Friday, Sept. 26, 2003 | 4:28 a.m.
It 1989 I sat in a courtroom and watched a 16-year-old receive a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
Dean McKee was 15 when he was charged with murder for beating a black man to death behind a Tampa, Fla., museum. Flanked by his brother and friends the previous summer, the self-proclaimed skinhead had told reporters he could kill to defend his white supremacy beliefs if he "had to."
McKee turned 16 during his trial. He should be about 30 now. If his sentence is followed to the letter he will be 41 when he takes his first steps as an adult in free society.
The weeks of testimony showed what kind of boy McKee was. What we didn't know was what kind of man he would turn out to be. What kind of adult does a prison raise?
It's a question that lurks in the background for nine Las Vegas teenagers who are facing attempted murder as adults in connection with what authorities say was a summer of terrorizing others. One attack left a 17-year-old severely disfigured.
One is 19 and three others are 18. But three of them are also 17, and the last two, 16.
Attempted murder is, as it should be, an offense that carries an adult's consequences. But punishing a teen as an adult does not make him one. Only time can do that.
And for teens sentenced as adults, that time passes behind bars, said Glen Whorton, an assistant director for the Nevada Department of Corrections.
"We separate these individuals from the general population," Whorton said. "We try to get them into education because of their age, by statute, they are obligated to attend school.
"Even though they're going to be here a long time, we try to give them the skills they need to get along," he said.
An optimist could point to Las Vegas' Reginald Hayes, who was 15 when he was sentenced to a life prison term in connection with a 1985 murder. He served 13 years before the justice system overturned the conviction and pardoned him for a crime that evidence later showed he did not commit.
Hayes was a few months shy of 30 in 1999 when he sat in his mother's Las Vegas living room and told of how it took nearly four months for him to stop looking at the floor for red lines to follow.
His faith in Islam and in himself kept him sane and driven. He became a voracious reader and took whatever educational opportunities he could find. He was working and making plans to get his own place and start a family.
I last heard from McKee about 10 years ago. He had been transferred to an Arizona prison for protection. We exchanged letters, as I hoped to receive consent for a face-to-face interview. I wondered then, as now, whether someone can move into adulthood and leave behind the shackles of his youth.
McKee wrote of the support and affirmation he had found for his racist views. He severed communications after being offended by the stamp one of my replies carried on the envelope. It commemorated Black History Month; I placed it without noticing.
"Prison doesn't prepare you to come out and be a productive person," Hayes said back in 1999. "You have to do that for yourself."
No matter on which side of the bars you stand.
archive
