The DA has backed off of the initial severity of the charges for the two boys going to trial for slapping bottoms.

Prosecutor: Jail unlikely for teens in "spanking" case

Yamhill County prosecutors say jail or sex offender status is unlikely for two McMinnville middle-schoolers who spanked girls in the school hallway.

Psst:  Quick, act tough…

But District Attorney Brad Berry said his office considers the matter involving two 13-year-olds, Ryan Cornelison and Cory Mashburn, to be more than just horseplay.

Berry said his office has been swamped with calls and e-mails by people who say the initial ten counts of sex abuse and harassment was an overreaction.

Yea, duh!

The boys families said they were furious at what appeared to be backpedaling by Berry.

Tracie Mashburn asked why the family would be threatened with severe consequences if the state wasn't going to follow though.

Just had to share this special moment   of Dennis Kucinich serenading Jesse Jackson.  

Thanks to Oregon for setting the newest low in stupidity in public schools.

Unruly schoolboys or sex offenders?

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran — what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.

Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?