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Jason Sole headed to Minneapolis' Seward neighborhood in January, hoping the horrific news he'd just heard was wrong. But three men had, in fact, been killed in a Somali convenience store, and one of them, customer Anwar Mohammed, was a man Sole knew well.
"He was really, genuinely, a good guy," Sole said of Mohammed, 31, who worked as a parking lot attendant.
As the story unfolded, Sole was in a tough position. The alleged shooter was Mahdi Ali, believed to have been born in a Kenyan refugee camp. Two weeks ago, a judge ruled that Ali was at least 16 when he allegedly pulled the trigger on all three men, a decision that means Ali can be tried as an adult. If convicted of first-degree murder, the teen can be locked up for life with no possibility of parole. That's the tough part for Sole.
What Ali is accused of is horrible, Sole said, "but try him as a juvenile, because that's what he is. We didn't treat him like an adult before the crime. Why after?"
Sole, who teaches criminal justice at Metro State University, said that murderers are the least likely to reoffend. Besides, if tried as a juvenile, Ali still would have served eight years at least. That's half his life again to turn himself around, something a growing number of legal experts say cannot be done if a young person is thrown into the adult system.
