He's only 14. Could he really be irredeemable?

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld a life sentence for a man who helped throw a boy off a parking ramp when the prisoner was only 14 years old. At issue was whether sentencing someone to life imprisonment without parole for a crime committed at such a young age was prohibited by either the U.S. or the Wisconsin Constitution. The Court ruled not, finding that no national consensus has formed against such sentences.

I can accept that this is the proper legal standard, and that the decision may be correct regarding the law. It is also ethically wrong.

All such problems involve line-drawing and its well-known slippery slopes: if a 19-year old can be sentenced to jail forever, how different is an 18-year-old? 17? 16? Before you know it, we are sentencing 6-year-olds to life imprisonment. We do not have to fall into that trap, however, to declare that it is unethical, though legal, to sentence a 14-year-old boy to an endless jail term. Why? The sentence lacks compassion, mercy, proportion and common sense.

Certainly the crime was a horrible one. Omer Ninham was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide for his role in the death of 13-year-old Zong Vang  in 1998. Ninham and four others between the ages of 13 and 14 accosted the boy  as he was riding his bike home from the grocery store. Ninham and another member of the group teased Vang, punched him, and when Vang ran into a nearby hospital parking ramp, assaulted him on the top floor. Ninham and a friend seized Vang by the wrists and ankles, and as Vang screamed for help, threw him over the edge. He fell five stories, and hit the ground “like a wet bag of cement hitting the pavement,” as a witness put it. Two years later, when Ninham was 16, a judge sentenced him to life without parole. Continue reading →