Yea, it's messed up isn't it? You can kill someone while high on drugs and get 14 years.... yet break into a house with a stolen gun looking for drugs & money and get 30 years. Crazy backward laws in this state...

Surely you're not saying that someone should be able to steal a firearm, break into a house for whatever reason and NOT get 30 years...

its all about the Booze industry.......they want DUI's to not be stiff, cant have there customers in jail forever.

Welcome to the USA......nothing fare about it.

and yes David you are wrong......30Years for breaking into a house and not hurting a sole. I mean come on.....

David - Definitely NOT. I am VERY against the 2nd Amendment....

Q: It doesn't matter if no one was hurt, the fact is that the accused showed up with a firearm - the victim(s) at the house don't know if that firearm is loaded or unloaded, AND if it were loaded, there's the chance that someone could be shot. If it weren't loaded, a victim could have a heart attack from fright, or they could suffer from some other accident trying to escape the criminal with the firearm.

Rather than fooling around trying to figure out if the firearm was loaded, unloaded, cocked, uncocked, etc. the distinction is simply that one showed up with a firearm to commit a criminal act.

Otherwise, you get every 2-bit criminal who'd show up with a firearm and then claim it was OK because it was unloaded. And loaded or unloaded, using a firearm in the commission of a crime is not OK. So to send the message that it's NEVER OK, we assign a very high penalty to that act - in this case, 6-30 years.

TJ - the 2nd Amendment doesn't just cover firearms - it reads, in part, "...the right to keep and bear ARMS shall not be infringed" [emphasis mine]. So what if they didn't show up with a firearm, but showed up with a sword? Giant bowie knife? Butcher knife? Baseball bat? Crossbow? Broken bottle? Spear? Nunchucks? Throwing stars?

Are those then somehow OK? I'm not saying that they are by any stretch of the imagination - merely trying to illuminate the fact that it doesn't matter what the weapon is - they are accused of committing a criminal act with a weapon, and it deserves a long sentence.

David - We are in agreement -- it does not matter the weapon they showed up with.

Curious to know if they had a weapon other than a gun, would it still be as strict of a crime they were charged with (my guess is probably not)? The sentence of 30 years is lengthy. I wonder what sentencing guidelines the Judge would use if they go through with a trial. It's basically a slam dunk for the prosecutor. My guess would be the case might get plead down to 3~5 years and probation because it would surprise me if they really do get 30 years for 'stupid teenager stuff' -- like trying to pull a stunt (if this is what their intention was) or just steal some cash and weed. If they are smart, they'll probably come out of jail with college degrees (or close enough to them) and still have to check off the 'felon' box on job applications -- but they will be taught a lesson.

Carly on the other hand, 14 years is not enough time for killing someone with an automobile while high on dust-off (or whatever drug or alcohol for that matter if it was anyone else). She did not learn her lesson from her possession of marijuana citation and moved onto other drugs. She might as well just have fired a couple bullets from a gun hoping nobody would get hurt.

David obviously knows everything I think we should all listen to him

One was an accident and the other was premeditated home invasion with a deadly weapon.

And hopefully these boys & Carly Rousso will teach the kids at HPHS and DHS some hard lessons about doing hard time when you make the wrong choices in life. Let these cases be good examples of how things go down in the 'real' world and not the North Shore world. Perhaps maybe the parents will pay attention too.

These offenses have mandatory prison time, and with good reason. I don't want people who commit serious class x crimes like this as my neighbors. That is why I live in this town and not in the city.

The time for scared straight sort of techniques would have been BEFORE they were allegedly involved in felony level criminal action. Now, the punishment needs to fit the crime. If found guilty, the accused need to have serious prison time, which shall serve as a deterrent for others as well as punish those involved.

There's no probation available for a Class X felony, and the felonies that are class X are considered heinous enough that probation isn't even an option. If they plead guilty or are found guilty of a Class X, they're going to prison.

Their lives were ruined the moment their crimes were made public. This is the Internet age. Who hires people without googling their name? Even if they were young, what they did was too serious for most people to ever trust them. When most jobs have many applicants, why hire this guy ?

Felons CAN find jobs and CAN graduate college during or after serving time. They deserve some prison time for this. In the past I've hired three ex-cons (through Illinois WorkNet program and all felons), one still works for me, one went off and started his own business, and another found a better job paying more money. All had learned their lessons.

If they get off with probation it just sends a message to all the other kids that "hey, it's OK, if you get caught like those two boys did we can do it too but we wont get caught".

They will learn how to be a thug in prison only if they choose that path to go down.

From what I understand, the charges that were brought carry some mandatory sentencing guidelines, so if the judge decides the accused are guilty of these crimes, he/she must then give these guys the required punishment.

However, I agree with you in that I am glad I am not the judge. The idea of sending someone this young to jail for a long time is not an easy thing to do, despite the serious nature of their acts.

One wonders if one of the teal bandits is going to end up plea bargaining some lesser charges in exchange for testimony against the other.

As an aside, to the people that reported the widespread / open drug use by teens in our community, I witnessed this myself last week. In the McDonalds parking lot, I saw teens smoking what certainly appeared to be a marijuana pipe openly near the picnic bench. It was daylight. They must have noticed my reaction, (jaw dropped that they would be openly doing this during daylight hours) because they ran off before I could do anything such as confront them or contact police. I really couldn't see their faces, as the only one facing me was wearing a hoody, but it looked like 2 girls and a guy and they were 16 at the oldest. I don't agree with the whole Reefer Madness theory, but in my day, teens at least went through the effort of trying to be subtle about their weed smoking. If you are that brazen about it, there is a problem. At least I didn't see them drive off.

Justice is supposed to be blind. To that end, the Judge isn't supposed to care who wins or loses. The law sometimes gives the Judge some wiggle room, and sometimes not. That wiggle room could be probation, mandatory treatment, electronic monitoring, the length of a sentence, and in that case the Judge has to look at the seriousness of the crime, chance of recidivism, and the record of the defendant(s).

In the case of the teal bandits, we don't know if they got certain chances beforehand, but the current crime is a Class X felony folks - we have a very serious crime with no wiggle room so the Prosecutor doesn't have to negotiate anything through a plea bargain. Moreover, they apparently have long records of theft and other issues, so why would anyone want to negotiate?

As for Carly - she apparently got plenty of chances already and now you have a heinous crime committed by an addict. Whatever the reason for her addiction, even after rehab she hasn't gotten it under control and she killed someone. The chances of recidivism are great, the danger to society extremely large. I'd ship her off to prison for a long time too - maybe when she gets out she'll be done with drugs, maybe not. But in the meantime, we don't have to worry about HER driving around in a vehicle getting high and plowing down people on the sidewalk.

"soon enough the random shootings of south chicago will migrate to the northern suburbs" - it's already happening. North side of Chicago is already a war zone. Evanston - people getting robbed and shot. Waukegan. North Chicago.

These students attended one of the better school systems in Illinois, not the Chicago schools. Their acts were not a migration of moral decay to the suburbs brought on by television.

Oh, before it was migration from Chicago and television. Now, it's liberal politicians and Political Correctness. I bet you're a real hoot at bridge club.

Huh?? The intent was home invasion, breaking and entering, burglary of a habitation. How much clearer could it be. Most likely they were looking for the weed that the kid had. They couldn't find it but the cops sure did...LOL The malice and forethought of burglary of a hab (aggravated with a weapon) is far more serious than anything negligent including the Rousso case.