**Warning – Adult themed content in this blog**
As some of you may know, I have spent the beginning part of this week in court. I was there as a witness for the defense in a case that simply pushes my buttons.
Morton has been accused of committing an awful crime. He is accused of intending to meet and perform sexual acts with an underage girl. But he never showed up to the meeting place. He didn’t go. Which is the best thing possible, because the ‘underage girl’ he was e-mailing with was really another adult trying to trap sexual predators. Not a police officer. Not a trained professional. The other adult was someone who is trying to mete out their own idea of vigilante justice. They are working on their own agenda, and not really trying to protect the public from harm. If they were, they never would have gone after Morton. I believe very strongly that those people out there who prey on young women and young men should be behind bars. But Morton is not one of them.
Why I do I believe he shouldn’t be punished? That he isn’t the predator they are accusing him of being? Because 18 months ago, Morton saw my MySpace page, and noting that I live one town over, he e-mailed me. As my MySpace page indicates, I am always looking for more people to hang out with who love hiking and kayaking around the region. We e-mailed and chatted for a month or so, in which he never once said or did anything lewd, suggestive, or otherwise rude.
Living in such a small town, I started asking my friends about him. Is this someone I would enjoy spending time with? And the answer from most of my friends (who know about my Jeopardy! obsession) was, no, Morton was not the kind of person I would spend quality time with. A month or so later, I was at restaurant/bar with my best friend, and he pointed out Morton to me. I observed as Morton had a conversation with someone with whom he had gone to high school, and I watched as she grew increasingly annoyed with his juvenile speech pattern. She was eternally patient with him, never actually telling him to go away. By the time he brought out his yearbook, she’d had enough. I watched as he clearly missed every obvious sign of her agitation. Finally, she and her friends left, just to escape him.
Here is the crux of the matter: in order to do what I feel is right and just, and keep an innocent man out of prison, I have to hurt him. I have to tell the truth on the stand. And the truth is that this man of 32 has the mental capacity of an 8th grader. He may have done what they say, and arranged a meeting with a 17 year old girl, but he didn’t know it was wrong. This is not a case of ignorance; of not knowing the speed limit. This is a case of a brain not being developed enough to differentiate and reason between right and wrong. Like any adolescent, he should not have unsupervised access to the internet. Saying this to other people is easy. Anyone who has met him and had a conversation with him knows that he is ‘challenged’. It is abundantly obvious. He can’t hold a job. He can’t live alone. He is not a fully autonomous functioning adult, nor will he ever be. And there is nothing wrong with that. God loves this young man just as he loves all of us. But for me to have to say these things, out loud, in front of Morton – this is not easy. In fact, it is incredibly difficult. To keep him out of prison, and save the life he has now, I will have to break down part of his belief in himself. It just doesn’t seem right.
*The name has been changed to protect the young man in question
