Professor Michael Wald is quoted in this Associated Press article on how much weight courts place on the “repugnant ideologies” of parents of murder suspects.

White supremacist Jeffrey Hall saw threats in the protesters who demonstrated outside his Southern California house. He installed a surveillance camera pointed at the cul-de-sac outside the tidy home where strangers might approach.

The threat he feared, however, was not outside. It came, authorities say, from within the home: His 10-year-old son shot him to death last week.

Police arriving at the house on May 1 for a report of gunfire found Hall’s body on a sofa.

Prosecutors won’t say if they know the motive, but family court records portray a troubled boy who spent his first years hungry and living in filth while his parents went through a messy divorce that included accusations of child abuse.

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However, Michael Wald, who teaches a course in children and law at Stanford Law School, said that “socializing your children into repugnant ideologies is not something the courts will go into.”