Toughest question ever of what is ‘age-appropriate’

Toughest question ever of what is ‘age-appropriate’

There’s no question that the 11-year-old boy accused of shooting his father’s pregnant girlfriend to death can be tried as an adult in Pennsylvania. He can, just as he could in about a third of the states.

The question is should he, and if found guilty should he be sentenced as an adult.

A generation ago, there’s little doubt that Jordan Brown would have been treated as a juvenile. But in the 1990s criminologists and social critics introduced a new phrase into the lexicon, superpredators. These were young criminals raised in environments with little or no restraint, destined to prey mercilessly on anyone they perceived as weaker. The theory was that they blossomed in a legal system that allowed juveniles, almost literally, to get away with murder. One of the poster children chosen by superpredator-theorists was Robert Sandifer, a boy who joined a Chicago gang at 8 years old and killed a gang rival, wounded another and killed a bystander at 12. He was never charged, but only because a member of his own gang executed him.

Such superpredators would soon sweep over society, we were warned, and legislators in many states responded by providing options under which vicious juveniles who committed adult crimes could be treated as adults.

A Florida boy, Lionel Tate, became the youngest American sentenced to life without parole after he was found guilty at age 14 of murder in the battering death of a 6-year-old girl three years earlier. The sentence was later overturned, and Tate got a second chance, which he threw away by committing a robbery and violating probation by possessing a firearm. He’s now in a Florida penitentiary.

Times change

There has been a softening of attitudes in recent years, perhaps because the nation was not overrun by the promised hoards of superpredators. But more, because there is increasing scientific evidence that the brains of most adolescents are incapable of functioning at an adult level.

We’ve always suspected as much, which is why children are prohibited from drinking, smoking, driving cars and voting. It’s why society protects children from sexual predators or from being exploited in sweatshops.

Children — at least most of them — are not just little adults.

And so Pennsylvania’s courts are going to face a challenge in pursuing charges against Jordan Brown, 11, in the shooting death of Kenzie Marie Houk, 26, and the death of her unborn child.

It’s been reported that Jordan voiced threats against Houk and her two daughters, but apparently no one took the threats seriously enough to restrict the boy’s access to the shotgun he was given at Christmas. Such a threat could be viewed as an indication of premeditation, or it could be seen as an unanswered cry for help. It’s going to take time and psychological expertise to determine the answer to that question and many others in this case.

And lawyers can argue over whether a law that was essentially designed to keep young criminals who were mature beyond their years from hiding in the juvenile justice system is appropriately used in this case.

We generally agree with the adage that justice delayed is justice denied. But in this case time should be taken by the prosecution, the defense and the courts to determine how justice can best be served in punishing and, if possible, salvaging Jordan Brown.