News

By Maggie Clark, Stateline, June 17, 2012

In 1993, in what was called Denver’s “summer of violence,” high-profile gang warfare attributed to youth “super-predators” seemed to overtake the city. Drive-by shootings were a common occurrence. Then-Governor Roy Romer called a special session of the Colorado legislature and rolled out his “iron fist” plan to address the violence, which included giving prosecutors the full authority to transfer youths under 18 directly into adult court.

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By Carrie Johnson, National Public Radio, June 14, 2012

Lawyers on all sides agree the system enshrined nearly 50 years ago that gives all defendants the right to a lawyer is not working. The Justice Department calls it a crisis — such a big problem that it’s been doling out grants to improve how its adversaries perform in criminal cases.

Consider Michigan: Five times since the 1980s, independent groups have called on Michigan to change the way it pays lawyers for the poor. Each time, state officials have done nothing. And a 2008 study by a legal nonprofit association said the state’s indigent defense system had reached a “constitutional crisis.”

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By Bill Vogrin, The Gazette,  June 9, 2012

This is a story of a troubled teen seeking redemption as an adult and struggling to redefine himself in the minds of strangers who consider him a monster.

It’s the story of a contrite man seeking forgiveness for a crime that shocked the community.

Of a man trying to prove people can change.

It’s the story of Gary Flakes.

That’s Flakes as in “Grant and Flakes,” two local teenagers who went to prison for the shotgun slayings of 13-year-old Andy Westbay and 15-year-old Scott Hawrysiak on Valentine’s Day 1997.

Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/redemption-139206-mentor-youth.html#ixzz1yHBbq7Fd

By Liliana Segura, The Nation

On August 29, 1976, around 1:40 am, a fire erupted at 1138 Spruce Street in Chester, Pennsylvania. The building, in a row of two-family homes just south of the Delaware Expressway, burned for two hours, killing two boys: 13-year-old Brian Harvey and his 6-year-old brother, Derrick.

The youngest of twelve kids, Trina was known as a slow child. She had a very low IQ and couldn’t read or write. Kids made fun of her for sucking her fingers. Her mother died when Trina was 9, and her father was a violent alcoholic capable of unthinkable cruelty. (Sworn affidavits describe, in addition to horrific abuse against his wife and kids, how he once beat the family dog to death with a hammer as Trina watched, then made his children clean up its remains.) From the time Trina was young, she was mostly cared for by her siblings: among them, Edith (or Edy), the eldest, who took over her mother’s responsibilities, and twin sisters Lynn and Linda, just a year older than Trina. In and out of homelessness, Trina and the twins slept in cars and abandoned buildings, washing their clothes in police stations and foraging for food wherever they could, including from trash cans.

When she was 11, Trina was sent by her grandmother to Allentown State Hospital for mental treatment; she was discharged at 13 against the advice of her doctor and stopped taking her medication.

Following the fire, prison officials requested she be given a psychiatric evaluation, after which she was deemed unfit for trial and hospitalized. A second evaluation yielded a diagnosis of schizophrenia. But a third assessment, just a few weeks later, deemed her competent to stand trial. Her lawyer did not challenge the decision. Nor did he challenge the prosecutor’s successful push to try Trina as an adult. (He would later be jailed and disbarred.) Trina was tried in March 1977. Trial transcripts have been lost, but it’s clear that she took the stand as the sole witness for the defense. Frances Newsome was the key witness for the prosecution, telling the jury Trina had set the fire as revenge on Sylvia Harvey for forbidding her sons to play with her.

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