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With the benefit of antidepressant medication, Davis now believes that mental illness was at the root of his behavior. The psychiatrists who examined him agree, having determined that at the time of the shooting, Davis was suffering from serious depression with psychotic features. Eight of the other 11 convicted kids that TIME reviewed have had some sort of mental disorder diagnosed since their crimes, mostly depression but also personality disorders and schizophrenia or its precursors. Six of the kids have had behavior-altering psychotropic drugs prescribed.
The presence of mental illness may help explain why some kids snap when faced with the usual torments of adolescence and others don't. Of course, some kids consider their vexations extraordinary. Carneal, who at the time of his crime was a freshman who got picked on for his small stature and quiet manner, told a psychiatrist that he felt going to prison would be better than continuing to endure the bullying in school.
Psychiatrist Stuart Twemlow, director of the Erik H. Erikson Institute for Education and Research in Stockbridge, Mass., notes that a significant subgroup of the school shooters consists of kids who come from relatively affluent families, who are academically above average, if not gifted, and who rarely have the qualities expected of violent offenders--such as a history of substance abuse or mental disorder. In Twemlow's view, this is no coincidence. "Bullying is more common in affluent schools probably than in the low-income schools," he says. It is spurred, he believes, by "the dynamics that come out of our typical hard-nosed, competitive" middle class.
Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who has interviewed numerous school shooters, says they tend to have in common "some degree of depression, considerable anger, access to weapons that they aren't ready to have, and a role model salient in their memory. So far," he told a TIME reporter, "it's always been a mass murderer who has been given ample coverage in your magazine." Describing his pre-rampage mind-set, Solomon once wrote, "I felt the next thing left to release my anger would be through violence. I had just gotten the idea from the shooting at Columbine High School on April 20." Solomon opened fire precisely one month after that date. Seth Trickey, who in 1999 shot and wounded five classmates in Fort Gibson, Okla., told a psychiatrist he had become preoccupied with previous school shooters and wondered how he would hold up in their shoes. Woodham told the cops who took his confession, "I guess everyone is going to remember me now."
THE REHABILITATION
Though Woodham has since expressed remorse, prison authorities aren't especially interested in his redemption. Woodham receives no schooling or counseling. "We don't make any pretense about trying to rehabilitate someone who is going to spend their natural life in prison," says Robert Johnson, commissioner of Mississippi's Department of Corrections. "What's the use?"