It's impossible to bring back 58-year-old Aman Kumar Khanna. He was a legal immigrant from India who came to the United States 11 years ago.
After arriving, he became an American citizen and worked two jobs to support his wife, three daughters and a mother. His life was snuffed out last October by a 16-year-old drunk driver.
The teenager was going 80 mph an hour when he blew through a red light and slammed into Khanna's car. The driver then fled the scene.
Last week, the teenager, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, now 17, was sentenced to a year at Sacramento County Boys Ranch. After serving his sentence, he will be deported.
Khanna's surviving family members think the drunk-driving teenager got off too lightly, that there was no justice for Khanna.
Their anguish is understandable. They lost a loved one who was the sole support of his family. They could lose their home, too. But the sentence was reasonable. It reflects much-needed reform in the state's juvenile justice sentencing laws that are just beginning to take effect.
Last year, the Legislature approved and the governor signed a measure that limited the offenses that would make someone under the age of 18 eligible for state juvenile prison. Gross vehicular manslaughter, the crime the 17-year-old pleaded guilty to, was not among them.
The new law recognizes that state lockups for juveniles have been expensive and dangerous failures, riddled with violence and steeped in gang culture. Young inmates sentenced to them invariably emerge more damaged and dangerous than when they arrived.
For the last several years, state juvenile facilities have been reserved for the worst of the worst. The number of young inmates housed in them has dropped steadily from more than 10,000 in the 1990s to just 1,800 today. State criminal justice officials expect the population to settle at around 1,500 eventually.
While his behavior was extremely reckless, the teenager who killed Aman Khanna did not set out to kill, maim or rob anyone. He had no prior criminal record. He was not an appropriate candidate for a state juvenile facility that houses young criminals that are far more sophisticated and violent.
Sacramento prosecutors could have petitioned the court to charge the teenager as an adult. A conviction under those circumstances would have sent him to state prison. They elected not to do so, because they did not think a judge would have granted their petition.
Prosecutors did ask for a tougher sentence. They wanted the teenager to spend a year at a county juvenile facility and another year in county jail. The juvenile referee sentenced him to a year at the Sacramento County Boys Ranch instead with no jail time.
It was a reasonable compromise, albeit one that Khanna's family finds it hard to accept.
It's hard to see how locking the teenager in jail for another year with hardened adult criminals would enhance public safety or satisfy the grieving Khanna family.
So, the teenager who drove while drunk and killed Aman Khanna will serve a year at the Boys Ranch and then be deported to his native Mexico. It may be an unsatisfactory outcome for the Khanna family, but it reflects the limitations of our criminal justice system.
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