Nathaniel Abraham is a 13-year-old boy who is currently being tried as an adult for first-degree murder in Pontiac, Mich. When he was 11, Abraham pointed a 30-year-old rifle at 18-year-old Ronnie Greene Jr. and killed him. He bragged about his intentions to his girlfriend and practiced with the rifle often.

According to CNN, prosecutors see this as a clear-cut case in which Abraham did, with malice of forethought, intentionally kill another human being.

We should not undervalue the life of Ronnie Greene by suggesting that his murderer should go unpunished. Clearly, anyone who takes a life is in need of punishment. Any 11-year-old with access to a deadly weapon who talks about his desire to kill needs help, and Abraham should definitely be punished.

If found guilty, prosecutors would have an 11-year-old spend the rest of his life behind the bars of one sort of prison or another. They would see him confined to a juvenile detention center until his 21st birthday at which time he would be transferred to a maximum security penitentiary until his death.

What makes the entire situation even more bizarre is that the defense has three psychologists who have testified that Abraham has limited powers of reasoning and lacked the normal ability to understand the consequences of his actions. So not only is he 11, he isn’t very advanced for 11.

Now this could just be the usual “limited capacity” argument that defense attorney’s trot out to get their clients off. Maybe. But if it is, it’s a pretty believable tact to take. What grade school boy do you know who is a fully functional and reasonable adult?

The line for trying children as adults has finally been moved so far back that it could be the plot of a Kafka novel. This case would be amusing if it were not so appallingly barbaric. America is as backwards and brutal as it was when the first upstanding citizens showed up on these shores from England. In our history, we have made little progress toward enlightenment in our legal system.

We keep hanging on to the death penalty like it’s a cure all and every other year we try younger and younger children for crimes they barely understand.

Most people cannot remember anything meaningful from when they were 11. Think back. As young as most of us are, if we can remember the name of our sixth-grade teacher, we are lucky. I can barely remember the name of most of my grade school classmates, and I consider myself blessed with a particularly good memory.

There is an excellent reason why we make distinctions between adults and children in our legal system. A child is, to a large degree, an individual who is incapable of making rational distinctions especially in the arena of morality. That’s why we don’t have them doing jury duty. They don’t understand subtle distinctions in legal terminology and they can’t drive themselves to the courthouse.

Children must be guided by a caring adult and when that adult fails the child, the child fails society. Locking up a 13-year-old boy for life for a crime he committed when he was 11, even for murder, is absurd. We don’t trust 11-year-olds to vote, drive, join the military, get married or do any number of activities that are reserved for adults.

I would not describe myself as “soft on crime.” When it comes to throwing the book at murderers and rapists, I am all for it. By the time a man is 18, he ought to know better and severe punishment may be the only thing he understands. Classical behavior modification.

Geoffrey Fieger is Abraham’s defense attorney. Right now he is probably rolling in all of the attention and doing his best to keep the cameras pointed squarely in his direction. And although many of his recent statements might be simple grandstanding, it is not difficult to find sincerity in some of his words.

According to CNN, Fieger said: “It’s quite clear it’s a terrible accident. What have they done? I assumed they would never try to falsely accuse a little boy of doing something.”

Now even some of the more hard-core among us might say, “To hell with him, he’s lucky they don’t fry him.”

He probably is. The tendency in this country is to mete out ungodly ferocious punishments in spite of our supposed credo against cruel and unusual punishment.

Even if we assume that Abraham is the most god awful evil boy to walk the face of the earth, he did not get there alone. If we truly value life in this country, we must begin to cherish those lives that still have potential and not throw them on the scrap heap which is the American justice system because it makes us feel as though we are accomplishing something.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.