Charging 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult in Georgia school shooting reveals a nation that has forgotten the purpose of its juvenile justice system.
Our society has utterly failed to come to grips with mass shootings, a fact brought home by the angry, panicked justice system response to Wednesday’s deadly attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., outside Atlanta.
Colt Gray, 14, is accused of killing two students and two teachers and wounding nine others with an AR-15-style rifle. Prosecutors charged him as an adult. They also charged his father, Colin Gray, with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children, presumably for failing to keep the gun out of his son’s hands.
At a Friday hearing, Judge Currie Mingledorff told Colt Gray that if convicted he could be executed. The judge later had to call the teenager back into his courtroom to correct himself: The maximum penalty for a minor is life in prison without the possibility of parole, under a landmark 2005 Supreme Court decision.
In that opinion, the court acknowledged developing brain science that shows adolescents lack maturity and should not be put to death for a crime, however horrendous, they committed before adulthood.
