On December 8, 2011, I sat in the Washington County Courthouse, in Hillsboro, Oregon, at the sentencing of one of my incarcerated students, a 15-year old boy, convicted of aggravated homicide.  The state of Oregon’s mandatory sentencing statute had this young kid, who committed his crime at age 13, facing life in prison with the possibility of parole, but only after 30 years of well-behaved life behind bars. The Supreme Court of the United States has declared that the law must not treat 13-year-olds as adults, and based its decision—the majority opinion written by justice Sonia Sotomayor—based on extensive neuro-anatomical research: The brain of a 13-year old has not fully developed, making it difficult for a juvenile to distinguish right from wrong.  Against common sense, scientific finding, and any humane impulse, the district attorney of Hillsboro argued to have this boy tried as an adult. He won. States’ Rights triumphed—at least for the moment. The defense has appealed on constitutional grounds.

I testified to my student’s amazing creative potential, to his keen mind, and his powerful yet brief being. I based my testimony on almost 50 years of teaching. The district attorney cross-examined me about the young boy’s unusual maturity, about the possibility that he possessed the brain of someone beyond his years—say, a 17-year old.  Might you not consider him an outlier, several deviations from the mean, demanded the DA. I responded that I could not talk about this young man as a statistic but only as a human being, alive and complicated and confused.

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