A Note from the Newsroom

“Under certain circumstances, who among us couldn’t be a killer?” Agent Emily Prentiss asks a colleague in a season three episode of the CBS television series, “Criminal Minds.”

Her question stemmed from the events of the preceding 50 minutes, in which the show’s protagonists, a group of FBI analysts, had worked to profile and capture Johnny, a young man in the midst of a committing a series of vicious slaying.

Johnny is different from the criminals the team usually interacts with though. In fact, the team discovers, Johnny was a successful comic book artist until he witnessed his fiancé’s murder by a gang of thugs.

The analysts successfully capture Johnny, but the case raises questions for them, especially for Agent Prentiss.

In one of the episode’s final scenes she discusses her struggle to classify Johnny within her mental roster of criminals.

“He’s the first suspect we’ve had who wasn’t a cold-blooded killer,” Prentiss says to more experienced agent, David Rossi. “In only six months he became so sick that he went from a normal person to a killer.”

“They’re all sick in their own ways,” Rossi responds.

Not satisfied, Prentiss says that she can’t understand how a seemingly normal person could commit such horrendous crimes.

“Well, he was the victim of a great tragedy,” Rossi answers.

It was this scene that came to mind as I sat in district court last Wednesday and listened to 19-year-old Aaron Jess Spang receive the state’s maximum sentence for deliberate homicide.

The “Criminal Minds” episode is neither a perfect analogy (Johnny suffered a psychotic break, Spang, according to a psychologist’s report, suffered long-term developmental trauma), nor is a crime show the ideal source of insight (I would imagine several law enforcement officials just dropped this column in disgust).

But it is an apt comparison in one key respect: Spang’s case, like Johnny’s, raises the question of individual culpability — to what degree were these young men responsible for their own actions and to what degree were they simply victims of tragic circumstance?

The tragedy, for Spang, was growing up in an extremely unstable household. According to testimony during his late April trial, Spang was forced to act as a parent to his mother, Vicki One Bear, whose alleged drug and alcohol addictions rendered her childishly irresponsible.

During the trial, Spang’s attorney floated out several defense theories to the jury, including the idea that the stress his client endured at home caused him to “just snap.” To some degree the jury bought it; they convicted Spang of mitigated deliberate homicide rather than straight-up deliberate homicide, with the mitigating circumstance being his home environment.

It was also this defense theory that Dr. Vincent River, a Polson-based psychologist who evaluated Spang, agreed with. During his testimony at Wednesday’s sentencing River imbued fresh meaning into that tired cliché by explaining why he believed it not only possible, but likely, that Spang “just snapped.”

“My understanding of Jess is that he developed prematurely adult behavior through internal pressure to take over, exercise his own judgment and protect the household since he couldn’t rely on his mother’s judgment,” River explained, adding that a child who grows up without adult protection may develop a “precociously over mature” nervous system.

This type of “over-mature” system, River said, allows a child to control his emotions well enough to function day-to-day, but does not allow him to develop the emotional nuances and complexities seen in his peers living in stable environments.

“Jess is emotionally more immature than his chronological age,” River said as part of his explanation why Spang seemed unable to show adult emotions like guilt and remorse.

Under cross-examination by the prosecution, River responded to the claim that Spang’s actions were consciously self-motivated.

“It could appear that way,” River said, about the prosecution’s theory that Spang murdered Frank He Does It to keep him from reporting his marijuana grow to the police. “But under the circumstances of developmental trauma, that night was very likely a triggering event based on the repeated experience of abandonment by his mom for men and substances.”

In other words: the kid just snapped.

Spang’s sentencing was the talk of the courthouse last week, and the chatter I overheard from courthouse regulars seemed, for the most part, to sympathize with him. No one who had sat through his five day trial seemed willing to outright condone his actions, specifically stabbing an unarmed victim nine times, but no one seemed quite willing to condemn him either.

At least no one who had witnessed One Bear’s nonsensical testimony and erratic behavior (“where are we?” she slurred from the gallery during her son’s sentencing).

Although the court of public opinion may have shown sympathy for Spang, the 20th Judicial Court had none of that leniency. But then again, that’s not really the court’s job.

“The reason for the sentence is that the defendant was convicted by a jury of one of the most serious crimes in the state of Montana,” Judge C.B. McNeil told the courtroom, adding that the details of the crime — “stabbing an unarmed victim nine times until he was dead” — made the crime not only serious, but extremely violent.

McNeil’s decision to go with the maximum sentence is a clear indicator of his respect for the jury’s decision and for Montana law. It’s a decision that also shows great respect for the victim and his family who had little voice during the trial.

And while I greatly admire McNeil’s dedication to implementing justice, as an observer not charged with that task, I wished Spang had received a lighter sentence, one that would have allowed him additional access to counseling and the potential for earlier release, conditional on good behavior.

Looking at the defendant, a slightly built, frightened kid, it was hard not to picture a friend, or even myself, in his place. As Agent Prentiss asked: “Under certain circumstances, who among us couldn’t be a killer?”

A question, for which her colleague Agent Rossi can only respond with a shrug.

“Life,” Rossi tells her “is a terrible thing to happen to a person.”