News: Teacher attempts to poison special ed student

This  article from Indiana describes one of the more crazy things that I have read about special education teachers.

For those who are interested, I would probably define this as attempted murder. It’s absolutely reckless behavior that is so depraved as to lead me to believe that she deserves that level of punishment.
1. She knew he had an allergy.
2. She deliberately fed him the allergen.
3. Peanuts are commonly known to cause breathing problems in allergic people.

If this were my child, I would be in the DA’s office on this one without question.

Interestingly, it brings up a legal issue I investigated during my summer internship at the Tompkins County District Attorney’s office in Ithaca, NY. In Ithaca, there is a town attorney/prosecutor that brings mostly quality of life charges before the town court. The issue was whether New York law prevents anyone other than the elected District Attorney from prosecuting people.

It was interesting because there used to be situations where private lawyers could bring criminal prosecutions. The practice died out because (a) most often this happened when there was individual bias against the accused, rather than a disinterested prosecutor who is ethically required to seek justice rather than convictions alone; and (b) the establishment of district attorneys throughout the state created a process for redressing public grievances and a process for changing the person in that job. (I’ll look for the article on the issue and scan and post it.)