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Common Dreams reports
Reviled Florida State Attorney Angela Corey lost her reelection bid on [August 30], prompting widespread celebration as the woman The Nation once suggested was "the cruelest prosecutor in America" was ousted.
"Corey's loss is an encouraging sign that the public will no longer tolerate overzealous and unprincipled criminal prosecutions, including women and children", University of Miami law professor Mary Anne Franks said in a statement.
Corey, whose eight-year tenure in Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit Court saw her charge 77 children as adults in 2016 alone and sentence more people to death than any other Florida prosecutor, gained widespread notoriety for her inadequate prosecution of Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, and for seeking a 60-year sentence for Marissa Alexander, a domestic violence survivor with three children, for firing a warning shot in the direction of her abusive husband. (Alexander spent three years in prison.)
[...] Corey was defeated by unknown opponent and corporate lawyer Melissa Nelson, who will now face off with write-in candidate Kenny Leigh in the general election--although Jacksonville media noted that no write-in candidate has ever been elected to the state attorney position in Florida, and that Leigh has yet to make a single campaign appearance.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday September 02 2016, @09:43PM
It implies no such thing.
The brain is a complicated organ and genetics plays a relatively minor role in its development. Genetics dictate what you start with and to an extent what you get, but if it were a matter of genetics to the extent you're implying, then you wouldn't see the children of convicts growing up to be anything other than convicts. And you wouldn't see people being convicted that didn't have a bunch of relatives that had themselves being convicted.
The fact of the matter is that other socioeconomic characteristics are much more helpful in predicting future criminal behavior, albeit not perfectly. A child that's brought up in a well-adjusted family unit with positive expectations for the future is in a much stronger position than one that grows up with nothing to lose and adapted by emotional issues from being abused.