the minimum needed for a violation under Michigan's zero-tolerance rule for minors. She said one officer offered her a break.
"He said, 'I'll give you another test later so that you can be under .02.' But our principal said no, 'It's school policy. We have to call your parents.' "
Honor status stripped
The next day, Meerschaert's parents were shocked to get an e-mail from the school. Their daughter had been suspended for five days, along with eight others, her family said.
That was the first school sanction. Meerschaert said she and Stesney also were suspended from the soccer team for two weeks, then allowed back for the season's final few games -- but only after they wrote apologies to their teammates and the team voted to bring them back. Stesney could no longer be team captain.
Added to that punishment, Meerschaert and another friend, Amanda Senopole, were banned from wearing the decorative white stole of the National Honor Society over their graduation gowns.
Meerschaert's mother, Polly Meerschaert, said she e-mailed the school and asked to appeal. But a panel of teachers held firm. So the Meerchaerts decided to yank their daughter from all graduation functions.
Troy Athens Principal Catherine Cost allowed a compromise.
"The concession was that Mary could have her stole just to take home, so that we could take her picture in her full cap and gown. But she had to turn it back in and she could not wear it across the stage at Masonic Temple," said Polly Meerschaert.
"I tried to make a teachable moment out of this -- with the school system, with the judge," Polly Meerschaert said last week. "But that didn't happen. These people were only interested in punishment." .
The girls' next punishment would be administered in a courtroom.
Martone's mission
Days before the prom incident, Judge Martone of Troy's 52-4 District Court had paid a visit to Athens High School, his fifth time in five years, to address the Class of '05.
Martone, 58, has devoted his career to battling under-age drinking.
In 13 years on the bench, he has given speeches on drinking's dangers to more than 150,000 students across the nation.
Other judges have praised and emulated his crusade, especially his dramatic school assemblies in which Martone holds actual court sessions, marching guilty adult defendants off in handcuffs to the gasps of students. He follows up with warnings about the risks of alcohol poisoning, bringing up tearful parents of teens who have died from drinking, making gyms and auditoriums quiet as a cathedral.
So, it was an unhappy coincidence that, after Martone had given his prom warning to the Troy Athens assembly, some of those students appeared before him to be arraigned on charges of being a minor in possession of alcohol, a misdemeanor.
Before they trudged away, he issued a warning that would haunt them: "There's to be no alcohol."
That means they not only can't drink again, but they must stay away from wherever alcohol is served or consumed.
For the girls, that order would be difficult to obey. Two -- Meerschaert and Senopole -- were headed to MSU, and they soon would hold parties for their visiting friend, Stesney, who was headed to the University of Detroit Mercy.
First, though, came sentencing for the prom incident: probation, fines, court costs, community service and alcohol-education classes. .
Off to college
Once at East Lansing, the partying began -- in students' rooms and dorm game rooms, and at tailgate parties before football games.
That's when Meerschaert began passing around a digital camera.
Soon, her computer skills would have her creating the Internet photo gallery. More than 400 digital photos showed some students appearing passed out, others using special tubes to gulp beer, couples playing a drinking game called "beer pong," inebriated girls sitting on toilets -- all of it tagged with captions, many of them profane and aimed at Martone. Stesney, visiting from Detroit, and Senopole, Meershaert's roommate, were also shown drinking at parties at MSU.
Meerschaert, now 18, later told Martone she did it because she felt "betrayed by the legal system."
The site had been up a month when Martone surfed the Internet, seeking a news release on one of his prevention programs. By entering his own name into a search engine, he landed on Meerschaert's site instead. Almost immediately he recognized faces from Troy Athens and the prom incident, he said.
That triggered what he calls his most trying time as a judge. He was hurt, frustrated and disillusioned, he recalled.
"They made a mockery of the legal system," he said this week. "I had to do something."
The Web site, shown to police and probation officers, immediately became legal evidence for charging the three young women with contempt of court "for disobeying my direct order not to consume alcohol," Martone said.
Facing Martone, again
The students were brought before Martone again. He lugged the evidence into court, inside his laptop.
On Dec. 23, Meerschaert, the Web-site creator, joined Stesney in court, ready for their new sentences. This time, Meerschaert appeared without a parent or a lawyer. She said last week that she did so because she wanted to face Martone on her own, to show her remorse and willingness to accept responsibility for her misdeeds and to try to explain herself. She was deeply ashamed, she said.
She'd written a letter, asking for leniency. She handed it to the judge.
"It was sad," he recalled. "In it, she said she wants to be a criminal justice major. I told her, perhaps you might want to consider another line of work."
Martone began questioning Meershaert about her Web site, why she created it, and what some of its symbols and profane words meant.
In an exchange of about 45 minutes, Martone reminded her to be honest, as Meerschaert first evaded some questions, then admitted that her Web site did use profanity aimed at Martone, and that she had a drinking problem.
He sentenced her to 30 days in the Oakland County Jail. She was marched off in handcuffs, to spend Christmas and New Year's Day behind bars.
Martone then sentenced Stesney to 15 days. The two become cellmates.
Their parents were stunned.
Stesney's mother, Cheryl Stesney, who would not let her daughter comment for this report, said Martone "let his anger get out of control. He was just so hurt and embarrassed by that Web site."
Polly Meerschaert agreed. "I do feel this is all about vengeance. I won't say my daughter didn't make a mistake. But the minute it became personal, the judge should've removed himself," she said.
Last week, with Mary Meershaert out of jail early for good behavior, family members and friends shuttled her to her part-time job, classes at her new school, Oakland Community College, and her courthouse appointments for breath tests and probation meetings. Her parents have yanked her out of MSU -- out of its culture of drinking, her mother said. She is barred from driving until mid-February.
Yet, Martone doesn't waver about his decision to impose jail time.
"I told them, 'If you think this gives me any pleasure, you're wrong.'
"You know, it's just a crying shame. I work my butt off trying to help kids like this, trying to figure out what works. And then they do things like this."
Michele Compton, chapter head of MADD in Oakland County, said Martone is stern but principled.
"We know that with kids, you really need to be in their face, and same thing with their parents," Compton said.
A lighter sentence
Last week, the last of the friends, Senopole, now 18, appeared before Martone to face a new sentence.
Utica attorney Christy Puduk represented the teen. Although not forgiving the partying, Puduk said she wondered if jail time was appropriate.
"These kids, I will say, weren't putting anyone else at harm. They weren't driving," she said. In court, Senopole stood before Martone.
"I have a new roommate now. She doesn't drink," she said.
She also said her fall grade point average at MSU had been 3.6. She pledged to Martone that she would introduce her dormitory to the alcohol-education program B.R.A.D., named after Brad McCue, the student from Clarkston who died at MSU in 1998 after drinking 24 shots of liquor.
Martone looked down from the bench and said, "I think you're sincere. And your attorney says you're sincere." He then doubled Senopole's hours of community service, to 100, but gave her 10 days of jail time -- fewer than the other girls -- and let her serve them one at a time, on weekends, "so it doesn't interrupt your studies."
Outside the courtroom, her father, Tom Senopole, said quietly, "Judge Martone's a fair man. ... She was just in the wrong crowd, wrong time, wrong place."
Of the nine students who drank before the prom, two others have served jail time as well, for later alcohol infractions. But only the three women created evidence that landed in the judge's laptop.
Polly Meerschaert said the experience has taught her that parents can't be too careful.
"Peer pressure is tremendous," she said. "Years ago, kids didn't think twice about getting a buzz.
"Now, I'd say to parents, 'Check the purses. Check the limos. Talk to the limo driver. Find out who else is going.' I would second-guess everything."
Opinions?
Thoughts?
Was he too strict?
Really interested to hear Snow's take on this especially, but all opinions welcome. Its time for another good debate
Go!
_Code
