Ned Gardner: Blind justice

Regarding the July 9 news article “4 indicted on murder charges in Cary teen’s death”: The case is a litany of adolescent behavior riddled by poor decisions and illegal actions.

The four charged should certainly be held accountable in the tragic death of another young person. But is first-degree murder all around the appropriate charge? And would Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman (who certainly had prosecutorial flexibility in the matter) have brought such charges if gender and race had been flipped? If, in exactly the same manner, a teenage black male drug dealer (as defined by current state legal statute, anyway) dies and four white teenagers (three female) were in the pick-up truck?

Who is executed then? Who spends 25 years in prison or gets a life sentence without parole? Is justice blind? Or not?

Just asking some insensitive, probably unpopular and, to me, troubling questions.

This story was originally published July 16, 2015 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Ned Gardner: Blind justice."