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Laurence Steinberg/The Boston Globe

Posted March 31st, 2015 at 11:58 am (UTC-4)
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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Adolescent or Adult?

Laurence Steinberg – The Boston Globe

As the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the accused Boston Marathon bomber, moves into its
defense phase, his attorneys likely will lean heavily on the science of adolescent
development to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty. Judy
Clarke, Tsarnaev’s lead defense attorney, has already made several references about
Tsarnaev’s youthfulness and susceptibility to the influence of his older brother.

Technically, the proceeding is about determining the appropriate punishment for
Tsarnaev, who has admitted his involvement in the attack. But the trial is also a
referendum on how we view and define adolescence.

Tsarnaev was 19 at the time of the bombing, an adult under every state’s criminal law.

States often have departed from the presumptive age of majority, 18, in prosecuting
and punishing juvenile offenders, but the departures always have been toward a
younger, not older, dividing line. Arguing that a 19-year-old is still an adolescent
is a step in a new direction.

Proffering developmental immaturity as a mitigating factor in a trial involving
individuals who are Tsarnaev’s age is consistent with recent discoveries in the study
of brain development, which show that substantial maturation continues well beyond 18.
We can’t point to a specific chronological age at which the adolescent brain becomes
an adult brain, because different brain regions mature along different timetables, but
important developments, some of which are relevant to sentencing decisions, are still
ongoing during the early 20s … The Boston Marathon bombing trial is important not only because the crime was so horrific, but because it forces us to ask hard questions about how best to judge the behavior of those who are legal adults, but in many respects neurobiological adolescents.

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