OP-ED: I Believe in Restorative Justice for My Child’s Killer

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It has been nearly 20 years since my 3-year-old son, Casson Xavier “Biscuit” Evans, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Denver. Back then, I wanted the three teenagers charged with his death to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

Today, I believe it serves no good to sentence a child to die in prison. It doesn’t bring back our lost loved ones and it fails to acknowledge that we are all better than the worst thing we have done. I want to see the young people involved in Casson’s death rehabilitated and, when they are ready, returned to society.

As we observe Victim Rights Awareness Week, I want to share the story of how I came to develop a relationship with the boy — who is now a young man — accused of pulling the trigger in Casson’s death and why I have agreed to take an important role in his life.

It was Dec. 21, 1995. There had been shootings by rival gangs the night before in my niece’s neighborhood in Denver and I had gone by to pick up her child. Casson was sleeping, so I left him and his 6-year-old brother Calvin in the car with two older cousins – one 17 and the other 22. I had been inside only briefly when I heard gunshots. Casson had been shot in the crossfire. He died in my arms.

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By Sharletta Evans April 21, 2015

Reform laws that send too many youths to adult prisons

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California hit a milestone this month with the first release under new laws of a man sentenced as a teenager to life without parole. Edel Gonzalez was 16 at the time of his crime and spent nearly 24 years in prison.

California’s new laws recognize that juveniles are different from adults. We know that a 16-year-old has tremendous capacity to grow and change, and not be defined by his or her worst act. These laws allowed Edel to express his deep remorse for a murder and prove over many years that he had grown far beyond the immature teen who took part in that crime.

But these laws are back-door fixes to a front-door problem. The real problem is the flow of young people into adult prison for life and near-life sentences.

California law allows those as young as 14 to be tried and sentenced as adults. One might think that the decision to remove a youth from the juvenile justice system would always be made by a judge who carefully considers the severity of the offense, as well as the potential for rehabilitation.

In fact, a judge does not make the decision in most cases. Instead, for most youths who end up in adult court, it was a prosecutor who decided, with no hearing or judicial consideration. And prosecutors typically have to decide quickly, without access to or the ability to collect essential information about the youth.

By Elizabeth Calvin April 18 2015

 

 

Bryan Stevenson

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Pursuer of justice

When I first heard Bryan Stevenson speak, I found myself admiring the way his gentle voice pulls you in to listen that much closer to the power behind his every word. But I imagine his mild manner is as much about delivering a clear message as it is his own way of conserving energy—for no one knows the steady pace that must be maintained on the long road to equality more than Bryan. For decades, he has dedicated himself to fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal-­justice system with the perfect combination of unwavering passion and idealism.

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By Serena Williams April 16th 2015

John Legend launches campaign to end mass incarceration

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“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend said in an interview. “It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”

Legend, 36, will also visit a California state prison and co-host a criminal justice event with Politico in Washington, D.C., later this month. The campaign will include help from other artists — to be announced — and organizations committed to ending mass incarceration.

“I’m just trying to create some more awareness to this issue and trying to make some real change legislatively,” he said. “And we’re not the only ones. There are senators that are looking at this, like Rand Paul and Cory Booker, there are other nonprofits that are looking at this, and I just wanted to add my voice to that.”

Legend’s speech at the Academy Awards this year struck a chord when he spoke about mass incarceration. He won the Oscar for best original song with rapper Common for “Glory” from the film “Selma.”

 

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By Mesfin Fekadu April 13th 2015

Juvenile Justice in America: We Can Do Better

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The juvenile court was invented in Illinois in 1899. Soon thereafter, recognizing that youthful offenders often had diminished culpability and unique potential for rehabilitation, every state in the Union created its own juvenile court system. Developed nations around the world emulated the American model of juvenile justice.

Today the United States is an international outlier in the severity of its juvenile sentencing practices. Until 2005, the United States was the only developed country that subjected children to the death penalty, and today we are the only nation that employs juvenile life without parole. The Pope, U.N. officials and human rights organizations have universally condemned the way the American criminal justice system treats children — the most vulnerable members of society.

In recent years, there has been some improvement due to new (and overdue) Eighth Amendment rulings from the United States Supreme Court. In Graham v. Florida(2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012), the Supreme Court significantly curtailed the extent to which states may employ juvenile life without parole.

Since those decisions, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming have abolished the practice of juvenile life without parole, while other states have precluded the sentence for certain categories of juveniles. West Virginia’s legislation in response to Graham and Miller rethinks juvenile sentencing altogether, and California has passed a law providing a new parole protocol for youth serving extreme sentences. The Supreme Court of Florida, considered to be among the most punitive of all states, recently decided a handful of juvenile sentencing cases and held in favor of the juvenile petitioner in each instance. The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly determined that children are different in the eyes of the Constitution; brain science tells us that children are less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation; and some states are enacting laws that properly reflect both realities.

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By Cara H. Drinan April 13th 2015

A Murderer at 14, Then a Lifer, Now a Man Pondering a Future

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CHICAGO — Adolfo Davis admits he was a swaggering thug by the age of 14 as he roamed and dealt drugs with a South Side gang.

He also describes a childhood of emotional and physical deprivation: a mother fixated on crack, an absent father, a grandmother’s overflowing and chaotic apartment.

From the age of 6 or 7, he often had to buy his own food or go hungry, so he collected cans, pumped gas for tips and shoplifted. At 10, he went to juvenile hall for wresting $3 worth of food stamps and 75 cents from a girl. At 12, he fell in with the Gangster Disciples.

“I loved them, they protected me, they were my family,” Mr. Davis said in a recent interview.

At 14, in 1990, he was out with two gang members when they robbed a rival drug house and shot the occupants, leaving two dead. Now 38, he has spent the last 24 years in prison on a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

 But his future will be reconsidered in a new sentencing hearing here on Monday. It is one of the first such proceedings in Illinois to result from the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Miller v. Alabama that juvenile murderers should not be subject to mandatory life without parole.
By Erik Eckholm April 10th 2015

Vermont eliminates life without parole for kids

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Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has signed H. 62 into law, eliminating life without parole as a sentencing option for children and adding to the movement for reform in the ways that we hold young people accountable when they are convicted of serious crimes.

“I am appalled that the U.S. is the only country in the world that still sentences juveniles to a life sentence without the possibility of release or parole, and currently 2,500 individuals in the U.S. are sentenced to die in prison for crimes they committed as children,” said Vermont Rep. Barbara Rachelson, who sponsored the bill.  “While I am proud to say that Vermont has never handed out this sentence, the signing of H.62 will take this crime off the books and assure that it will never happen.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, drawing in part on child development science, has ruled that children are “constitutionally different” from adults and should not be subject to our country’s harshest penalties. In 2005, the Court abolished the juvenile death penalty. In 2010, the Court ruled in Graham v. Florida that it is unconstitutional to impose a life-without-parole sentence upon a child for a non-homicide crime. And in 2012’s Miller v. Alabama, the Court ruled it is a violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment to impose a life-without-parole sentence for a crime committed by a person younger than 18.

“Vermont has taken a great step forward in recognizing that children should be treated differently than adults when they are convicted of serious crimes,” said James Dold, Advocacy Director for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. “We are grateful for the leadership of Vermont’s legislature and Attorneys General in ending the practice of sentencing children to die in prison.”

The Vermont Attorneys Generals Office, along with numerous advocates from across the state supported the legislation.

A growing number of lawmakers and opinion leaders — including President Jimmy Carter, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, columnist George Will and Pope Francis — have called for an end to these sentences. More than 150 national and international organizations have also called for reforms.

Earlier this year, the American Bar Association passed Resolution 107C calling on all states and the federal government to eliminate life without parole sentences for children. ABA President, William C. Hubbard, called the sentence a severe violation of human rights when imposed upon children. “The ABA applauds those states that have already taken steps to reform their laws and urges other states to pass similar reforms as soon as practicable,” he stated following the resolution’s adoption.

Vermont is the 12th state to eliminate life-without-parole sentences for children and the first state to pass such legislation following the adoption of the ABA’s resolution in February.

 

 

 

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Miller retroactivity case

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On March 23, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Montgomery v. Louisiana, which is expected to clarify whether the Miller v. Alabama decision should be applied retroactively. A retroactive decision in Montgomery could allow thousands of individuals currently serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed as children an opportunity for resentencing and a second chance at life.

The petitioner in this case, Henry Montgomery, was sentenced to life without parole for a crime that occurred in 1963, two weeks after his 17th birthday. He has been in prison for more than 50 years.

In June 2012, Miller abolished mandatory life-without-parole sentences for youth. Not all states have applied the ruling retroactively, which has led to inconsistent treatment of individuals from state to state.  To date, the high courts of 10 states have ruled that Miller applies retroactively to everyone serving the sentence. Those states are Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas, and Wyoming. Four state supreme courts — including Louisiana, where Mr. Montgomery is serving — have ruled thatMiller does not apply retroactively. Louisiana also is among the five states that have sentenced the majority of the approximately 2,500 people who were sentenced to life without parole as children.

This is the second case concerning Miller retroactivity the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear this year.  In the first, Toca v. Louisiana, the petitioner, George Toca, had been sentenced to mandatory life without parole for allegedly shooting his friend during a botched robbery at the age of 17. After the Court agreed to hear the case, prosecutors offered Mr. Toca a plea agreement, which vacated his murder conviction. He accepted the agreement and was released from prison in January.

It is vital that the U.S. Supreme Court resolve the question of Miller retroactivity to ensure that all individuals serving life without parole are afforded equal treatment under the law.  We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will further uphold the principle that children are different and that all children sentenced to die in prison deserve a second chance.

Read the petition in Montgomery v. Louisiana

Read more about the case

 

Photo by Roland Meinecke

Experts respond to the guidelines for representing youth facing life

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full1Trial Defense Guidelines: Representing a Child Client Facing a Possible Life Sentence are the first-ever guidelines for representing children who face our country’s harshest penalty. These Guidelines were drafted in close collaboration with attorneys and advocates from across the nation.

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Florida Supreme Court orders new sentences in juvenile cases

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A 33-year-old woman serving life without parole for the murder of a Panama City-area cab driver when she was 15 will get a new sentence under a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.

The court ordered new sentencing hearings for Rebecca Falcon and three other people who committed felonies as juveniles in order to comply with U.S. Supreme Court rulings that say juveniles can’t be sent to prison for life if they haven’t killed someone and mandatory life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for juvenile murderers.

The Florida high court is also giving anyone who received life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles two years to seek new sentences, which could affect about 200 people.

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By Brendan Farrington

March 19, 2015