Terrorists or
teens?
August 14, 2006
By Dahlia Lithwick
Special to The Washington Post
Salt Lake Tribune
At first blush, it's just outrageous. Across the
country, teen-agers are being tried as terrorists for plots to shoot
their enemies in the lunchroom. In many cases, they have been
charged under terrorism laws intended to keep us safe from al-Qaida,
not from anguished Goths with dreams of grandeur.
Prosecutors say that angry young men amassing guns and bombs
really is terrorism; that the students killed in 1999 at Columbine
High School are as much terrorism victims as the workers killed in
the World Trade Center in 2001. Defense lawyers say these
prosecutions are overblown; they allow prosecutors to claim huge
victories against terrorism when they've just put a pimply misfit
behind bars.
As is often the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
There is a difference between terrorists and teen-agers, and using
stiff anti-terrorism laws to ratchet up penalties and punish
juveniles as adults obscures an important distinction. As Michael
Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland, recently
told USA Today, charging troubled teen-agers as terrorists "cheapens
the war on terror." There's a profound difference between
fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, domestic terrorism such as Timothy
McVeigh's bombing in Oklahoma City and juvenile plots to shoot the
cool kids in study hall. Charging all three classes of offenders as
terrorists only serves to blur the already porous legal definition
of terrorism. It suggests that the lonely kid who posts bomb threats
on his MySpace page is the moral equivalent of Mohamed Atta.
But that lonely kid can prove to be a lethal kid, and, as
Columbine's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and D.C. sniper Lee Boyd
Malvo, proved, the fact that you're in high school hardly matters
when you've fatally shot someone. While it's clear that we shouldn't
be using terrorism laws to prosecute teen-age death threats, the
striking parallels between fundamentalist terrorists and alleged
school shooters offer intriguing insight into the policy strategies
for addressing both.
The annual crop of Columbine wannabes flourished yet again this
year. And where they once may have been charged with conspiracy or
attempted assault, they are now charged as terrorists. Which
probably rules out college.
In April - timed, as ever, to coincide with the anniversary of
the Columbine killings - a string of disturbing plots emerged: Four
New Jersey students, ages 14 to 16, were charged with first-degree
terrorism on suspicion of plotting to massacre at least 17 people
during lunchtime at Winslow Township High School on April 20, seven
years to the day after Columbine. None of the students had been able
to obtain weapons. In Kansas City, Mo., two 17-year-olds were
charged with making terrorist threats in an alleged plot to use guns
and explosives against Platte County R-3 High School, also timed to
coincide with the Columbine anniversary.
In Michigan, prosecutors are deciding whether to file terrorism
charges against a 16-year-old Oxford boy accused of stockpiling
homemade bombs, napalm and blueprints of his high school in his
parents' basement. Also in Michigan, Andrew Osantowski, 18, of
Macomb County was sentenced to at least 4 1/2 years in prison in
June after a jury found him guilty of terrorism and making terrorist
threats in a plot to massacre students at his suburban Detroit high
school. Amassed in his home were an AK-47, pipe bombs, a Nazi flag,
printed material about Adolf Hitler and a schematic diagram of his
school.
One of the striking similarities in all these school shooting
plots is this lack of originality. There's always the stupid Nazi
flag. There's always the school schematic. There's usually a
pornographically detailed written plan. It's as though the same
adolescent drive to own the same style of Nikes as all the other
kids animates a need to plot the exact same killing spree. And
perhaps that is the parallel between the 9/11 terrorists and these
would-be school shooters - their fundamental passivity, failure of
imagination and willingness to be led without thought.
There's another telling similarity between suicide bombers and
teen-age would-be suicide-shooters: A Secret Service study
undertaken in response to the rash of school shootings in the late
1990s found that of the 41 teen-age shooters studied - ranging in
age from 11 to 21 and with little commonality in family background,
income or intelligence - the only common links were depression and
suicidal tendencies. Moreover, like suicide bombers, school shooters
see themselves as victims. The report indicated that more than
two-thirds of the school shooters felt persecuted or bullied. The
motive for the shooting often was revenge. In that sense, too,
school shooters could be compared to terrorists; they feel
victimized and despairing, they hunger for revenge and they need to
have their lives matter, even if only in hindsight.
One of the most pathetic details that emerged with last month's
release of nearly 1,000 pages of previously confidential diary
entries, notes and schoolwork of the two Columbine shooters was
this: Sandwiched between the hatred and loneliness and alienation
was a simple yet acute longing for girlfriends. As Newsweek
reported, Klebold, 17 at the time, lamented, "I don't know what I do
wrong with people (mainly women) it's like they set out to hate &
ignore me." This is not unlike the longings of the fundamentalist
suicide bomber, whose religious beliefs often lead to a complicated
mix of desire for and loathing of women.
Certainly, there are differences between disaffected Goths and
suicide bombers. The role that religion plays in the minds of the
latter group cannot be underestimated. More broadly, teen-agers are
teen-agers, and they are not criminally culpable in the way an adult
might be, even when their attacks are as lethal. And because
teen-age boys with grudges are fundamentally different from men with
liquid explosives, we should resist the temptation to use terrorism
laws to prosecute them; even when those laws offer the prospect of
longer sentences and trial in adult court.
Still, it may well be the case that the best legal analogy we
have for teen-agers plotting a repeat of Columbine in this country
is religious terrorism. In both cases, the offenders are alienated
and grandiose, bitter and vengeful. And although we shouldn't use
laws fashioned for terrorists to try high-schoolers with homemade
bombs, we should consider the parallels between them in fashioning
laws to deter and punish both.
Lithwick covers legal affairs for Slate, the online magazine
at www.slate.com |
