N.B.:With role models like this, how could one stray?  A commentary on the questionable moral value of religion…

N.B.: He would be better served by engaging council that could plead for a reduced sentence for a first offender.

From the Plain Dealer, by Amanda Garrett

” A 16-year-old Stow boy charged with murder involving men who responded to job postings on Craigslist believes God will spare him from decades behind bars.

The boy, whom The Plain Dealer is not naming because of his age, wrote to his father last month expressing his hopes and fears. His father shared a copy of the handwritten letter with The Plain Dealer at a reporter’s request.

“There’s a chance I might be out by the time I’m 42,” the boy wrote. “I know there is no way in hell that any kind of God would do that to me.””

The boy, a junior at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, is charged in Noble County with aggravated murder and attempted murder.

He is accused of helping his 52-year-old mentor, Richard Beasley, in at least two shootings — a fatal attack on David Pauley, 51, of Virginia, and the wounding of Scott Davis, 48, formerly of Canton.

The boy’s family has said Beasley, who has a long criminal history, started taking the boy to church after Beasley claimed to find God and opened a halfway house in Akron.

Police now say the halfway house was a front for a brothel. Beasley has since been charged with running a prostitution ring and selling drugs.

The teen doesn’t address the charges against him in the letter, but he did apologize to his father for putting him in “this position” and said he hoped his father could forgive him.

He also assured his father that he is OK. Jailers, he wrote, put him in solitary confinement and he passed the time by exercising and reading. The teen said he had already finished “Treasure Island” and “Robin Hood.”  (N.B.: Isn’t 16 rather old for these?)

But the thought of spending the next 26 years in prison was clearly on his mind.

If that happens, the boy wrote, “all my meaningful family members would be dead.”

His aunts and uncles, his grandmother and his pets would be gone, the teen wrote, adding that his parents would be dead or dying.

“I think about this and know that there is no way God would do that to me,” he wrote. “Something will happen between now and then.”

He is accused of helping his 52-year-old mentor, Richard Beasley, in at least two shootings — a fatal attack on David Pauley, 51, of Virginia, and the wounding of Scott Davis, 48, formerly of Canton.

The boy’s family has said Beasley, who has a long criminal history, started taking the boy to church after Beasley claimed to find God and opened a halfway house in Akron.

Police now say the halfway house was a front for a brothel. Beasley has since been charged with running a prostitution ring and selling drugs.

The teen doesn’t address the charges against him in the letter, but he did apologize to his father for putting him in “this position” and said he hoped his father could forgive him.

He also assured his father that he is OK. Jailers, he wrote, put him in solitary confinement and he passed the time by exercising and reading. The teen said he had already finished “Treasure Island” and “Robin Hood.”

But the thought of spending the next 26 years in prison was clearly on his mind.

If that happens, the boy wrote, “all my meaningful family members would be dead.”

His aunts and uncles, his grandmother and his pets would be gone, the teen wrote, adding that his parents would be dead or dying.

“I think about this and know that there is no way God would do that to me,” he wrote. “Something will happen between now and then.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: agarrett@plaind.com, 216-999-4814

Emphasis Mine

see:http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/12/youth_charged_in_craiglist_kil.html