When Does a Life Become No Longer Worth Saving?

A 16-year-old boy drinks alcohol, gets behind the wheel of a pickup truck and crashes. The boy survives, but a friend of his who was a passenger is killed.

How should the law respond?

An Oklahoma judge decided that the boy, now 17, deserved a break. Though the boy pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, the judge sentenced him to an unusual probation arrangement. Some of the conditions are pretty standard, such as wearing a monitoring bracelet and participating in counseling.

But Judge Mike Norman, 69, also sentenced the teen to attend a church of his choosing every week. From the ABC News account, the duration of this requirement was unclear. Presumably, however, it is for 10 years, as that is the length of the deferred sentence.

Naturally a sentence like this raises constitutional eyebrows about violation of the separation of church and state. Prof. Doug Berman, for example, casually implied as much when noting the case in his sentencing law blog.

A legal challenge is not likely to be coming from the defendant, though. “I usually represent outlaws and criminals,” his attorney told a local paper. “This is a kid that made a mistake. I think he’s worth saving.”

These words are very telling — not so much for what they say about this case, but for what they imply about most of the others. For most of the others are not saved. The common pattern is for them to become enmeshed in the justice system, with the chances of getting out diminishing with each repeat offense.

Yet if a 17-year-old with an otherwise clean record is worth saving, then what about an 18-year-old? What about a 17-year-old with a few blemishes on his or her record? And so on.

Questions like this remind me of the dialog between Abraham and God presented in Genesis 18. God is poised to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for wanton sinfulness. Abraham intercedes, arguing that is would be wrong to do so if a certain number of righteous people can be found there.

Abraham eventually gets God to agree to forego forsaking the two cities if ten righteous people can be found there. Eventually Sodom and Gomorrah met fateful ends anyway. But Judge Norman would surely approve of Abraham’s attempt to intercede.

Postpartum Depression and Infanticide: Shades of Gray

A mother struggling with severe postpartum depression leaves her two-week-old son unattended in the bathtub, where he drowns. She then drives to a nearby reservoir, weighs his body down with rocks, and tells multiple lies to law enforcement about what happened.

At her first murder trial, the mother - let's call her Heidi - has an attorney who fails to raise the issue of her mental state as a possible defense, despite the fact that Heidi was hospitalized just days after her son's death for depression, suicidal thoughts, and panic attacks. A female juror refuses to convict on the first-degree murder charge, resulting in a mistrial due to a hung jury.

The prosecution brings the case to trial again and this time convicts Heidi of second-degree murder. She receives a mandatory 50-year prison sentence.

Heidi serves nine years in prison before the state supreme court rules she is entitled to a new trial because her original trial counsel had failed to consider her mental state.

After ten months of freedom, however, Heidi pleads guilty to multiple acts of child endangerment. She is sentenced to up to 50 years in prison.

At sentencing, Heidi's attorney points out that in 29 countries around the world, when a mother who kills a child under the age of one can prove that her mental state was disturbed due to childbirth, the maximum penalty is manslaugher. Most of these countries limit the consequences to probation and counseling.

After sentencing, the judge says he will take the practically unprecedented step of writing a letter urging the parole board to consider Heidi's release. Even the prosecutor, in pursuit of her for so long, acknowledges that she is no longer a threat to public safety and says he will write a letter to the parole board, too.

In this almost unspeakably sad story, Heidi is Heidi Anfinson of Des Moines, who killed her young son Jacob in the third week of September in 1998 - right about the time my wife and I moved to Des Moines to start jobs there. Heidi was ELCA Lutheran, as we were, and about our age, so her case has always seemd quite close to home. Indeed, the older of our two sons was born in Des Moines and spent the first few weeks of his life there before we moved to Minnesota.

"There but for the grace of God go I," a Christian will sometimes say when showing mercy.

The criminal justice system, of course, has a very different point of departure. Yet there, too, the principal actors in this dark drama have struggled to find a proper response. Scott Rosenberg, the judge who sentenced Heidi Anfison on her plea agreement, put it this way:

"We often like to think of things in black and white. But often, it is the gray that is the truth."

What color will the Iowa Board of Parole see in Heidi Anfinson's case, I wonder - and when will it act?

Equal Justice - Even For Owners of 56,000 Disputed Acres?

It’s hard for me to get my mind around someone who owns a 56,000-acre estate. Here in the American Midwest, even after considerable consolidation, farms tend to be pretty small In Jane Smiley’s early-90s bestseller, for example, it was a great prize for a farmer to own a thousand acres.

Thomas Cholmondeley’s farm in Kenya’s Rift Valley is 56 times that size. Its very existence reflects the deeply problematic legacy of white colonialism in Africa in general and Kenya in particular. Over a thousand people were killed in the Rift Valley in 2007 in clashes arising out of tension due in part to disputed land. Many people there feel the land was stolen by the British and not properly transferred back to the black tribes when Kenya became independent in 1963.

So one day in March 2006, Cholmondeley, then 37, came upon a black poacher on his land and confronted him. The poacher, Robert Njoya, also 37, was checking illegal traps, accompanied by two machete-wielding friends and six dogs. Cholmondeley fired shots − to frighten off the dogs, he claimed. But one of the shots struck Njoya in the buttocks. He bled to death, despite Cholmondeley’s effort to render first aid.

What sort of justice would you expect an heir of white privilege to receive in Kenya, after a fatal shooting under these circumstances? Cholmondeley was held in jail for three years, with numerous procedural postponements. The defense argued he lacked intent to kill and pointed to the first aid attempt as a mitigating factor. But the fact also came out that, only a year earlier, Cholmondeley had shot and killed an off-duty black game warden under unexplained circumstances.

Finally, in the spring of 2009, the presiding judge reduced the murder charge to manslaughter and found Cholmondeley guilty. In May, the judge sentenced him to eight months in prison, in addition to the time already served. Cholmondeley was released in October, free to return to his vast acreage.

What type of regime is in place on the Cholmondeley estate now, one wonders, to keep poachers at bay?

Dangerous Mix: Meds, Alcohol, and Childcare

There are no perfect caregivers for children. No perfect parents, no perfect grandparents, no perfect babysitters, nannies or others.

Taking care of a child is an awesome and often challenging responsibility. Some of us don’t experience it until we pull the car out of the hospital parking ramp with our first baby on board. Others take it on far earlier, perhaps as teenagers, working for a few dollars an hour. No matter what the circumstances, it’s a truly humbling experience, knowing a vulnerable person’s life is in your hands.

Infants who are only a few weeks old are among the most vulnerable — and sometimes things go horribly wrong, as happened in Lakeville, Minnesota, last May.

Tina Louise Miller-Steiner, a 46-year-old grandmother who was on medication for depression, anxiety, and hypertension, was taking care of her six-week-old grandson, Evan, in her home. Despite a doctor’s orders not to consume alcohol while on medication, she drank two martinis and some wine when Evan was in her care. Becoming drowsy, she lay down on a bed, placing Evan next to her. Tragically, when Evan’s aunt awakened Miller-Steiner, Evan was not breathing. Miller-Steiner had fallen asleep on top of him and he suffocated.

Lakeville police, who investigated the death, pushed for a manslaughter charge. They pointed out that Miller-Steiner’s blood alcohol content almost four hours after the police were called was still 0.08 percent, the threshold for driving while intoxicated.

Longtime county attorney James Backstrom, who tends toward a hard-nosed approach, was unsure about the appropriate charge. He took the rather unusual step of convening a grand jury to seek citizen input, and the grand jury indicted Miller-Steiner in August on two counts of manslaughter.

On November 2, Miller-Steiner pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter. In return, prosecutors dropped the second count. Judge Timothy Wermager sentenced Miller-Steiner to 10 years of probation and 45 days in jail. She must also pay restitution for the cost of Evan's funeral. Her probation conditions will include remaining sober and not being allowed to take care of children under 10 without supervision.

The sentence followed an emotional courtroom scene between mother and daughter. Davina Louise Miller, Evan’s mother, asked the judge for leniency for her mother.

After the sentencing, the county attorney remarked that in a case like this, the criminal justice system can inflict no punishment harder on the offender than what has already happened. That is probably true, but I wouldn’t describe the way this case was resolved as “mercy,” as the Star Tribune reporter did. Defense attorney Joe Friedberg was closer to the mark, I think, in calling it “equitable.”