56 youthful offenders may get hearings after court ruling

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LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ highest court ruled Thursday that an inmate serving life without parole for a killing he was convicted of as a juvenile deserves a new sentencing hearing, a move that opens the door for new sentences for 55 other former youthful offenders.

The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a Lee County judge’s order granting a new sentencing hearing for Ulonzo Gordon, who was convicted of capital murder in the 1994 slaying of a West Memphis man. In the unanimous ruling, justices ruled that a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting mandatory life without parole sentences for youthful offenders should apply retroactively.

An attorney for Gordon said the ruling means all 56 inmates in Arkansas serving life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles are entitled to new sentencing hearings.

“It should affect all the others. All the others were being held up pending the decision on retroactivity,” said Jeff Rosenzweig, who is representing most of the 56 former juvenile offenders.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office said it was reviewing the court’s decision.

“Only those inmates who were juveniles when they were sentenced to serve a ‘mandatory’ life sentence are affected by today’s decision in Kelley v. Ulonzo Gordon,” Rutledge spokesman Judd Deere said in an email. “The attorney general’s office continues to review this decision from the State Supreme Court.”

Justices said Gordon was entitled to the same relief as Kuntrell Jackson, an Arkansas inmate who was given a new sentence as a result of the 2012 U.S. high court ruling.

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By Andrew Demillo The Associated Press June 18, 2015

Jacqueline Sparks: Don't throw away key on young

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As it stands, children and adolescents under age 18 in the state of Rhode Island can be sentenced to life without parole. This defies both common sense and science.

It is well known that the brains of children and adolescents are not fully developed. Specifically, the pre-frontal cortex, that portion of the brain responsible for weighing consequences of one’s actions and making calm and considered decisions, does not mature until the early 20s. Any parent of a teenager knows what this means. However, the part of the young brain that develops earliest is the amygdala. This is the more primitive, “emotional” part that reacts to stress and seeks excitement and immediate reward.

Given these neurological factors, it is easy to see why young people, in particular adolescents as they move away from parental oversight and come under the influence of peers, are prone to risky behaviors.

Complicating the picture is the fact that as many as 80 percent of juvenile lifers have reported witnessing violence. In many instances, this occurs from early ages and extends into adolescence. Witnessing violence is a known cause of childhood trauma with serious consequences for children’s emotional, social and physical development. Research indicates that immature brains develop hyper-arousal adaptations to trauma that can become maladaptive in different life contexts. Exposure to violence not only traumatizes, it teaches the young person that violence is a way to solve problems.

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By Jacqueline Sparks June 16, 2015

60 Organizations Pen Open Letter to NY Governor and Legislature: Raise the Age Now

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(June 15, 2015) In an open letter to be hand-delivered to Albany today, sixty state-wide and national organizations including international human rights groups, social workers, faith-based organizations and children’s advocates, strongly urged the passage of Raise the Age legislation before the session ends this week.

Currently, New York remains one of only two states that still prosecutes all 16- and 17 –year- olds in the justice system as adults. New York also houses 16- and 17-year-olds in adult jails and prisons, where they are at grave risk of suicide, rape, and physical abuse, and often do not receive appropriate services.

With days remaining until the 2015 legislative session ends, it is imperative that there be no further delay in raising the age.

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June 15, 2015

States that ban JLWOP

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Alaska
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Kansas
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Montana
Nevada
Texas
Vermont
West Virginia
Wyoming

 

Paroled After Life Sentence For Juvenile Crime, Joe Donovan Works Towards His Release

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BRIDGEWATER, MASS. Around the country, states are beginning to release people from prison who thought they would be there for life.

Following a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that it’s unconstitutional for juveniles convicted of murder to automatically be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, some 2,500 cases across the country must be reviewed.

Here in Massachusetts, the state Parole Board has reviewed 20 juvenile cases so far — granting parole to nine people so long as they meet certain conditions before they’re released.

One of the most well known cases is that of Joe Donovan, who threw a punch that led to the murder of MIT student Yngve Raustein. Donovan has been incarcerated for murder since 1992, when he was 17 years old. Last year he was granted parole. This August he turns 40.

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By Deborah Becker June 9, 2015

Kalief Browder’s suicide and the high cost of violence and delay at Rikers

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There was a time when Kalief Browder was given a choice: Admit to a crime he didn’t commit and leave prison after already spending three years there, or maintain his innocence and potentially face 15 years behind bars.

Browder chose innocence.

“I felt like I had to fight, I had to fight,” Browder told HuffPost Live in 2013.

Browder was just 16 years old when he was picked up by police, accused of stealing a backpack and sent to Rikers Island without a trial or a conviction. There, life was a never-ending cycle of violence, hunger and fear perpetrated by his fellow inmates and wardens.

“It was like hell on Earth,” Browder told ABC News. “We were beaten, stomped by the correction officers. Hit with weapons.”

Browder’s court date kept getting pushed back indefinitely. The entire time, he insisted on his innocence.

His case never went to trial. The charges were eventually dismissed.

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By Abby Phillip June 8, 2015

Kalief Browder, 1993–2015

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Last fall, I wrote about a young man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime. He had been arrested in the spring of 2010, at age sixteen, for a robbery he insisted he had not committed. Then he spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened. During that time, he endured about two years in solitary confinement, where he attempted to end his life several times. Once, in February, 2012, he ripped his bedsheet into strips, tied them together to create a noose, and tried to hang himself from the light fixture in his cell.

In November of 2013, six months after he left Rikers, Browder attempted suicide again. This time, he tried to hang himself at home, from a bannister, and he was taken to the psychiatric ward at St. Barnabas Hospital, not far from his home, in the Bronx. When I met him, in the spring of 2014, he appeared to be more stable.

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By Jennifer Gonnerman June 7, 2015

Watchdog: Advocate James Dold

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There’s hypocrisy in the U.S. criminal justice system. If an adult has sex with a child, the child is a victim. But if that same child accepts money for sex, the child is, in many states, a criminal.

James Dold, ’06 BA Criminal Justice and Psychology, can’t let that injustice go unchallenged.

“It’s a conflict in the law where a child who can’t legally consent to have sex can still be prosecuted for prostitution,” Dold said. “We place restrictions on children and have criminal laws to protect them from bad influences and those who would prey on them.” But then we turn them into criminals, he said. And sometimes we make sure those mistakes follow them for life.

Dold is the advocacy director for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. He’s been in Washington, D.C., since getting his law degree from the University of Maryland, but his work has taken him across the country — and back to Nevada. In 2013, he successfully lobbied for a state law that increased the penalties for pimps who traffic children. The law passed.

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By Michael Blasky May 19, 2015

Juvenile Killer Barry Massey To Be Released in 2016

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Barry Massey was the youngest person sentenced to life in prison without parole in the United States. Now he will go free.

That decision was announced Thursday by Washington’s Indeterminate Sentencing Review Board.

In 1987, Massey and an older accomplice stabbed and shot to death Steilacoom Marina owner Paul Wang. Massey was just 13 at the time. Now, after nearly 30 years behind bars, Massey will be released on February 16, 2016.

His release follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed mandatory life without parole for juveniles.

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By Austin Jenkins June 4, 2015

Bringing Back Pell for Prisoners

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The U.S. Department of Education is poised to announce a limited exemption to the federal ban on prisoners receiving Pell Grants to attend college while they are incarcerated.

Correctional education experts and other sources said they expect the department to issue a waiver under the experimental sites program, which allows the feds to lift certain rules that govern aid programs in the spirit of experimentation. If the project is successful, it would add to momentum for the U.S. Congress to consider overturning the ban it passed on the use of Pell for prisoners in 1994.

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By Paul Fain May 20, 2015