He sat in the front row in a Boulder courtroom filled with bad boys and boys accused of doing bad things. He did not belong there.
I showed up because he has no voice, certainly not against the state, which has arrayed all of its resources — police, jailers, prosecutors and judges — against him, painting a picture of him that cannot possibly be true.
I know his name, but I will not tell it to you. He has been scarred enough publicly. He is 10 years old, a small, soft-spoken, bespectacled and polite wisp of a child.
The legal question before the court on this day, the 12th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre that triggered the law he is accused of breaking, is whether he menaced two other children with a broken BB gun he found in the gutter next to his school in Lafayette.
It happened March 31, long after classes were over for the day. His school, Alicia Sanchez Elementary, is across the street from his home. He and a buddy were on the grass playing police officer when two other boys on skateboards came over.
They asked if they could see the BB gun. He showed them. They shrugged and skated away.
The next day, a Friday, police officers arrived at the school. They led the boy away in handcuffs and put him in detention, where he stayed for the next three days.
Wednesday’s court hearing was to determine whether the boy would agree to enter a diversion program. The charges against him would be dropped if he completed it and stayed out of trouble.
His mother, Paula, and his father, Fred, were considering it. Certainly they did not have enough money for a lawyer. Divorced for more than a year now, they have left aside their differences to help their son.
There rightly has been considerable outrage over the prosecution of this boy. One of the outraged is noted Denver lawyer David Lane, who early this week picked up the phone and called Paula and Fred.
He told them he would take the case. He would do it for free.
“I have three sons myself,” he said in an interview Thursday. “This is an example of what drives me, personally, crazy.”
Paula and Fred’s son is a victim of zero-tolerance policies, “which is code for ‘no brains allowed,’ ” Lane said.
The boy, Lane said, never threatened or menaced any child. The adults involved, he added, know this.
“But everybody in the system, including the school, is afraid they’re going to somehow get in trouble if they exercise common sense,” he said. “So they go overboard.
“And once the machine gets turned on, you have to move heaven and hell to turn it off. My job now is to turn it off.”
A new court hearing is set for May 4. At Wednesday’s hearing, the boy’s parents pleaded with Judge Roxanne Balin to allow them to place their son in a Northglenn public school that has agreed to take him.
The boy, they said, still is not allowed to return to school and, instead, is being home-schooled by Fred’s father. They told the judge that the school is proceeding with efforts to expel their son but nevertheless won’t release his records.
The judge said she doubted her jurisdiction but promised to look into it.
“I wasn’t hurting or was going to hurt anyone,” the little boy said after court. “I would never do that.”
Yes, the machine is roaring. You look at the kid and wonder how they found handcuffs and shackles small enough to fit him.
You know this week was the anniversary of Columbine. And, yes, a no-weapons-at-school law remains as sensible as ever.
But you look at this boy, where he is and what he has been through, and you think surely lawmakers did not have him and what he did in mind.
The boy reaches up and kisses his mother goodbye. His father on this afternoon is taking him to a skate park.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
