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list of risk factors looks as if it was freshly plucked from a neurocriminological recipe book for creating a recidivistic violentcriminal. Donta Page was a walking time bomb waiting to go off. He was totally unloved and uncared for right from the moment he popped out of his gonorrhea-infected mother’s womb. It wasPeyton Tuthill’s dreadful bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Page blew up in her face.
    Page himself wrote lucidly on his life and the perspective of the jury in a letter read out to the court before sentencing:
    All they see is a black man that killed a white woman. Nobody took the time to ask why but rather who. I’ve been asking for help for years. Nobody cares until I hurt someone, then they wanted to give me medicine, but when I went home nothing until I got in trouble again.… I don’t see what I really have to live for. I’m 24 years old. I never had a chance to live. Now it’s over. 14
    “I never had a chance to live.” 15 He was a 300-pound African-American who had raped and killed a pretty young blond woman. Thisinterracialrape and homicide is rare. Most violence—about 90 percent—is intra-racial. 16 The racial dynamic must surely have ratcheted up the retribution factor in the minds of the jurors. When they returned after three days, they found him guilty of first-degree deliberate murder and rape—and a prime candidate for thedeath penalty.
    The jury took time to answer the question of “who?” but spent much less time to answer Page’s own more pertinent question of “why?,” a question so childishly simple that it is almost impertinent. Yet we sometimes need to ask an impertinent question to find our way to the pertinent answer. We need to understand the “why”—the causal factors that explain the crime—if we are ever going to prevent horrific crimes like the one poor Peyton Tuthill had to suffer.
    Page is also essentially correct on the remainder of his letter. Very early behavioral signs of disturbance flagged him immediately. He was crying out for intervention. Eight documented referrals for treatment
before
he had even committed a single crime—and heaven knows how many undocumented referrals. He desperately needed an expert todefuse the toxic mix of risk factors that was thrust upon him so early in life. These were life circumstances he had no control over whatsoever.
    Looking at the free-will continuum as a totem pole, Donta is down at the bottom, where destiny lies. He was always in the red zone. Anyone could have seen that; indeed, they did see it. If you want to lay the blame on someone, blame his psychopathic-like mother for the wretched life she knowingly and uncaringly thrust on her son. Blame the indolent bystanders who witnessed what was going on and did nothing to intervene. Blame the social services for a complete and abject failure to act in a case that was crying out for intervention. Blame society for not doing more to protect once-innocent lives.
    But don’t blame Cain. Donta’s case shows that free will is not as free as law and society would like to believe.
MERCY OR JUSTICE—SHOULD PAGE BE EXECUTED?
    Should we execute Page? He was eventually found guilty and was facing the death penalty. We strongly suspect that brain damage made him significantly more likely to commit violent acts. We have also ascertained that the likely cause of damage occurred early in life for reasons beyond his control. Of course we have to protect society, and unless we can treat this brain dysfunction we may need to keep him in secure conditions for the rest of his life. But does Page deserve more punishment? Should he lose his life, given the early constraints on his free will?
    Oneargument rests on the belief that we all have free will and agency even in the face of risk factors. It’s almost a religious belief. Surely we all have a choice? If I were to ask you to explain why you are reading this book right now, you’d say something like, “Well, I