One of the more common aspects of intellectual disability is an intense desire to please, to appear normal, to be accepted. Making those who live with it perfect patsies far too much of the time.

The most heart-breaking part is they have him sign a murder confession and he asks if he can go back to school. Zero understanding of the consequences of what he signed.

I mean, that would have been better than prison but he didn’t need a mental institution OR prison. Neither. He had some special education classes and I would say he needed more community outreach and resources, but definitely not a mental facility or prison.

Brendan testified that he was bullied for being overweight and his girlfriend had dumped him- he believed this was also due to his weight, which led him to crash diet/basically starve himself in hopes of ending the bullying and getting his girlfriend back. That was what led his cousin to start telling people he was…

I really really hope the cats his mom adopted for him are still alive. They should be, I think! I remember watching it that there was no way those cats would be alive by the time he got free. :(

I feel like his mother was the only other decent human being in the family, though she didn’t have the faculties to get much done on his behalf (no fault of her own). If Brendan and his mom could get support to live in some kind of protected housing in a neighboring state, even for a couple months while they…

This is what worries me too. Brendan doesn’t know any other part of the world, he won’t know how to function anywhere else. But at the same time, he really can’t stay at home. Assuming he isn’t retried, which would be a farce but after what they’ve done already I can’t rule it out, and is released... the local police,…

Before his trial, he talks to his mom on the phone about the upcoming WWE match and how he couldn’t wait to see it (that was what he cared about, not his incarceration or the reality that he wasn’t going to see that WWE.) He couldn’t even comprehend the magnitude of what he was being charged with. Tragic.

I hope he sues and in the meantime gets the FUCK OUT OF DODGE.

And how poverty and a lack of education can turn people into fodder for the prison industry, which is why the last thing conservatives and prison profiteers want to see is expansion and funding of public education. The idea of the masses being taught what their rights actually is terrifying to their bottom line.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

When they asked him if he had any weapons on him, he answered “I have a discman”...and then they explained that a discman is not a weapon. But apparently they felt it was fine to continue questioning him relentlessly without counsel or a parent, eliciting the most ludicrous and coerced confession that has ever…

More than mild. He’s what we used to call “retarded.” I guess now it’d be... what, cognitively disabled? Not developmentally disabled, he was emotionally and socially a regular teenager, but intellectually he didn’t have anywhere even approaching average capability.

He should probably move out of that area.

I fear someone in the Manitowoc PD is planning some kind of set up for him even as I type...

It’s too little, too late, but it beats serving out that outrageous sentence.

Whoa. I really did not think this would happen. I hope he can build a life for himself surrounded by supportive people who can try to help him move past this as best he can. And I hope when he sues he gets a shit ton of money.

This kid never had a chance. When I listened to the phone calls he had with his mother, annd witnessed the ineptitude of his attorney I just wept for this dude. I’m not saying he’s innocent but he has the right to a propper trial with competent representation.

I wonder if they looked into the circumstances of these maternal deaths to see how many of them were attempts to self-induce abortions?

I’m just thinking out loud here, but, wouldn’t the shut down of these clinics have some effect on the care these pregnant women get? Maybe pregnancy red flags were not detected because these women did not have access to these clinics? I don’t know..