State of Thursday: THROW AWAY THE KEY

It’s about time

Geoffrey Ingersoll

Mar 19, 2026

Greetings, Dear Reader,

Imagine my surprise when I wake up this morning and see common sense going viral on X.

Roll the tape!

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THROW AWAY THE KEY

Texas Judge Raquel West was having none of it.

Surveillance tape showed 18-year-old Caden James Fontenette and two others “terrorizing,” according to West, a convenience store clerk for “quite some time.” The three men roughed up the clerk, stuck what appears to be semi-automatic rifles in his face, and robbed the store.

The act was caught on CCTV surveillance. Fontenette pled guilty to aggravated assault. Even as it was his first felony and the defense begged for probation, during his sentencing, West didn’t hold back.

“Well, Mr. Fontenette, there was a time some years ago that there really wasn’t even a question. Everyone, states attorneys were recommending, youthful offenders, probation, let’s give everyone an opportunity.

And things have just changed in such an incredibly dangerous way with young people doing what I just saw you do on that screen. I cannot imagine the fear that that person had that was working in that store. Just trying to go to work, make a living, and go home.

And he has three people come in and, not just grab some stuff and run out, but terrorize him for quite some time.”

West also noted that she had received incident reports from the jail. As Fontenette awaited sentencing, he had gotten into several fights.

“You apparently like to fight and jump people, which is what’s been happening in the jail … You can’t even follow the rules in jail,” West said, adding that law enforcement officials reviewing Fontenette’s case concluded he was “high risk.”

“You don’t have, unfortunately, a good likelihood of being successful if I were to put you on probation,” West said, “We’re tired of it and there’s got to be something done.”

West then sentenced him to 25 years in prison, with the opportunity for parole in 12.5 years.

Fontenette’s family immediately erupted in the court seating, sending bailiffs scurrying to keep the peace. It figures.

Good for West. It’s a near certainty she saved innocent people from becoming victims of Fontenette, at least for now.

While it’s a good thing the 18-year-old Fontenette and his neck tattoos will be in prison for the next decade, maybe more, it’s also a good thing that West highlighted the failed policy of (highly racialized) lenience has only served to further plague the law-abiding citizens of this country.

People, as West said, who simply want to go to work, make a living, and go home, who instead end up victimized on commuter trains, brutalized on sidewalks, and murdered at bus stops. Usually, as we’ve routinely heard scores of times just this year, it’s by a repeat offender who more than once stood in front of a judge and more than once was granted leniency from the court.

Not this time. Judge West’s primary concern is the traumatized store clerk and maintaining public peace. If that means locking up violent anti-socials, deleting swaths of their free lives, so be it.

Novel idea, eh?

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