Because Arizona law says that 8-year-olds can be tried as adults, prosecutors have pushed to use the full force of the state’s judicial system against the third-grader who allegedly shot his father and another man living in the home earlier this month. Their assertion from day one has been that the boy, who is just a bit taller than their belt buckles, had the intellectual and emotional maturity to plan and carry out the shootings, and so should be charged with and tried for two first-degree murders. In their view, this child has committed an adult crime, deserves an adult punishment.
And you know, they’re probably right, because apparently the kid is something of a handful.
According to Channel 5 News in Phoenix,the boy’s own grandmother told police that if any child that age was capable of committing those crimes, it was him. He was obviously a very bad boy. By his own admission, he’d been spanked 1,000 times.
And he can prove it. He’s been keeping track on a piece of paper.
One wonders how long it took him get to 1,000. Did he start counting only a few months ago, or did he begin when he was seven? Six? He didn’t say. Maybe his scrawled tally didn’t actually add up to 1,000. Maybe he was just whacked so often that it seemed like 1,000. Or a million.
The good news is that the prosecutor’s office is backing off their blood quest and offering to ensure the boy can be tried in juvenile court. They are, however, attaching some strings to that deal. The offer is contingent on a finding by child psychiatrists that the boy is incompetent to stand trial - incompetent based on the fact that his tests come back "normal," and he is not insane. Because a normal 8-year-old couldn’t possibly understand the goings on in a court of law, and so would not be able to receive a fair trial.
It’s a complicated deal, but the way I understand what’s been said, is that if the boy is found to be mentally incompetent (i.e.: nuts), he can then receive up to eight months of treatment designed to get him back to a normal mental state. If he is still found to be "abnormal" after that time, according to Apache County Attorney Chriss Candelaria,
The court’s options would be limited
In other words, they wouldn’t be able to try him. He’d be ordered treated for his mental illness and serve no jail time. Oh no- he’d get off Scott free!
The legal jousting has begun in earnest and will likely continue for some time. On the 21st, prosecutors indicated they wished to drop one of the counts of pre-meditated murder, the one against the boy’s father. The boy’s defense attorney actually filed a motion to prevent them from dropping the charge. Per the Phoenix CBS TV station, the lawyer reportedly said he could find no forensic or other evidence as a reason behind the move. He suspected that the prosecution was simply hoping to keep the boy in juvie until he turns 15, then re-file the charge and try him as an adult. That would be a kind of end-around move to ensure the child got the punishment he deserved, adult punishment, even if the State had to wait a bit to mete it out.
I have been sick at heart since the shootings occurred on Nov.7, and have followed the case as closely as possible, although it has not been in the national spotlight, except sporadically. This was not a happy home. According to news reports, both the father and the roommate had numerous disputes at work and in bars, and in their personal lives. A few years earlier, the biological mother (who does not have custody) may have tried to kidnap her son to get him away from his father. The boys’ grandmother told reporters she feared something might happen, because the boy’s father and friend
"were too hard on him"
but she did not step in to help.
This case strikes a special chord in me, because I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the classroom with 8-year-olds. I have known so many of them - from "good" families, and from all the other kinds - kids who live in the lap of luxury, and kids who don’t have a bed to sleep in. I’ve come to have a pretty good idea of what goes on in their little minds. I know the kinds of things they are afraid of, and the kinds that make them happy. I understand how they make decisions, and how they act and react in different situations, with and without various kinds of stressors.
Based on my intimate experience with these marvelous little human beings, I will go on the record right now and say unequivocally that an 8-year-old is not capable of committing first degree murder, and anyone who thinks a child that young should be tried as an adult and be punished like an adult should have their head examined!
Few things make me as angry as adults demanding "justice" for crimes committed by children. And by children, I mean just about anyone under the age of 17 or 18. I have been actively opposed to such "injustice" for years, and have spoken out publicly against it.
I understand perfectly well the anger and the feelings of unfairness adults deal with when their loved one has been victimized by someone still considered a child. I understand their desire for revenge – to hurt back as much as they have been hurt, and make sure someone "pays" for what has happened.
But I also understand children. And I know that as bright and precocious as a child may be, he or she is still a child – incapable of adult reasoning and judgment, incapable of willingly committing adult acts. Science backs me up. In fact, 18, long accepted by most as the age of adult culpability, is starting to look too early to call someone mature.
Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., and some colleagues at McGill University in Montreal found that an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex continues to grow and mature until the mid- 20’s. The prefrontal cortex, or "boss of the brain," is in charge of planning, working memory, organization, and controlling moods. As it matures, this part of the brain reasons better, makes better judgments, and develops more control over impulsive behavior.
According to Giedd, the best estimate for when the brain is truly mature is about age 25.
So I come back to this poor, confused, frightened, and (in my mind anyway) abused child. He chose the only way he could think of to free himself from the trap in which was caught. He was not thinking as an adult when he made his plans. He was not thinking as an adult when he pulled the trigger. He just wanted to make the beatings stop. He wanted his dad to love him, not hate him. He wanted to be just a boy, not the convenient outlet for adult anger and frustration.
Is he sorry? I’m sure that word doesn’t begin to describe the depths of despair this boy is in. It’s probably just now beginning to sink in that he will never see his father again. Actual death is a concept that is still very amorphous at that age. If things go well, and he does not go from being victimized by the adults in his home to being victimized by the adults in his community and on the state’s prosecution team, his actions will be dealt with by the juvenile justice system.
But when I talk about things going "well," I mean that in a relative way. This child’s life has been so damaged already, that despite receiving justice in accordance with his young age, he may never recover from what he has done. He killed his dad. He’ll have to live with that and come to terms with it – eventually, when he reaches true adulthood.
Something ancient and very angry in my brain cries out at the fact that this child’s life has been so injured by the adults around him. Something inside me rails against the cruel injustice done to him during his eight short years, and likely beginning when he was very small. That he was deprived of an environment where he was loved and valued as a human being makes me crazy. That his life became so intolerable he saw violence as his only means of escape makes me incredibly sad. That he is being dragged in and out of his court appearances in handcuffs and shackles! as though he were a danger to the adults around him makes me want to bop someone. If it were possible, I would wrap this child in my arms, comfort him, and try with ever fiber of my being to ease the pain and terror he is in.
I can only hope that in the place where he is now are adults with the compassion and willingness to do just that.