As with the Trolley Square tragedy, there will be large sums of money and time spent on how Curtis Allgier may have escaped his bond, taken Anderson's handgun, shot him and escaped.
There will also be great debate about what the fitting punishment for Allgier should be if he is convicted. Does the state exercise its ultimate power and execute him or do the taxpayers of this state pay between $25,000 and $50,000 a year to keep Allgier in prison for the balance of his natural life?
The attractive short-term economic answer would be to pay the more than $50,000 for the execution (the price of an execution without the additional legal cost if Allgier makes an appeal) versus the $1.8 million cost ($30,000 x 60 years = $1.8 million) of incarcerating Allgier for the rest of his life.
The problem with the short-term perspective is its destruction of the very evidence which might lead us as a society to identify and correct problems in our education and social systems that produced Allgier.
As a part-time scientist I know from experience the best science often comes as a result of failed experiments. From failure the scientist learns what variables need to be changed or re-examined.
In the continuing great American experiment of public education, we don't seem to use this failure theorem to correct or modify our educational processes. We simply pass on the at-risk "bad" kids to the next grade until they either drop out of school or graduate. The continuation of this pass-on process makes the student a loser and the members of the society potential victims.
In 1992 I ran for statewide office. The campaign provided me with frequent contact with classroom teachers. I paid particular attention to teachers of kindergarten and first, second and third grades. My question to these teachers always was "can you identify the student in your class who will have a run-in with the law or law enforcement before he or she is 18?" There was rarely a pause before the teachers answered, "Absolutely."
By not heeding these early social indicators of malice and maladjustment, we choose to pay a much higher price, as evidenced by the tragic shooting of Anderson on Monday.
Equally, by proceeding to execution we forgo an admittedly morbid, but necessary inquiry, nonetheless. We need to pay the price to have social scientists and mental health specialists track the life of All-gier and identify meaningful points of intervention where society and education could have made a difference.
By making this map of a social pathogen and knowing when and how to intervene, we would increase the chances of avoiding reoccurrences of Monday's killing.
The Centers for Disease Control takes this scientific mapping methodology and applies it to infectious disease. We quite properly spend billions of dollars on research about viral and microbial pathogens to protect ourselves against disease.
Allgier is a social pathogen, and we should study the negative shapers or influences of his life to understand how he could have callously killed Anderson.
Finally, an observation about a source of real sorrow - prisons. I have represented various prisoners over my three decades of legal practice. There are several points to be recognized when you are on the other side of the bars in prison. Each prisoner is an individual. Each has his or her own story.
The statistics about prisoners in Utah are not pretty. We pay more than $25,000 a year to keep prisoners in minimum and medium security, more for maximum-security prisoners. Our recidivism rate is more than 60 percent, and 65 percent of inmates are in prison for substance (alcohol and drugs) abuse-related offenses.
Prison is good at educating prisoners; that is, to be better criminals. Prison remains an 18th century remnant in the 21st century with a serious new twist - gangs. Life behind bars now almost requires membership in a gang for the inmate's protection.
Unless we begin to properly fund the corrections system and use the tools of social science and psychiatry, we will continue to be shocked and sorrowed by killings such as that on Monday and those at Trolley Square.
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* PAT SHEA is a Salt Lake attorney and former director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
