Yesterday, a jury in West Palm Beach, Florida convicted Nathaniel Brazill, the 14-year-old who killed his teacher last year, of second-degree murder. With this decision, the murdering youth escaped a first-degree murder conviction, which would have kept him behind bars for the remainder of his life without any chance of parole.

This court case no doubt received national television attention in this time of trendy school shootings due to the fact that Brazill is only 14 years of age, and he was being tried as an adult -- a decision with which many people, including Florida governor Jeb Bush, disagreed. Nathaniel Brazill was only 13 years of age when he shot his teacher, Barry Grunow, on May 26, 2000. Brazill showed up at school with a gun he had stolen from a family friend's house after a school counselor had suspended him from school for throwing a water balloon. Brazill allegedly intended to shoot the counselor as a result of the suspension, as testified to by a friend of the young boy.

Brazill's defense attorney, Robert Udell, was quoted as saying, "I don't think Nathaniel can think past the next 10 minutes. He doesn't know 10 years, 20 years, 30 years in jail. It's a lifetime to him. He doesn't understand those numbers." This is a quite interesting comment from Udell, considering anyone who has passed "Law 101" would be able to tell you that it's quite inappropriate for one person to determine in a courtroom -- unless investigated professionally by experts in the psychology field -- exactly what another person might and might not understand. Of course, this is of no concern to Udell or anyone else looking to diminish the significance of killing someone in cold blood -- especially if you stand to make a ton of money for saying it.

What is even more interesting, or disturbing for that matter, is the fact that Udell was probably correct in stating what he did. Nathaniel Brazill probably can't think past the next 10 minutes of his life at any given point in time. It probably takes someone that stupid to commit a murder in the first place, as anyone with a relative degree of intelligence and common sense should be able to discern right from wrong. Of course, as is evident in schools across America today, we aren't as concerned with arming our children with the skills capable of allowing them to understand how to tell time or to think critically as we are with making sure we forgive any action our children choose to display, no matter how negative or severe. Unfortunately, it seems that murder is an action we're all too willing to forgive, as well.

This incident invites discussion of another trendy topic of the time, glorified by the liberal left -- "hate crimes". Gaining momentum a couple years ago in Texas when James Byrd was heinously dragged behind a truck by his neck until he met his ultimate demise, Democrats have been trying to pass legislation that would increase the penalty for any crime if it was proven that hate was involved. There are very few white Americans who would deny the racist actions of James Byrd's attackers, but laying a foundation of hate to a crime that could only be construed as hateful would likely not decrease hateful crimes as much as it would fuel individual causes. Consequently, President Bush is currently taking heat because he refuses to pinpoint certain groups that these laws would specifically support, namely homosexuals and minorities. The area of largest concern is that this sort of legislation would imply that it would be okay to hate certain people, but not others. In effect, a heterosexual could end up being prosecuted more harshly for victimizing a homosexual than a homosexual would be for victimizing a heterosexual.

We have already witnessed on numerous occasions how "civil rights" leaders like Jesse Jackson and his buddies in the NAACP have tried mightily to exploit the "white racism" in America, from the James Byrd incident to the supposed "disenfranchisement" of black voters in Florida during the last presidential election. Incidentally, how many people remember the case in Decatur, Illinois about a year and a half ago when six black teens were expelled from school for engaging in gang-like, riotous behavior in the gymnasium stands of a high school during a sporting event? Concurrent with the school's "zero tolerance" policy, in which disciplinary policies would be carried out swiftly and strictly in the light of severe misbehavior, the thugs were expelled from school. Consequently, Jesse Jackson himself showed up in Decatur to protest the expulsion of the students from school, even getting himself arrested for his own racist cause in attempting to depict the school board members as racist. Ironic?

Perhaps the complaints of radicals like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or the actions of the NAACP would be taken more seriously if they were evenly distributed. A little over a year ago, an 8-year-old white boy named Kevin Shifflett was gruesomely murdered by a black man while playing in his front yard in Alexandria, Virginia. Where was Jesse Jackson or the NAACP to protest this "hate crime"? If we're so intent on bearing down on racially-motivated crimes and murders (read: "hate"), surely there should be just as much public outrage over the killing of an innocent white boy as an innocent black man. However, barring local television news networks and newspapers such as the Washington Post, this story went virtually unnoticed nationwide. Why? Because in this scenario black racist activists couldn't continue to paint the picture of white racist America.

And so we come back to the murder of a white school teacher by a black student. What would have happened if the boy was white and his teacher black? Where was our nation's so-called "civil rights organization" during this trial? If Jesse Jackson and the NAACP are really so insistent upon exposing hatred and protecting Americans' true civil rights, wouldn't this have been an opportune time to show their support, especially in this time of turmoil on school grounds? Or, does a neglect in supporting a white shooting victim by a black attacker merely expose the absurdity of hate crime legislation in the first place? Murder is murder, no matter how you look at it. Passing legislation that would allow murderers to go free because a prosecutor couldn't prove that "hate" was involved in an already malicious act detracts from the integrity of the judicial process in prosecuting criminals.

Perhaps the most lethal results of the verdict in the Brazill case remain to be seen. And they may have nothing to do with hate or "racism" whatsoever. Jurors stated that they weren't looking to send a message in convicting Brazill, but by not intending to send a message, they sent one loud and clear: Don't like what your teacher says to you? Come on into school and kill them! Just make sure you shed a tear or two when they ask you how you felt as you watched your teacher die, and everything will be okay.

Maybe everything isn't "okay" for Nathaniel Brazill, as he will surely serve a prison sentence. For how long, we won't be certain for another month or so. But the realistic severity of his malicious intent was overshadowed by his defense's ability to convince a jury that Brazill didn't "hate" the teacher he shot, and that he didn't shoot the teacher he originally intended to, which could have led to a first-degree murder conviction. The fact remains, however, that Nathaniel Brazill brought a gun to school with the intent to use it -- it hardly matters on whom.

During the trial, Brazill cleverly mentioned that Grunow was his "favorite" teacher. Gee, when I was a kid, we used to give them apples.