Brendan Depa is hard to miss. By the time he was 17 years old, he had already reached 6 feet 6 inches in height, a height that was often mentioned in every headline about him before his diagnosis of severe autism.
Not only does Brendan have level 3 autism, the most severe, but he also has ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder and reactive explosive disorder. It is important to note that people with level 3 autism usually require 24-hour care, and a jail is not a care facility, but he may end up spending the next 30 years of his life there. Brendan made headlines earlier this year when he beat a female paraprofessional over the removal of his Nintendo Switch. There are several conflicting stories about who took the game, but the fact remains that it was the cause of his explosion. The video of the attack is violent—so on the surface—it is understandable, whether one agrees or not, why people are calling for him to be sent to prison, but the truth of the matter is, that is not justice, and this case is yet another example of the system failing a Black child. The circumstances of why he was in foster care are not widely known, but at five months, Brendan came into the Depas’ lives and was adopted at two. In a letter pleading for leniency, his mother, Leanne Depa, recalls that he was overly fussy as a baby and struggled even in preschool. Things as simple as flies, stickers and discarded bandages easily upset him. Brendan performed better in smaller environments and structures which is why his parents chose to homeschool him as long as they could. During his teens, Brendan was on an ever-changing cocktail of mood-stabilizing medications to help control his irrational emotions that were also mixing with the hormonal changes of puberty.
Right – there needs to be a federal investigation into the group that saw to it Brendan Depa was placed in public school. @ktdonleavme pic.twitter.com/9pmXMrFcDU
— Casey's_Last_Ride (@LastCasey) December 2, 2023
Left with few options, Brendan was placed in a group home that specifically catered to people with special needs but was then removed and placed in public school, much to the reservations of his parents. He was removed because the home’s program only offered services for people who were over 22 or who had already graduated high school.
Brendan had not.
There was also a myriad of issues with their insurance company, from them paying for his care to his medications. In order to thrive in the public school setting, Brendan was provided an IEP, his took several months to develop. An IEP is a legally binding agreement for students with special learning needs and is put in place to help facilitate the best outcome for those who need it. Brendan’s video game and the use/removal of it were expressly mentioned in that same IEP and the results that could ensue were they not to adhere to the structures set in place. It was not followed, which resulted in Brendan’s uncontrollable outburst. Now Brendan, legally a child at the time of the incident and emotionally a child for the rest of his life, is facing 30 years in prison as an adult, and many people online are more interested in throwing him in jail and locking away the key than they are in restorative justice.
Isn’t jail supposed to be for someone who at least understands why they are being punished? What is this rush to throw children away, especially Black children? Why does it feel like the justice system is nothing but a covert operation for blood sport?
5 reasons why #BrendanDepa should not go to jail https://t.co/E3LR6SfZlT pic.twitter.com/TmjyqojRZl
— W.W.Y.D (@YouKnowTheVib) November 27, 2023
For those of you who are not familiar with Florida geography, this happened just an hour’s drive away from where Trayvon Martin was murdered and implicated in his own hunting. Matanzas High School, where the unfortunate incident occurred, is in the coastal Florida county of Flagler. In 1970, Flagler made national news when it was mandated to fully integrate its school system, which had previously allowed schools to do so voluntarily. According to the attorneys at Southern Poverty Law Center, and republished by Learningforjustice.org, in 2011-2012 Flagler County had the highest racial disparity in suspending and expelling Black students out of all 67 Florida counties. According to the Campaign for Youth Justice, in Florida, Black teens were almost two and a half times more likely to receive a jail sentence instead of community supervision than their white counterparts and received 7.8 % longer sentences than them as well. Brendan was originally slated to be tried as a juvenile but just two days later, a judge declared that a boy, who by his own therapist’s words, has the emotional maturity of a 4- to 6-year-old is competent enough to be tried as an adult. How cruel is this world where the same systems of checks and balances that are supposed to protect children turn around and feed them to the wolves because they are ripe enough physically? You cannot expect the American prison system, known for its egregious miscarriages of justice, to be the best place for Brendan, especially when a school system that was charged with the responsibility of following delicate protocol could not even manage to do so.
What Brendan did was wrong. There is absolutely no equivocation about that, but Brendan does not have the ability to atone for his actions the way neurotypical people do. If jail is about rehabilitation, which we all know it’s not for real, then what is the point of sending him there when he has no real understanding of the reason? It is merely to satisfy the lust of people who view Black kids as older and more prone to criminality. It is a call to action without purpose. It is void of justice.
Black kids rarely get the benefit of the doubt.
Online, Black kids get referred to as monkeys, animals or future criminals without hesitation, even without the presence of wrongdoing on their part. The justice system is not about justice nearly as much as it is about justifying the abuse and misuse of Black people. When a population can no longer serve you, you make them serve time in a for-profit prison system. Even as children, you demonize them for their own murders and victimizations. You can hunt them and say they attacked you (Trayvon Martin, 17), you can shoot them in the head for holding toy guns in an open carry state (Tamir Rice, 12), you can shoot them when their parents tell them to call the police (Aderrien Murry, 11), you can shoot them while they are asleep (Aiyana Jones, 7) and get away with it, as did every perpetrator of the crimes done to these four children. The youngest person with a known birthdate to be executed by the American Injustice System is George Stinney who was tried and convicted for the murder of two young white girls, aged 7 and 11, his conviction was vacated 70 years after his electrocution. When the media reports on white adults, especially lone gunmen who commit heinous crimes, ones that are methodical and that they have planned for extensive periods of time, they are also quick to report that the criminal had a history of mental illness as a justification for mass murder.
NEW: The mother of Brendan Depa, the 6ft 6in teen who beat his teacher unconscious over a Nintendo Switch, is pleading for the teacher to "show mercy" on her son.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 1, 2023
Depa's adoptive mom, Leanne Depa, says sentencing her autistic son to prison will be a "death sentence."
Depa is… pic.twitter.com/T2fBkeICBl
A documented history of challenges, lack of support, and literally being a special needs student is not enough to satisfy the hunger of those who would rather see a child spend the rest of his life behind bars than they would rather see justice.
