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July 21, 2010

Anonymous The Kokomo Tribune Wed Jul 21, 2010, 05:16 PM EDT

— It’s the perfect movie. A barely schooled, shoeless teenager dodges police as he races across the country stealing cars and airplanes before finally being caught in a high-speed boat chase.

The kid’s mom already has hired a well-known entertainment lawyer who says he is being swamped by unsolicited offers. You can almost hear the cash registers ringing.

Nineteen-year-old Colton Harris-Moore was arrested in the Bahamas a week after he reportedly crash-landed there in a plane stolen July 4 from an Indiana airport. The teenager made initial court appearances in Florida last week before heading back to Seattle, where he faces a federal charge in the crash-landing of a plane stolen from Idaho last year.

The self-taught pilot is suspected in more than 70 crimes across nine states since he walked away from a halfway house in April 2008, and he still has two years left on the sentence.

Some prosecutors have expressed interest in negotiating a “global” plea deal to resolve all or most of the charges.

But here’s the thing. There is no way that the teenager or his mother should cash that first check.

After all, if it turns out there’s a fortune to be made by having your kid take off on a cross-country crime spree, what’s to stop the next enterprising parent and child from trying to do the “Barefoot Bandit” one better?

If they do nothing else, prosecutors must send a clear message that while crime might well be a way to achieve fame, it is not the path to fortune. And they should make sure that any profit to be made from the bandit’s exploits goes to his victims, the people whose planes and cars and boats he’s accused of stealing.

They could follow the example set by prosecutors in the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, who pleaded guilty in 2002 to supplying support for the Taliban in exchange for a 20-year sentence. As part of his plea, Lindh agreed that any profits from publicity deals would be turned over to the U.S. government, and he pledged not to communicate with relatives or associates to help them profit from his story.

Similar language should be part of any plea bargains negotiated in the case of the Barefoot Bandit.

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