Nancy Grace was in a snit last night because the mother of 5-year old Shaniya Davis, allegedly sold into child prostitution, has not yet been charged with first degree murder and exposed to the death penalty. I doubt very much that that will happen.
The mother does not appear to have been a participant in the actual killing of Shaniya, and the police don’t have a receipt reading “1-child, prostitution.” They have, at most, somebody’s statement to that effect, and there’s no criminal defense lawyer in the universe who can’t undermine the words of a soaring, screwed-up drug addict.
The alleged killer is one Mario Andrette McNeill, who is shown on a hotel security video carrying Shaniya into a motel room mere hours before her death. He has been captured, he is now incarcerated, and he will be tried, convicted, and then executed in Raleigh’s Central Prison.
Generalizations are dangerous, but juries generally don’t like to specify the death penalty. More than the details of the crime, they tend to be guided by this question: Is the defendant scary? If so, the needle; if not, life.
Sobbing mothers who are incoherent with remorse at what happened when they were stoned are not scary; they are pathetic. Sending her to prison for decades will be relatively easy for a prosecutor to do, but executing her will be very hard. McNeill is never going to set foot outdoors again; Shaniya’s mother almost certainly will.
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