Did officials overreact by threatening a high school student with prison over what was essentially a prank?
The prospect that a high school prankster might spend years in prison over a blow-up sex doll drew national attention this summer to Rushville.
But now Tyell Morton's felony case is over. Instead of prison, he's more likely to be spending time back inside the girls restroom where he placed the doll -- on cleaning duty.
The Rush County prosecutor agreed to withhold prosecution of the 18-year-old's case in exchange for eight hours of community service. Under a diversion agreement filed in court Thursday, Morton agreed to perform the work for Rush County Schools and stay out of trouble for a year.
The upshot: Morton, who had no criminal history, keeps his clean record.
That's apparently the opinion of the "legal experts" who've been reacting to the incident, such as IU School of Law prof. Joel Schumm, who says this is a creative way to resolve a charge "that should never have been filed."
But this "prank" seemed a little more serious at the time. What school officials were reacting to was a security video showing a hooded figure bringing a package into the school. They thought they might be seeing a bomb being placed, so the school was locked down for nearly three hours while a bomb squad and K9 dogs went through the place. As the prosecuting attorney notes, ". . . it should be clear to everyone that you cannot dress like a terrorist and stash any object in a school without setting off serious security measures and terrifying people." The days of innocent, fun-loving pranks, they be over, eh?
RELATED: Sending student discipline problems into court instead of settling them in the schools has apparently become a nationwide trend:
SPRING, TEX. — In a small courtroom north of Houston, a fourth-grader walked up to the bench with his mother. Too short to see the judge, he stood on a stool. He was dressed in a polo shirt and dark slacks on a sweltering summer morning.
“Guilty,” the boy's mother heard him say.
He had been part of a scuffle on a school bus.
In another generation, he might have received only a scolding from the principal or a period of detention. But an array of get-tough policies in U.S. schools in the past two decades has brought many students into contact with police and courts — part of a trend some experts call the criminalization of student discipline.
Now, such practices are under scrutiny nationally. Federal officials want to limit punishments that push students from the classroom to courtroom, and a growing number of state and local leaders are raising similar concerns.
