he could think of when we were together to extend our visits. We talked about sports and
exercise, we talked about books, we talked about his family, we talked about music, we
talked about all the things he wanted to do when he grew up. He was usually animated and
excited about something, although when he didn’t hear from his family for a while or had to
deal with some bad incident at the prison, he would become extremely depressed. He
couldn’t understand some of the hostile and violent behavior he saw from prisoners and the
other people around him. He once told me that a guard had punched him in the chest just
because he had asked a question about meal times. He started crying as he told me this
because he just couldn’t understand why the officer had done that.
Evan was sent to the St. Clair Correctional Facility, a maximum-security adult prison. Not
long after he first arrived, he was attacked by another prisoner, who stabbed him nine times.
He recovered without serious physical problems but was traumatized by the experience and
disoriented by the violence. When he talked about his own act of violence, he seemed deeply
confused about how it was possible he could have done something so destructive.
Most of the juvenile lifer cases we handled involved clients who shared Evan’s confusion
about their adolescent behavior. Many had matured into adults who were much more
thoughtful and reflective; they were now capable of making responsible and appropriate
decisions. Almost all of the cases involved condemned people marked by the tragic irony that
they were now nothing like the confused children who had committed a violent crime; they
had all changed in some significant way. This made them distinct from most of my clients
who committed crimes as adults. That I was involved in the cases of teens who’d committed
violent crimes was itself ironic.
I was sixteen years old, living in southern Delaware. I was headed outside one day when our
phone rang. I watched my mother answer it as I strolled past her. A minute later I heard her
scream inside the house. I ran back inside and saw her lying on the floor, sobbing, “Daddy,
Daddy” while the phone’s receiver dangled from its base. I picked it up; my aunt was on the
line. She told me that my grandfather had been murdered.
My grandparents had been separated for many years, and my grandfather had for some time
lived alone in the South Philadelphia housing projects. It was there that he was attacked and
stabbed to death by several teens who had broken into his apartment to steal his black-and-
white television set. He was eighty-six years old.
Our large family was devastated by his senseless murder. My grandmother, who had
separated from my grandfather many years earlier, was especially unnerved by the crime and
his death. I had older cousins who worked in law enforcement and sought information about
the boys who committed the crime—I remember them being more astonished than vengeful
about the immaturity and lack of judgment the juveniles had demonstrated. We all kept
saying and thinking the same thing: They didn’t have to kill him. There was no way an eighty-
six-year-old man could have stopped them from getting away with their paltry loot. My
mother could never make sense of it. And neither could I. I knew kids at school who seemed
out of control and violent, but still I wondered how someone could be so pointlessly
destructive. My grandfather’s murder left us with so many questions.