TRI In The News

'Spit Wad' Case Comes to a Close

From One News Now

Original article available here

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of a 14-year-old honor student whose life has been turned upside down because he was expelled for shooting spit wads in school.

Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead says the juvenile incident of shooting plastic spit wads out of a peashooter at fellow students in 2010 required minor disciplinary action. Instead, he explains, Andrew Mikel's expulsion from school following the December 2010 incident has turned into a nightmare.

"He was completely removed from school, he didn't get adequate education, his family's been totally disrupted, he's moved to New York from Virginia, he can't get into the Naval Academy now because of this record. He was charged with a crime," states Whitehead.

The attorney is disappointed the high court is not reviewing the case because he believes guidelines need to be written for zero tolerance cases. He also was hoping Mikel's record would be wiped clean of what the school described as "violent criminal conduct" and possession of a weapon.

"An honor student, [a] junior ROTC student now has an electronic record that he's a criminal, and we want that taken off his record -- but that's not going to happen now," laments Institute's leader.

Whitehead says the school's actions in treating Mikel's conduct as a crime violated the student's constitutional guarantee of due process of law. And by refusing to hear the case, he adds, the Supreme Court is "legitimizing the perverse use of zero tolerance policies by school districts."