In 25 years, John Nusslein will be 44 years old; in 25 years, Chung Yan Chin will still be dead.

We should have, I suppose, some gratitude that carjacking is a federal offense, and such cases can be tried in federal court, rather than in a state court in which Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, and softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney, Larry Krasner, has no say in the charges or outcomes. Nevertheless, Mr Nusslein will eventually be a free man, while his victim will still be pushing up daisies.

Philly teen agrees to a 25-year sentence for string of carjackings that left a 70-year-old delivery driver dead

John Nusslein, 19, was the oldest of three teens who attacked at least four deliverymen and stole their cars after luring them to locations in Northeast Philadelphia with fake food orders.

by Jeremy Roebuck | Wednesday, April 3, 2024 | 1:58 PM EDT

A Philadelphia teen has agreed to spend 25 years in federal prison for his role in a string of 2021 carjackings, including one that left a 70-year-old restaurant delivery driver dead.

John Nusslein, 19, was the eldest member of a three-member crew who prosecutors say attacked at least four deliverymen in the span of a month and stole their cars after luring them to locations in Northeast Philadelphia with fake food orders.

The scheme turned fatal on Dec. 2, 2021, when they brutally beat Chung Yan Chin, a 70-year-old driver for the China Royal Restaurant, stole his 2004 Toyota Camry, and left him to die on a Mayfair street.

Mr Nusslein was 18 at the time of the carjacking, and his accomplices were Qiyam Muhammad, 16, and an unnamed 12-year-old boy. And no, of course The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t include Mr Nusslein’s mugshot; I found that in the New York Post’s coverage of the carjacking.

Look at that photo. Mr Nusslein was too young to even grow a man’s moustache and beard, but he was old enough to commit a man’s crime. To use one of my favorite quotes, from Leroy Jethro Gibbs in NCIS, “Believe me, son, you will not do well in prison.” Normally, federal sentences for violent crime require that the malefactor serve at least 85% of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole. 85% of 25 years is 21 years and 3 months.

Nusslein’s accomplices — Qiyam Muhammad, 18, and a 14-year-old whom authorities have not publicly identified — were prosecuted in Pennsylvania juvenile court, prosecutors said.

Muhammad was sentenced in June to 17 ½ to 35 years behind bars after pleading guilty to third-degree murder charges, court officials said.

Details of the 14-year-old’s sentence were not immediately available.

So, young Mr Muhammad will get out as early as age 33, assuming that he has already put in 1½ years behind bars. Mr Chung will still be dead then.

The caption on Mr Muhammad’s mugshot in the Post said that the photo was from the Philadelphia Police Department, but that he was not yet in custody when the story was published. The Police Department released a previous mugshot of Mr Muhammad, meaning that this was not his first arrest.

There are a couple of things at work here. The most obvious is that Messrs Nusslein and Muhammad are going to prison for decades, but in fact far fewer criminals in Philadelphia have been arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to serious time in prison. As the article further reported:

Since December 2021 — when Nusslein and his crew committed their crimes — the city has experienced a record surge in carjackings and auto thefts, particularly in the Northeast.

In 2021, car owners reported more than 11,000 cases — nearly a 15% increase from the year before.

Last year, those numbers rose to more than double that, with more than 23,000 carjackings or auto theft episodes, making it the worst year for vehicle thefts in the city in 15 years.

As the Philadelphia Police proudly report, homicides have definitely fallen, as have other reported crimes, but there is still a reasonable calculation that hey, perhaps Messrs Nusslein and Muhammad didn’t get away with it, but a significant percentage do. And with Mr Krasner’s lenient policies, even if someone does get caught, the odds are that the criminals will not be punished all that severely.

But there’s more, and it has nothing to do with how frequently the police solve crimes or how leniently the District Attorney’s Office prosecutes them. Mr Nussbein was an adult, and Mr Muhammad was already used to a life of crime. What caught the attention of the Post was that the third member of this ‘crew’ was only 12-years-old. For whatever reasons exist, no one reared this child right, no one taught him that he shouldn’t do this stfuu, and, quite probably, no one took him to church. His identity has not been released, but I’d bet euros-to-eclairs — my personal version of dollars-to-doughnuts — that there was no decently-employed and respectful father in the home.

David T Cloft wrote:

The question remains; how do we reintegrate moral values back into our culture in a woke society who claims we are all just “mistakes” of the universe; a cancer on the planet? It’s essential to recognize the impact of secularization on the decay of societal morality. One way is to fix it; be in a Church pew on Sunday and realize you’re made by God and have a real purpose in life.

This is something the oh-so-kindhearted American left have lost. We have become so self-absorbed, and the left has been preaching that we can be ‘good people’ without religion, and without a realization that there is a God more important than we are, that the things which have created Western civilization are not being taught to our children, and this three ‘man’ crew is just another of the results.