Dontez Tillman, one of Michigan's young lifers, was 14 when charged as an adult with murder. Convicted at age 15, he is currently serving a life sentence in an adult prison.
I sat in a courtroom this past week, and watched yet another child, this kid's face still round with baby fat, go away to prison as an adult.
It is Michigan's ugly little secret. We are second in the world in the number of juveniles we sentence as adults. There are currently more than 350 kids, some as young as 14, serving life sentences in this state. We're topped only by Pennsylvania, with 444.
Barbaric? Consider this. Totalitarian governments - Syria and North Korea, for starters - do not treat children as adults in their justice systems. Colorado and Texas flat out ban sending kids to prison for life. (Texas? Yes, you read that right. Texas! That bastion of compassion!)
Leonard White was 15 years old, and at 5'1'', small for his age, a special education student struggling to fit in his first year of high school when one day last June, while at a friend's house, he was bullied by an older and much larger teen. Johnathan Rickman, 17, weighed 330 pounds and stood nearly a foot taller than Leonard when he pummeled Leonard and threw him to the ground.
Leonard then grabbed a kitchen knife, chased the older teen out the door and into the street, where he stabbed him once. It was a mortal wound. Rickman died a few minutes later. Leonard White was charged with first degree murder. A jury, perhaps taking into consideration Leonard's size and the prior bullying, convicted him of the much lesser charge of manslaughter in December.
Nevertheless, an Oakland County Circuit Court judge, citing Leonard's "lack of impulse control" sent him to prison for four to 15 years earlier this month. Leonard White, deemed by society too young, too irresponsible, too immature to vote, drink, drive, make love, go to war, obtain a credit card or sign a contract, was now an adult, in the court's view.
As I sat in the courtroom and watched this boy grapple with his sentence, I was struck by this - he didn't have to shave for this important court appearance - one that will forever change his life - because he's not old enough yet for facial hair. His is the body of a child.
And I would suggest this. His brain is that of a child as well.
Breakthroughs in brain imaging in the last decade tells us what anybody who has ever raised a child already knows - there's nothing in that kid's noggin but a pile of Play Doh. The all important frontal cortex - the mass of brain matter located right behind our foreheads that involves complex reasoning - is mush in adolescents, and not fully formed until we're well into our early twenties.
A fully formed frontal cortex stops most of us, as adults, from chewing out our bosses, running red lights, sleeping with the sexy neighbor next door while our spouse is out of town, or buying a yacht on a $40,000 salary. The frontal cortex is the policeman in our brain, warning us not to do something stupid.
With kids like Leonard, the policeman has not yet come on duty.
I live with a 15 year old boy. Or rather, I cohabitate with him. To "live" with him implies we share a life, when in truth, he is of an entirely different species and we simply orbit around each other. My son is disorganized and slovenly, sullen and sometimes angry. He spits toothpaste all over the sink. His personal hygene is hit and miss. He chews with his mouth open. It is akin to sharing a home with an orangutan, only one that can talk.
He is particularly fond of vile language, and has recently taken to dropping the F bomb in casual dinner conversation, hoping no doubt for a reaction from his father and me. His father and I ignore it. Instead, we say, "pass the butter, please," and "God, I can't believe there's another Republican debate on tonight." We know to pick our fights.
In short, he is a cretin, just like every other 15 year old boy walking the planet. He has little understanding of cause and effect. There is limited concept of consequences. It is as if he reinvents his universe every ninety seconds or so - never understanding that the thing he said, or did, two minutes before resonates into the present.
Do you understand, son, that if you choose to wear an oh-so-cool Detroit Lions sweatshirt - instead of your winter coat - to the bus stop in 15 degree temperatures, that you will soon be freezing your ass off?
Even the august justices of the US Supreme Court have come to realize just how dumb kids are, how they are works in progress that cannot be held to adult standards. In Roper vs. Simmons, a 2005 case, the high court forever banned the death penalty for juveniles. In 2010, citing those important brain scans, they found it unconstitutional to send kids to prison for life in cases other than murder. And in November, they agreed to hear a case out of Florida about whether juveniles should be sentenced to life when convicted of murder.
One day two winters ago, I drove to the Thumb Correctional Facility, a prison in Lapeer, Michigan to interview two boys serving life sentences, convicted as adults of first degree murder. They were both 14 at the time of the crimes. Now, 15, they would never go free.
Dontez Tillman had been running with much older kids in the city of Pontiac in the summer of 2008. Dad was long gone, and mom was overwhelmed with other children. Barely 14, he was out night after night, smoking pot, drinking and wilding with the big guys, trying to look tough.
During the course of three hot July nights, this gang of hooligans, high on marijuana and machismo, beat up homeless men, perfect victims because they were too frail to fight back. Two of those men died. The older teens escaped, but Dontez and another 14 year old Thomas McCloud, weren't smart enough, sophisticated enough, to escape police.
Prosecutors offered these two mopes a deal. Tell us what you know, identify the older kids, and we'll let you plead to second degree murder. You can be out in ten years, at age 25.
Their mothers though, told them no, don't cooperate with police or prosecutors. In their mothers' lives, law enforcement is the enemy. Boys listen to their mothers, particularly when they're in big trouble. They stood trial. Both boys went down as adults for first degree murder. Some of the jurors wept when the verdicts were read. One wept so hard the judge had to stop the proceeding. Both boys cried.
At the prison, I sat in a little room with windows so that the guards could keep an eye on us. Dontez was lanky in that way teen age boys are - all legs and arms, his skinny wrists poking from his prison uniform.
And he was earnest. Taking classes. Keeping his cell clean. Staying out of trouble. He was doing okay, he said, but looking forward to going home. Back with his mom, and his sisters, back to school. Back to being a boy.
I told him there was no trip home. Did he understand that? That he would never again sit at his mother's table for dinner. No graduating middle school into high school. No drivers training. No dates with pretty girls. No proms or graduation. No wedding. No children. Nothing but the cinder block walls of this prison.
He looked at me and I saw my son, bewildered by this big and confusing world, trying to process information too overwhelming yet for his young brain.
"I know," he said. "But maybe someday?"
No comments:
Post a Comment