John Michael Caudle, a 14 year old child who is charged with murdering his mother and stepfather, is the latest name to add to the list of direct file victims. As the article in the Valley Courier explains, this child can now look forward to solitary confinement and the detestation of his fellow humans, and all because a DA decided that vengeance should trump compassion and justice.

Whatever the details surrounding the killings, which we will learn in good time, there is one certainty: John Michael Caudle is a very scared, angry, and unstable child.  His underdeveloped adolescent brain snapped for some reason, and now, rather than receiving mental help and rehabilitation in a suitable juvenile facility, the state of Colorado is considering whether this child should be thrown into the adult prison system and left to rot.

In this season of peace and hope, is it too much to ask that John Michael Caudle be given the help he needs to recover and develop into a healthy and productive adult?  Have the wellsprings of our culture’s compassion for troubled children dried up?  Violence is a fact of life, but why compound the tragic loss of two lives with the avoidable destruction of a third?