Is life without parole justified?

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Crime was horrific, but is life without parole justified?

dunbarvillage.jpgBy Kimberly Corteau

My heart goes out to the mother and son for the horrific crime that took place in Dunbar Village in Palm Beach County. I know that this will forever haunt them, and they will never fully recover.

But as horrific as the crime was, how do we justify sending kids to die in prison without the possibility of parole – for a crime short of murder?

At least one teen was born as a drug addict, another repeated first grade at least three times, and another repeated sixth grade three times. There are dozens of examples of visible physical and mental abuse throughout their young lives – visible to the community as well as the school system. One child often missed school because he was too injured to attend. The list goes on.

At what point does the community share in the responsibility and address this at its core? These are young human lives that never stood a chance. No genuine helping hand. How does our school system allow elementary-aged children to repeat grades three times? Is there no Plan B?

Judge Krista Marx is quoted as saying she sympathized with the defendants’ difficult lives, including poverty, fatherlessness and drug addiction, but none of those things explained their lack of a moral code.

What more could it possibly take to explain their lack of moral code?

The penalty for this crime should be severe, but should we allow children to live and die in prison without an attempt at rehabilitation or a chance to somehow right their wrong?

We should question why Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape.

And in response to the author who recently expressed that “community service” was a distraction from her teenage son’s schoolwork, be thankful that you live in area where community involvement is expected. These are life lessons that will never be experienced through textbooks. He is fortunate to be given that chance.

Kimberly Courteau lives in Boca Raton, Fla.

Clemency for these six prisoners could save millions and serve justice

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By Alan Prendergast

Published on October 21, 2009 at 9:24am

Among Governor Bill Ritter’s hits and misses, few actions have drawn as much criticism as his proposal to release thousands of inmates months earlier than originally planned, thereby cutting millions of dollars from the state’s overstressed budget.

The announcement sent convulsions of anxiety through Colorado’s crime-control industry. Police chiefs braced for waves of thugs hitting the streets. A criminologist predicted a sharp spike in the crime rate, including an upswing in “heinous” crimes. Private prison contractors groused about lost business and possible layoffs. Last month a Denver Post article shrieked that the governor’s early-release list included a cop-killer — who was within a few weeks of mandatory release, anyway. And last week, Republican lawmakers demanded that Ritter end the “disastrous” program, even though it had scarcely begun.

Actually, Ritter’s plan barely qualifies as “early release” at all. Only a small percentage of state inmates receive discretionary parole anymore. The vast majority serve out their sentences right up to their mandatory release date, then have a mandatory period of parole to complete on top of that. Although the Colorado Department of Corrections routinely deducts “earned time” of a few days each month, violent offenders are required to serve at least 75 percent of their original sentence.

Ritter’s plan excludes sex offenders, targets inmates who are already six months or less from getting out, and would still require screening by the Colorado Board of Parole, which can — and often does — deny early release to violent offenders. The plan is a candle lit under a glacier, a slight nudge to a massive, overstuffed prison system that’s draining an ever-increasing share of state resources while lawmakers dawdle over sentencing reform proposals.

The alarm and outrage that greeted even this modest cost-cutting measure is a good indication of what the governor is up against as he tries to get a handle on the DOC’s $700 million-a-year budget, which has swelled at an average rate of 10 percent a year for the past two decades. No politician can afford to appear soft on crime — not even a former prosecutor who, in his gubernatorial campaign, vowed to control soaring prison costs by launching new programs that would lower recidivism.

Ironically, the governor has a powerful weapon in his arsenal when it comes to getting people out of prison early, one that requires no legislative approval. Properly applied, it can save money, address inequities in the justice system and transform the sentencing reform debate. But it’s politically risky, and Ritter has declined to use it to any real effect in his first three years in office.

It’s called clemency. The state constitution gives the governor “the power to grant reprieves, commutations and pardons” for all crimes except treason. It’s a tool that Ritter’s predecessors have wielded, sometimes boldly, to free particular prisoners or shorten their sentences, to correct injustices or reward people who have turned their lives around while incarcerated, or to wipe the slate clean years after youthful bad behavior. Clemency used to be a routine part of being Colorado’s governor, like cutting ribbons and wearing a cowboy hat, but in recent decades the option has been exercised less and less.

Governor John Love granted more than 200 pardons in his ten years on the job. Richard Lamm granted more than 150 in twelve years — and commuted hundreds of sentences. Roy Romer pardoned just over fifty in his three terms. In eight years, Bill Owens issued only seven pardons and six commutations.

Ritter reorganized Owens’s executive clemency advisory board and created a second one, designed to review applications from inmates serving time in adult prisons for crimes committed as juveniles. To date, he’s issued two pardons — one for a 1997 drug charge, and one for a 1995 misdemeanor theft — and not a single commutation.

The situation has frustrated prisoner advocates, especially those trying to modify life-without-parole sentences for juveniles. A 2006 law makes lifers who enter the prison system as juveniles eligible for parole after forty years, but it doesn’t apply retroactively to those already convicted; their chief hope now is Ritter’s juvenile clemency board, which has reportedly reviewed more than a dozen cases so far but has not produced one commutation.

“When we went to the legislature to get the law changed for juveniles in the adult system, they told us, ‘There’s always clemency,'” recalls Mary Ellen Johnson, director of the Pendulum Foundation, a juvenile-justice nonprofit based in Denver. “They were shocked when we told them that nobody gets clemency.”

Certainly none have among the life-without-parole cases that Pendulum has championed, several of which were featured in a 2007 Frontline documentary. Trevor Jones, who was seventeen in 1996 when he fatally shot another teen, was convicted of reckless manslaughter — but still ended up with a mandatory life sentence under the felony-murder law. Despite an exemplary record in prison and his insistence that the gun discharged accidentally, his application for clemency was recently denied.

Also turned down: Dietrick Mitchell, the sixteen-year-old driver in a 1991 fatal hit-and-run. The victim’s family and prosecutors maintain that the killing was intentional and gang-related; Mitchell’s supporters say it was accidental and that Mitchell was no gangbanger.

Jeanne Smith, director of the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice and chair of the juvenile clemency board, won’t disclose how many cases the board has actually reviewed, what recommendations were made to Ritter, or what was involved in each decision. The process is confidential and not subject to open-records laws. But she acknowledges that the board has met more frequently than the two times a year required by Ritter’s order, just to deal with the volume of applications.

“We’re trying to look at these cases with a more focused eye toward the age of the person when they committed the crime, what the influences were, what their efforts toward rehabilitation have been,” Smith explains. “Most of the time, there is input from victims as well. You have to look at the whole package.”

Members of the adult and juvenile clemency advisory boards are appointed by Ritter. Both boards are dominated by people with law enforcement, prosecution and corrections backgrounds, though the juvenile board also features two psychologists, who weigh in on matters such as adolescent brain development. (The adult board, which has an even greater volume of applicants than Smith’s board, currently has two vacancies.) Only inmates who’ve already served ten years or a third of their sentence are eligible, and the board is supposed to consider not simply a clean prison record, but catastrophic illnesses and “acts of heroism” behind bars. They’re also expected to “serve the interests of justice” by weighing sentencing disparities and other inequities.

It’s a tall and quite broad order, and no one has measured up to Ritter’s criteria yet. “The juvenile board says it’s a secret, but we think they’ve turned down eighteen so far,” says Johnson. “I think we’re going to be destroyed by our own cruelty. We don’t want to help anybody, yet this prison spending is destroying us. It’s eating up a lot of other services.”

Cutting prison costs isn’t among the specific objectives for Ritter’s advisory boards. But prudent use of commutation powers can save money and reshape public policy at the same time.

The six candidates for commutation suggested below aren’t necessarily the most deserving or heroic. Some are in the process of applying for clemency; some aren’t eligible yet. All of them (with one possible exception) have done terrible things. But each one is representative of a different, fixable problem in the current prison system: drug offenders doing hefty sentences; illegal immigrants targeted for deportation but taking up cell space for petty crimes instead; prisoners paying for juvenile tragedies the rest of their adult lives; and more.

The cost savings projected for each inmate are based on the average current annual cost of housing a state inmate ($28,759) times the number of years until their probable release date — or life expectancy. This is a conservative figure, since many long-timers are housed in more expensive, high-security settings. Yet cutting the six loose tomorrow would save the state at least $4 million.

And it might, just might, serve the interests of justice.

DONALD ANDREWS

Age: 41

Convicted of: Burglary, attempted robbery, drugs

Sentence: 81 years

Sentence Discharge Date: January 17, 2066

Donnie Andrews is living a nightmare version of the “broken window” theory of crime control. Break a window — Andrews insists he didn’t even do that — and end up in prison for decades.

“As far as I know, I am the only person in the United States with a 30-year sentence for a broken window,” Andrews recently wrote in a letter to a state legislative committee. “There was a broken window, no crime of theft, nothing stolen or taken, no other damage seen, just a broken window that I did not break.”

In 1989, Andrews was a twenty-year-old cokehead on a thieving binge that resulted in a stack of charges in Denver and three suburban counties. Although he allegedly flashed a gun in one attempted robbery, no one was injured in any of his heists, and Andrews describes himself as a non-violent offender.

But his crimes couldn’t have come at a worse time. The War on Drugs was at its hysterical peak, and it probably didn’t help that Andrews’s ex-partner in burglary, Eugene Thompson, went on to infamy in a cocaine-fueled rampage of his own, killing two female hostages before taking his own life. Because Andrews was on bond for a drug case in Jefferson County when he committed other thefts, prosecutors pushed to “aggravate” the sentences and run them consecutively rather than concurrently.

The harsh sentencing scheme turned Andrews’s handful of minor felonies into major time, culminating in the residential burglary case he took to trial in Arapahoe County. His attorney stipulated that evidence of a break-in would be sufficient to prove intent to burgle — a strategy to keep out other evidence, but one a criminal defense expert would later blast as “tantamount to a confession of guilt.” Although nothing was taken in the break-in, Andrews got thirty years for a busted window, on top of the half-century from other cases.

A new charge followed Andrews behind bars in 1990: sneaking marijuana into the Denver County Jail. But he maintains that he’s been clean for the last two decades. “The only drug treatment I got was a three-month drug and alcohol class, but I haven’t used drugs in many years,” he says. “I know I would never commit another crime. I got no habit to support.”

Over the past twenty years, he’s seen violent gangbangers and sex offenders come and go in the system while he’s doing his mountain of time. He’s seen the mandatory sentence schemes of the 1980s modified or repealed. If he makes it to his discharge date, he’ll be 98 years old. But he still has hope.

“Many guys like me are broken down and tired of serving time,” he says. “Start a program to give guys like me a second chance. I want to give back to society instead of costing taxpayers more money for me to sit around in a cell wasting space.”

Estimated savings if released: $776,493

TAMI RICHARDS

Age: 36

Convicted of: Child abuse resulting in death

Sentence: 32 years

Mandatory Release Date: July 26, 2027

Tami Richards describes her younger self as a “naive, selfish, judgmental girl.” The selfishness was on overdrive one winter night in 1998, when the 24-year-old mother left her two children alone in a Westminster apartment while she went drinking at a bar for three hours — her response to receiving divorce papers from her husband that day.

She’d heated some leftover spaghetti for the kids’ dinner, but three-year-old Brian wanted pigs in a blanket. He started a fire in a pile of clothes, apparently in an effort to cook a package of crescent rolls. Richards arrived home to find the apartment full of smoke. Brian was in her bedroom; eighteen-month-old Cheyenne was on the floor of her own room, where she’d covered herself with stuffed animals. Both children died of smoke inhalation.

At first Richards told police she’d been gone only a few minutes. After flunking two polygraphs, she confessed and pleaded guilty to child abuse resulting in death.

Now ten years into her 32-year sentence, Richards recently prepared a letter to Governor Ritter as part of a clemency application. “Because of my stupidity and selfishness my beautiful babies lost their lives,” she wrote. “I have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life. Every day that goes by without them in my life and in my arms is torture.”

Richards has no prior criminal record. In prison she’s taken a wide range of programs and classes, dealing with everything from parenting to digital photography. Working with dogs in the Department of Corrections’ K-9 Training Program prompted her to complete a veterinary-assistant correspondent course. She’s been free of disciplinary write-ups for years and doesn’t appear to pose a risk to public safety.

Richards showed off her computer skills in her letter to the governor, a colorful, homey, Photoshopped brochure. The letter was intercepted by prison staff because they believed it gave her an unfair advantage over other inmates’ clemency applications. A more conventional letter has since been submitted and is awaiting action by the adult clemency board.

Estimated savings if released: $517,662

KRYSTAL VOSS

Age: 35

Convicted of: Child abuse resulting in death

Sentence: 20 years

Mandatory Release Date: March 1, 2023

Like Tami Richards, Krystal Voss has already served close to a third of her sentence for causing the death of her own offspring. But in Voss’s case, there are troubling questions about the justice process and whether an innocent, grieving mother was convicted of a crime she didn’t commit.

In 2003, Voss took her nineteen-month-old son, Kyran, to an Alamosa emergency room. The boy had multiple bruises and a subdural hematoma, often found in cases of shaken babies. Suspicion initially fell on Patrick Ramirez, Krystal’s ex-lover, who claimed that Kyran fell and hit his head while Ramirez was babysitting.

But the boy’s injuries didn’t match the story. Ramirez changed his account in subsequent interviews, finally claiming that Voss had shaken the toddler and persuaded Ramirez to say that he fell. Police then obtained an untaped “confession” from a sleep-deprived Voss, admitting that she’d briefly shaken a fussy Kyran the night before. Voss was arrested, and Ramirez became the key witness against her after Kyran died from his head injury.

Yet both Kyran’s father and grandfather say the child was behaving normally hours after Voss supposedly shook him — and shortly before he was left in the care of Ramirez. Their accounts clash with the testimony of the prosecution’s “shaken baby syndrome” expert, who insisted that the symptoms of Kyran’s injury would have been immediate and alarming. At the close of the trial, the prosecution abruptly changed its theory of the crime in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting evidence. Voss was convicted of child abuse. A Westword interview with one juror suggests that the panel may have misunderstood the expert testimony (“Shades of Guilt,” November 25, 2004).

In 2007 the Colorado Court of Appeals found that Voss’s trial was marred by judicial errors and improper conduct by the prosecution, but declined to order a new trial. The Colorado Supreme Court refused to review that decision. Despite growing controversy over the science behind shaken-baby prosecutions, Voss continues to serve time for a crime that her family and friends say she couldn’t have committed, a crime so puzzling and motiveless that even the prosecutor can’t credibly explain it. She’s now seeking post-conviction relief, claiming that her own attorney was ineffective.

Aside from one scolding over a messy desk, Voss has the spotless record of a model prisoner. Guilty or not, women in her situation are among the least likely to commit more crimes. She has tutored other inmates in their GED studies and writes letters frequently to supporters denouncing the wastefulness of the prison system.

“How about actually investigating a case (such as my own) prior to trying to slap a lifetime of incarceration on someone?” she asks in a recent missive. “The state has paid for all my legal proceedings, as well as [those of] thousands of other litigants who refuse to give up.”

Estimated savings if released: $373,867

JACOB IND

Age: 32

Convicted of: Murder

Sentence: Life without parole

Shortly after his fifteenth birthday, Jacob Ind hired an older teen with reputed ninja skills to kill his mother and stepfather, Pamela and Kermode Jordan. When the ninja bungled his early-morning attack on the couple in the master bedroom of their 4,000-square-foot mountain home, Ind had to finish the job himself, shooting both parents in the head.

Then he went to Woodland Park High School, told friends what he’d done and announced that he was planning to kill himself. He was promptly arrested.

Parricide cases can have wildly different outcomes, but almost all of them involve a tangled history of family violence — or, at the very least, murky allegations of physical and sexual abuse. A few weeks ago in Cortez, 22-year-old Jeremiah Berry was allowed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the shooting death of his sexually abusive father; Berry had chopped up the corpse and fed pieces of it to coyotes. He received a three-year prison sentence.

At Ind’s 1994 trial, Jacob’s older brother testified that their stepfather sodomized both boys during bath time when they were young. There was other evidence that Pamela Jordan had molested her son for years, that school officials knew something about beatings in the Ind household and Jacob’s desire to harm his parents — and did nothing. But many of the claims were never presented to the jury, and his lawyers refused to let Ind testify in his own defense. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, an automatic sentence of life without parole (“The Killer and Mrs. Johnson,” March 19, 1998).

If Ind had testified, it’s not clear that he would have helped his cause; he was reluctant to discuss the abuse he’d endured or portray himself as a victim. “Sure, my childhood sucked,” he wrote years later. “Being raped and forced to perform oral sex on my mom and Kermode sucked. Being beaten sucked. But what does wallowing in grief and self-pity accomplish?”

He also failed to express any remorse for the killings. “I always saw it as the right thing to do,” he told Westword in a 1998 interview at the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he spent much of the first few years of his sentence in lockdown for various infractions. “I’m better off.”

Prisoners like Ind, serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles, may have a tougher road to clemency than almost anyone else. Many adolescents have trouble adjusting to the adult prison system and end up with disciplinary records that all but exclude them from consideration. Because they’re never getting out, they’re not eligible for education and treatment programs that could make them better candidates.

Ind’s crime may be considered far too horrific by the clemency board to merit any action. But the severity of his sentence compared to those in other parricide cases may be an argument in his favor.

Pendulum director Johnson, who served on Ind’s defense team and wrote a book about the case, believes Ind may actually have a strong case for clemency, despite write-ups in the system that have moved him from the Limon prison back to CSP, the state supermax.

“Jacob is someone who doesn’t bow down too well to authority, but I actually think he would be a good candidate,” she says. “He has strong family support. He’s got a degree in theology. There is very little victim opposition to him, he’s intelligent, and I think he would have little trouble getting work.”

Estimated savings if released: $1,236,637

TARA PERRY

Age: 26

Convicted of: Kidnapping, attempted murder, robbery, assault, menacing

Sentence: 68 years, later reduced to 40 years

Mandatory Release Date: May 22, 2035

Tara Perry turned sweet sixteen in the closing week of 1998. She was on the speech team at Aurora Central High School, active in her church youth group and carried a Christian Daily Planner to map out her activities.

Five months later, she still had the planner when police pulled her out of a crashed Ford Explorer after a high-speed chase through western Kansas. It was the end of a terrifying four-day crime spree that had involved a crew of badass young thugs — and one conspicuous girl — who pulled home invasions in Cheyenne and Denver, jacked the Explorer in Cherry Creek and stuck its driver in a storage compartment, robbed a suburban hotel and shot up a King Soopers on Smoky Hill Road.

What transformed Perry from typical high-schooler to gun moll? His name was Randy Miller. Perry met him when she was thirteen and Miller was twenty. Miller was an intriguing bundle of romance and doom, a former child prostitute who’d worked Colfax at the age of ten and was frequently in trouble. Perry wrote to him when he went to prison and moved in with him when he got out.

Miller wooed her and wowed her. He also beat her, kept her away from her family and demanded to know her whereabouts at all times.

Then Miller botched his parole. Determined not to go back to a cell, he decided it was time to “breeze” — but not before he raised some cash, with the help of Perry and some other faltering parolees. They walked into people’s houses, stuck gats in their faces and helped themselves to whatever money and vehicles they could find.

Miller led his crew into the King Soopers and instructed Perry, wearing a black nylon stocking over her head, to fire three shots in the air from a .22 rifle. The failed robbery turned into a panic of shots, pistol-whipping and broken glass. Then Miller and Perry split for Kansas. When the Explorer crashed, Perry surrendered while Miller ran to a nearby house, took hostages, then shot himself in the head.

Perry cooperated with the police and agreed to testify against other defendants. She didn’t injure any of the robbery victims. But facing enough charges to put her away for several lifetimes — twenty counts in the grocery store debacle alone — she entered plea deals that got her 26 years from a Denver judge and another 40 years, plus change, from Arapahoe County judges. A 2001 sentence reconsideration allowed the sentences to be served concurrently, trimming the overall time, but her attempts to get an appointed attorney for further appeals have been denied. She’s had two minor disciplinary infractions in the decade she’s been in prison.

“Tara knows she did wrong and destroyed a big part of her life,” Perry’s mother wrote to a judge in 2000, pleading for mercy. “If not for Mr. Miller and the others involved in these crimes, Tara would still be at home, going to school, and have a life ahead of her.”

Estimated savings if released: $747,734

JACINTO PEREZ

Age: 28

Convicted of: Possession of contraband in a correctional facility

Sentence: 24 years

Mandatory Release Date: November 24, 2032

In the ranks of petty thieves and small-timers, Jacinto Perez may be one of the biggest losers. His crimes aren’t remarkable or even interesting, but the resulting cost to him and to Colorado taxpayers almost defies comprehension.

In 2003, Perez, on probation for a drug charge, was caught rifling through someone else’s car in downtown Denver. A few months later, he was busted after breaking into a small store and stealing three packs of cigarettes, valued at $8.25. He got six years for the burglary. A man of many aliases and a native of Mexico who had entered the country illegally, he was also scheduled to be deported upon completion of his sentence.

But while he was serving time at the Limon prison, a shank was found in his cell. Perez, who’d been moved to that cell only a few days earlier, admitted finding the knife in his mattress and failing to report it to the guards. A bad move all around — especially since the prison is situated in the Eighteenth Judicial District, where District Attorney Carol Chambers has sought astonishingly long habitual-criminal charges against chronic low-level offenders (“The Punisher,” February 8, 2007).

Even in they’re already in prison.

Even if they’re about to be deported.

Perez was, in fact, on the verge of completing his sentence and being shipped back to Mexico by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when Chambers’s office filed a fresh charge of contraband over the knife. The prosecution also sought to have him bitched as a three-time loser, which would require that he be given another 24 years — quadruple the usual sentence. That brought an angry protest from public defender Tom Ward.

“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” Ward said at one hearing. “How is that a good use of taxpayer money? To house someone who has three minor felony convictions, to house him for up to 24 years [at a cost of up to] $1.5 million when he simply will be deported right after that sentence?”

Judge William Sylvester thought Ward had a point. He initially sentenced Perez to eight years. The district attorney’s office objected, and Sylvester recently relented and imposed the entire 24 years. That sentence is now under appeal.

Perez isn’t eligible for clemency yet under the current rules. But he is symptomatic of a larger problem in the system. There are 1,324 offenders in the Colorado Department of Corrections who have detainers placed on them by ICE, costing the state close to $40 million a year to incarcerate them when they could be deported tomorrow. Some, of course, have committed numerous violent crimes that demand long sentences, and there’s no guarantee they would not return to the state.

“Deportation provides no protection for the public,” says District Attorney Chambers. “The only way to protect the public is to treat those who might be deported as we would anyone else.”

But to date, no serious cost-benefit study has been done to determine which non-violent immigrant felons might be good candidates for a commutation that includes immediate deportation. It’s possible that sending Perez and others like him out of the country could bring back to Colorado badly needed dollars — and sense.

Estimated savings if released: $661,457

Supreme Court to take up constitutionality of JLWOP

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The recent sentencing by Circuit Court Judge Krista Marx of three Riviera Beach juveniles – Jakaris Taylor, now 18; Tommy Poindexter, 20, and Nathan Taylor, 18, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, will likely come under increasing scrutiny as Nov. 9, 2009; the date the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to begin hearing arguments in Sullivan v. Florida/ Graham v. Florida, draws near. The justices will determine if the Eighth Amendment prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment” has been violated in the case of juveniles sentenced to life in prison with-out parole for non-homicide crimes they committed before the age of 18.

The Dunbar rape case, presided over by Judge Marx, involved one of the more horrific crimes perpetrated by juveniles in Palm Beach County, Fla. history. A 35-year old mother and her 12-year-old son were beaten, sexually assaulted and robbed on June 18, 2007 in their apartment at Dunbar Village, a notorious, 226-unit public housing project in West Palm Beach, which had been over-taken by crime, crack dealers and a pervasive feeling of hopelessness.

Marx — who worked for Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office from 1985-1998 under district attorney Barry Krischer, and is well known for her harsh sentences — stated prior to imposing sentencing on the three: “I can only believe that none of you gentleman ever developed any moral code….And I have no confidence that if you are shipped off to the Department of Corrections you will find a moral compass there,” she added before promptly shipping them off to the Department of Corrections to begin serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

These three now join 77 other teens from Florida — out of a total of 109 juveniles world-wide — who were under 18 when they committed non-homicide crimes for which they will spend the rest of their lives be-hind bars. Incredibly, one state, Florida; accounts for a whopping 70 percent of all juvenile life sentences handed down worldwide, and is 19 times more likely to send juveniles to prison for life than comparable states in the U.S.

In Sullivan v. Florida, Joe Sullivan was 13 in 1989 when he and two other teens broke into an elderly Pensacola woman’s home robbing her of her jewelry and money. Later Sullivan, who was considered mentally challenged, returned by himself to the woman’s house where he beat and raped her. Subsequently, Sullivan was indicted and tried as an adult in a case that hinged on the flimsiest of evidence, and was rampant with racial overtones.

Sullivan was nevertheless found guilty and deemed by the judge to be “beyond help.” A year later he was sent to prison for life without parole, becoming the youngest convict in U.S. history to be sentenced to life without parole. Once in prison he was repeatedly sodomized.

Referring to Roper V. Simmons, a 2005 anti-death penalty ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court involving juveniles in which the death penalty was struck down as unconstitutional on Eighth Amendment grounds of “cruel and unusual punishment,” attorney Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (which has filed an amicus brief with the court on behalf of Sullivan), stated, “Roper understood and explained why such a judgment cannot rationally be passed on children below a certain age. They are unfinished products, human works-in-progress.

“The essential feature of a death sentence or a life-with-out-parole sentence is that it imposes a terminal, unchangeable, once-and-for-all judgment upon the whole life of a human being and declares that a hum-an being is forever unfit to be a part of civil society,” Steven-son pointed out, alluding to the 2005 ruling in which the justices concurred that juveniles simply lack the “psychological maturity” to understand the full magnitude of their crimes. “Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile” might not be a valid indicator of an “irretrievably depraved character,” the court wrote at the time.

“Their [teens] potential for growth and change is enormous,” said Stevenson. “Almost all of them will outgrow criminal behavior, and it is practically impossible to detect the few who will not. To date, they are the products of an environment over which they had no real control — passengers through narrow pathways in a world they never made.”

By contrast, Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar who is arguing the case for the state of Florida contends that it is the state’s prerogative to sentence juvenile offenders, whose crimes warrant it, to harsh punishment irrespective of age. “There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery,” he wrote in court briefs.

Similarly, Charles D. Stimson — a member of the conservative Heritage Foundation which has been closely aligned with former VP Dick Cheney — is helping Florida’s Solicitor General prepare his case. It is Stimson’s belief that “some acts are so heinous and show such a callous disregard for human life even if their actions don’t result in death” that life in prison without the possibility of parole is appropriate.

That position has been taken up by other right-wing conservative groups including Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute and the Cato Institute, which filed briefs with the high court stating, “The United States Congress and the overwhelming majority of states have adopted laws permitting juvenile offenders to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. These laws reflect the will of the people and were enacted after due consideration of the nature of, and threats posed by, juvenile criminal activity in modern America, as well as the possibilities for the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.

“For this reason, given their steadfast commitment to the democratic process, the rule of law, and national sovereignty, [we urge] this Court…not to consider the non-binding provisions of international human rights treaties” or other international decrees “regarding the sentencing of juveniles to life without parole.”

Critics lambaste this ration-ale as another arrogant snub of national and international human rights organizations which have been critical of Florida’s draconian criminal justice policies for years, arguing that African American juveniles are not only disproportionately bearing the brunt of kids sentenced to life without parole, but are disproportionately represented at every other level of the criminal justice system as well. Clearly, redress is warranted. Otherwise, how can one justify, and continue this barbaric treatment, say critics, when there are so many blatantly biased cases in which the racial demo-graphics are obviously skewed, and it’s not just in Florida.

According to the Sentencing Project, in 22 states, over half of all juveniles sentenced to life without parole were African American. In three other states, Maryland, Alabama and Virginia that percentage goes up to over 80 percent.

Here in Florida, six counties with large Black populations: Hillsborough, Orange, St. Lucie, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade comprise 43 of the 77 juveniles serving life sentences without parole. Coincidental?+ Not by a long shot, critics assert.

The long shadow of Willie Horton: Joe Donovan’s case for commutation

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More than two decades ago, a governor showed a prisoner leniency, with horrifying results. Our justice system hasn’t been the same since.

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A case for commutation? Joe Donovan is serving a life sentence for his role in the killing of an MIT student in 1992, when Donovan was 17 years old. Both of his codefendants, including the one who fatally stabbed the student, received lesser sentences and were released years ago. Below, listen to Donovan talk about his case for commutation. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

By Michael Blanding October 18, 2009

Joe Donovan is not an innocent man. That much is clear from the events of September 18, 1992, the night he threw the punch that forever changed his life. It was three weeks past his 17th birthday, and Donovan was prowling the streets of East Cambridge with two guys he knew from the neighborhood: 18-year-old Alfredo Velez and a scrawny 15-year-old named Shon McHugh. They were looking to make their way to the Mass. Ave. bridge to cross into Boston and score some beer. Walking along Memorial Drive, Donovan bumped shoulders with a Norwegian MIT student named Yngve Raustein, who was with a fellow student. An argument ensued, and thinking Raustein was making fun of him, Donovan punched him in the face, so hard it dropped Raustein to the ground and broke Donovan’s hand.

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As Donovan doubled over in pain, Velez confronted Raustein’s friend, demanding his wallet. But McHugh had other plans. As Raustein tried to get up, McHugh unfolded a 7-inch hunting knife and stabbed Raustein, repeatedly and fatally, in the chest. Mere seconds after Donovan’s punch, all three teens fled over the bridge into Boston. It was only then, says Donovan, that he saw the knife and realized that McHugh had stabbed the man. By then it was too late. The three were arrested and tried under the “joint venture theory,” a law holding all accomplices responsible for a murder committed during the course of a felony such as armed robbery. McHugh was tried as a juvenile and served almost 11 years in prison. Velez cut a deal to testify and was out in eight. Alone among the three, Donovan was convicted of first-degree murder and received the mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Seventeen years later, he is still in prison, long after the actual murderer has gone free. At a meeting in the visitors’ lounge of Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Donovan is tall and thickset, with an oval face and pale green eyes. He twists his big hands as he tries to explain why he threw that punch. “I don’t even know what the hell I was thinking,” he says, speaking so quietly it’s hard to hear him. “I was just a dumb kid.” On the other hand, he can’t wrap his head around the discrepancy between his sentence and McHugh’s. “He murdered a kid and they think he can be rehabilitated, and I am a year or two older and I didn’t kill anyone, but I can’t be? That makes no sense.”

The judge, at least one juror in the case, and even Raustein’s family now support Donovan’s release. But his chances of seeing daylight are near zero, because his only hope is commutation, a power held by the governor (and influenced by the state’s parole board) to reduce prison sentences. The practice is common in many states, and Donovan, eligible to be considered for the first time, was planning to file his petition this month. In Massachusetts, however, there hasn’t been a single commutation approved by a governor since 1997 — and there were only seven in the previous 10 years (four for murderers). Over the past 22 years, more than 650 petitions have been denied. In that same period, Delaware has approved hundreds, 12 for convicted murderers. Michigan’s Democratic governor has approved 23 in the past five years; in the prior 12 years, her Republican predecessor approved 34. And from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s Republican governor granted 15 commutations, including five for life sentences for murder.

It’s no secret why Massachusetts has lagged behind: the memory of Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who terrorized a couple, raping the woman, in 1987 after escaping while on a weekend furlough allowed by then governor Michael Dukakis. The act pretty much torpedoed Dukakis’s presidential campaign a year later when ads showing Horton’s picture and images of inmates going through a revolving door hit the airwaves. Even years later, it lays bare the thorny political calculus of letting a felon out of jail. There is almost nothing for a governor to gain and everything for him to lose should the criminal commit another crime. “Ever since what Willie Horton did to Mike Dukakis, governors are going to think not twice but 10 times before they ever commute anyone,” says retired judge Robert Barton, who presided over the Donovan case. Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry agrees. “If I was a governor’s adviser,” he says, “I would recommend he be very cautious.”

So far, Governor Deval Patrick has been exactly that, turning down the one recommendation for commutation he has received, from a 40-year lifer who has received the support of some of Boston’s most prominent civic leaders. He’s watched his parole board deny hearings for dozens more, including a murderer who, it turns out, was abused as a child by notorious Catholic priest the Rev. John Geoghan. These cases, like Joe Donovan’s, are far from simple. But the overwhelming number of rejections continues, even as states across the country increasingly consider early releases and other measures to reduce prison populations. On this issue, there are two competing visions of justice: Is it a system that allows for redemption and reevaluation over time, or is it strictly a system for retribution, where the judge and jury forever have the last word? The numbers in Massachusetts have squarely pointed in only one direction.

Commutation, a power that on the federal level is vested in the president in the Constitution, has been used regularly by states for some 200 years to reward good behavior and right mistakes made in sentencing. (Unlike pardons, which forgive the underlying offense upon release, commutations shorten the sentence but allow the conviction to stand.) Massachusetts approved anywhere between one and 16 commutations every year between 1945 and 1983. An uptick in violence in the 1980s, however, led to a “get tough on crime” movement that resulted in mandatory minimum prison sentences and a national decline in both pardons and commutations.

Then came Willie Horton. Sentenced to life for fatally stabbing a gas station attendant in Lawrence, he was released on a weekend furlough in 1986 and never returned. A year later, he stabbed and bound a man and raped the man’s fiancee in Maryland, where he is now imprisoned. In the 1988 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush’s team used the incident to relentlessly hammer Dukakis as soft on crime. A few years later, a similar case of a criminal whose sentence was commuted in Pennsylvania and who then committed rape and murder sunk the gubernatorial aspirations of then lieutenant governor Mark Singel.

After that, “more than a few states . . . basically shut down the pardon process, which also includes commutation,” says Margaret Love, a US pardon attorney under the first President Bush and under President Clinton. The risks simply outweighed the benefits. “We all talk about second chances, but we don’t want to give anyone a second chance in this country because it’s too damn risky.” Although there hasn’t been a state-by-state study of commutations, Love has researched the use of pardons, which have been severely curtailed in all but 13 states.

In others, a more flexible sentencing policy or parole system has made lack of commutation less of an issue. Massachusetts, however, has some of the nation’s strictest sentencing laws. Mandatory minimums for drug trafficking range from three to 15 years. Second-degree (unpremeditated) murder means a mandatory minimum of 15 years before parole eligibility; first-degree (premeditated) murder is automatically punished with life without parole. Currently, 900 inmates in the state (17 percent of the total) are serving life without parole. That percentage is exceeded in only three states: Alabama, California, and New York.

As a result, the discretion on what charges to bring and what deals to cut has shifted more power to the hands of prosecutors and away from the bench. “Judges have seen a lot of their ability to make distinctions in circumstances stripped away,” says Gavi Wolfe, staff attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, who recently wrote a law-journal paper arguing for the revival of clemency. While commutation should never be routine, says Wolfe, it exists as an important “safety valve” to acknowledge changing circumstances. “In some ways, it is a more powerful concept than pardons,” he says. It’s not wiping away the crime, but “it allows for the possibility of change and growth on the part of either the individual or the criminal justice system.”

That safety valve, however, has all but vanished in Massachusetts, even while other states have been going in the opposite direction to trim costs. States like California, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Michigan, and Texas are either considering proposals to free more inmates or have already taken steps to increase early releases.

When Dukakis first took office, his staff put together a three-tier process for commutations, whereby applicants go first before the Massachusetts Parole Board, a state agency, which issues a recommendation to the governor to be approved or denied. The governor then reviews the cases and decides. (It’s possible, but highly unlikely, for a governor to overrule a negative recommendation. Dukakis says he never did.) Finally, the Governor’s Council, an elected panel that also reviews the governor’s judicial nominees, must sign off. Despite the bureaucracy, Dukakis approved 48 commutations (and more than 500 pardons) during his first term, from 1975 to 1979. He admits to being more cautious during his second stint, 1983 to 1991, but still approved 10 commutations (and nearly 300 pardons).

The number fell, however, with Republican governor William Weld, who approved seven commutations and some 50 pardons during the next six and a half years. The last commutation in the state was under Weld in 1997, when Joseph Salvati was found to be framed for murder by rogue agents of the Boston FBI office; he was let out after nearly 30 years. Since then, Republican governors have proved even more sparing. Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift approved several pardons but no commutations; Mitt Romney boasted of not approving any in either category.

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s former press secretary and current adviser, says Romney didn’t have a blanket policy against clemency. “It was [his] view that it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances for him to set aside a criminal sentence and substitute his judgment for the judgment of a judge or jury,” he says, calling the cases of Horton and freed inmates who go on to commit crimes “cautionary tales that suggest a more conservative approach, which is what we adopted.” He specifically points to the case of Joseph Yandle, whose life sentence for his role in a 1972 murder was commuted by Weld in 1995 but who was later found to have lied about his Vietnam War record and sent back to prison. “Clearly a mistake was made there, and I think it did have a chilling effect on subsequent governors.”

That approach has its share of advocates. Massachusetts-based victims rights group Community VOICES, for example, doesn’t support commutations, except possibly in cases where a victim’s family favors it. “To commute a sentence is just another slap in the face for them,” says the group’s president, Laurie Myers. The fact that a commutation doesn’t forgive the offense doesn’t matter to her. “You can say [prisoners] are not being forgiven, but if they are allowed to leave prison regardless of the sentence, that is a kind of forgiveness.”

When Deval Patrick took office in 2007, prisoner advocates hoped his experiences as a defense attorney and civil rights attorney in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department would lead him to visit the issue with fresh eyes. Indeed, the new guidelines he issued for commutation when he took office spelled out several instances where it would be warranted. Among them: a prisoner who had made “exceptional strides in self-development”; one who had previously suffered abuse at the hands of the victim; and one who was given a sentence deemed unfair in relation to “equally culpable and similarly situated defendants.” More than two years later, however, he’s yet to find anyone worthy of those strictures, including one very high-profile case that crossed his desk.

rnold King was flying high on booze and weed when he shot a young political worker named John Labanara at point-blank range during a botched robbery in downtown Boston in 1971. Despite the brutality of his crime, many say King, sentenced to life without parole, has clearly changed over his nearly 38 years in prison. He completed at least 25 furloughs (the state no longer grants those) and has earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, written numerous newspaper articles, and counseled youths.

Appearing before the pardon advisory board, which is also the parole board, for the fourth time in October 2007 (it was the sixth time he was applying overall), he made a passionate case for his rehabilitation. He was supported by two Boston city councilors and several state representatives, as well as Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree and Boston Foundation chairman the Rev. Ray Hammond.

Lynne Labanara, the sister-in-law of the victim, disagreed. “I don’t feel that Mr. King has changed but is working to change his image to the public,” she said. Nevertheless, the advisory board unanimously recommended that the governor commute his sentence. About a year later, Patrick denied the request, lauding King for helping young people but describing his disciplinary record as “far from exemplary.”

In the hearing, King was criticized for two minor violations of prison rules: sending a birthday card and a letter to the home address of a teacher in a prison program. King’s supporters were flummoxed. “If Arnie King can’t be released, it’s hard to imagine anyone would reasonably meet the guidelines,” Ogletree says. Though disappointed by the decision, Ogletree hopes Patrick will change over time. “At some point you have to take risks,” he says, “to show your independence to be unbought and unbossed.”

Kimberly Haberlin, Patrick’s deputy press secretary, says in a statement that the guidelines the governor has established “are comprehensive and rigorous and ensure that decisions are made based on the facts and merits — not the politics — surrounding each case.”

Despite the focus on the governor’s role in these cases, most petitions never even reach his office; they are denied without a hearing by the parole board, which has for years been dominated by law enforcement and corrections officials. During the 1970s and ’80s, the board was more diverse, containing social workers, psychologists, and ministers, says Patty Garin, a Boston attorney who deals frequently with the board. In her view, these were people who had the ability to accurately predict when offenders had gotten beyond their crimes. “This parole board looks at its job as finding reasons to keep people locked up,” she says. “They rely on behavior that happened 30 years ago, as opposed to what happened in the last 10 years.”

Patrick has done little to change the composition of the seven-seat board; his first appointment was Mark Conrad, a former police officer who served as his driver during his gubernatorial campaign. (Conrad, now chairman of the board, declined to be interviewed.) After outrage from social workers and several state legislators, Patrick’s next appointee was a psychologist, Leticia Munoz. However, Patrick has allowed two members, both former probation officers appointed by Romney, to continue to serve despite the expiration of their terms and has neglected to fill a vacancy on the board for nearly two years. (A second vacancy occurred late last month.) Another Romney appointee, a former deputy county sheriff and probation officer, fills out the current panel.

Meanwhile, in the last five years, the board has denied more than 200 petitions without a single hearing other than those for King. One of those turned down was that of James Costello, now 43, who is serving life without parole for a home-invasion robbery and murder of an elderly neighbor when he was 15. Costello was tried as an adult and found guilty of first-degree murder when his two older accomplices testified against him. Not known at the time, however, was that Costello had been molested for years by John Geoghan, the defrocked priest. Costello’s lawyer, Helen Holcomb, argues that had that information been known at the time, Costello would have been tried as a juvenile and likely be free now. But Costello has been denied even a hearing by the parole board, which noted his strides in self-development are “remarkable” but do not rise to the level of “exceptional.”

Costello is hardly the only inmate in Massachusetts serving life for crimes committed as a juvenile. The state has been more aggressive than its neighbors in sentencing juveniles to life without parole. According to Lia Monahon, a lawyer and a former fellow at the Children’s Law Center in Lynn, there are 57 now in prison in Massachusetts compared with nine in Connecticut, three in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, and zero in New York, New Jersey, Maine, and Vermont. In the early 1980s, Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that life imprisonment was not “cruel or unusual” punishment for juveniles, since commutation was always possible. “I doubt seriously that the court would assert that” at this point, says Monahon. Yet, she says, adolescent psychologists and neuroscientists alike have attested to the capacity that young people have for change — the exact criterion for commutation. They are simply not done developing when these juvenile offenses occur, says Monahon. “You can’t decide when someone is 14 or 15 or 16 or, in Donovan’s case, 17, that they are irredeemable.”

In Donovan’s case, he has hardly been a model prisoner. His record lists 30 disciplinary tickets, including several for fights with inmates and one for possessing a crude weapon. In addition, he has done two stints in solitary for violent behavior. Donovan defends his record by saying it’s impossible to stay out of trouble at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole — the state’s maximum security prison, where he was assigned his first 10 years. His first stint in solitary, for two years, was for participating in a vicious, racially motivated brawl in which he says he was forced to defend himself from attack. His second — for four years — was for assaulting a guard, an act for which Donovan was later cleared by a Norfolk County jury, after arguing he acted in self-defense.

On the other hand, Donovan has earned a reputation for defusing tension. One family friend says that when she came to visit him, a corrections officer jokingly referred to him by his prison nickname, “Joe Jesus,” for his penchant for talking friends out of violence. In one incident, he tried to talk down a violent inmate drunk on contraband liquor, holding him against the bars while a guard escaped from the cell, according to reports from two guards.

Whatever his record in prison, it’s the disparity in sentencing for his crime that presents the most compelling case for commutation — even to the victim’s family. In an e-mail to a Donovan supporter, Dan-Jarle Raustein, the victim’s brother, wrote, “I am and have believed from the beginning, that the ‘life without parole’ sentence was way too harsh. I am in favor of a release if [Joe] can show that he is ready to face the community.” After Donovan wrote the family, Yngve Raustein’s mother, Inghild, wrote to that same supporter, saying, “I fully agree . . . he now should be given a new chance.”

Retired judge Robert Barton also says the punishment was excessive. “I haven’t stayed up nights worrying about Joseph Donovan and that trial,” says Barton, a 22-year veteran of murder trials in Superior Court. But, he says, “seeing what has happened over the past 15 years, it seems unfair and inequitable that someone should have to spend his life in jail when you look at what happened to his colleagues.”

Carolyn Butterworth, a Newton resident who served as a juror in the trial, believes the wrong sentence was delivered. For her, the sticking point was the felony murder rule — if the jury found Donovan guilty of armed robbery, they had to convict him of first-degree murder as well. There was some doubt at the trial, however, about how much Donovan actually participated in the robbery, and that doubt has only grown over time.

At the trial, codefendant Alfredo Velez testified that Shon McHugh (who’s currently on trial in Virginia on drug trafficking charges) showed Donovan the knife before the three teens met the MIT students and that afterward Donovan was waving around $30 in cash, the amount held in Raustein’s wallet. The two assertions were enough to establish that Donovan participated in and benefited from a premeditated armed robbery. Velez’s original statement to police, however, contained neither piece of information.

Now working as a residential remodeler in Texas, Velez clearly remembers specific details about the night, but he says he doesn’t recall whether Donovan saw the knife before the robbery or whether he had the cash afterward. “I don’t remember anyone waving money in the air,” he says. “I really don’t.” Despite the questions about the crime, Donovan’s lawyer, Ingrid Martin, is emphatic that the commutation request isn’t a retrial of the case but that the central issue is the severity of the sentence.

When Donovan talks about the crime itself, his soft voice gets even softer. “I was the guy who made the first bad decision,” he says. “Maybe Shon would have killed someone else, maybe he wouldn’t have.” Regardless, “I’ll always feel responsibility for the choice I made.” Realistically, he doesn’t think he has much chance of succeeding in his commutation appeal, but he says that if he ever does get out, he won’t return. “I’ll flip burgers, I’ll sweep streets.”

The decision to release Donovan, or any prisoner, especially one convicted of murder, is a risky one. But at the core of any deliberation is a question much bigger than any single case: Does a society that often celebrates second chances benefit overall from taking that risk?

Ultimately, the answers rest in the lap of the governor. “You are never going to get the politics out of it,” Dukakis says. “There are safeguards out there, but someone has to make the decision, whether you like it or not.

“Governors have this authority,” he says, “and they’ve got to decide . . . where and when it ought to be used.”

Michael Blanding is a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine. Send comments to [email protected]

Second Chances

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By Raphael Johnson | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 16, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Oct 26, 2009

At 17 I was captain of my high-school football team and on my way to college. But in November 1992 I went to a birthday party with friends. We were tussling around, and the chaperones threw us out. One of them knocked me to the ground, and I felt ashamed and angry. My friend had a gun in his car. I got it, came back, and fired three shots, killing one of the chaperones. I was convicted of murder and given 10 to 25 years in prison.

I grew up in an area known for gun violence and drugs. Like a lot of boys, I looked up to tough men who could fight and had been in prison. My first arrest came when I was 12: I stole my grandmother’s gun and took it to school. At 14 I was sent to a boys’ home. I studied hard and won a full scholarship to attend the University of Detroit high school. I excelled there, but my thinking was twisted. I didn’t know how to manage my anger. As a result, a man lost his life the night of that party.

On the day I was to begin Marygrove College, I started a prison term instead. I was 18 and had hope: I could be paroled when I was still a relatively young man. I spent six of my 12 years in prison in solitary confinement. I promised myself I would read 1,000 books. I read 1,300. I became certified as a carpenter, plumber, electrician, and paralegal.

I was released from prison in 2004 after my third parole hearing. I received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Detroit Mercy. I started a motivational-speaking and fitness-training company. As a community-reintegration coordinator, I help other ex-offenders start anew. I’m proof that people, especially teens, can’t be judged by the worst thing they ever did.

There are countless examples of former juvenile offenders like myself who, given the opportunity to be contributing members of society, have done great things. Former senator Alan Simpson committed a serious federal offense as a juvenile (destroying government property) but became a GOP leader. Terry Ray was a violent repeat offender but became an assistant U.S. attorney. Charles Dutton was convicted of manslaughter at 17 but became a respected actor and director. Dozens of studies show that overwhelming majorities of juvenile offenders mature out of committing crimes.

Next month the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, two cases that will decide if it’s constitutional to sentence teens to life in prison without parole. The court should give people like me a reason to keep improving themselves. Individuals who have committed crimes as teens should be allowed to have their sentences reviewed. Teenagers change. Adolescents, even more than adults, have enormous capacity for redemption. I know.

Johnson recently won a primary election for the Detroit city council.

The kids are not alright

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http://www.mndaily.com/2009/10/14/kids-are-not-alright

Columns
Minnesota minors who kill can go to jail for life with no chance of getting out.
Published: 10/14/2009

Lamonte Martin was 17 years old when he and two of his companions killed Christopher Lynch on May 3, 2006.

Martin was charged with first-degree premeditated murder, which, under Minnesota law, means he was automatically charged as an adult. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.

Last Thursday, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld Martin’s sentence, saying it was not a violation of the federal or state constitution. Minnesota’s decision comes at a critical time for judicial consideration of juvenile sentences. On Nov. 9, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on whether sentencing juveniles to life without parole for non-homicidal crimes is unconstitutional. To oversimplify things, the decision faced by the courts is whether life sentences meted out to offending minors violates the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which bans “cruel and unusual punishments.” Minnesota’s state constitution, which was also considered in Martin’s case, however, bans “cruel or unusual punishment.”

Before jumping to any conclusions, consider how important some of the issues involved are. These kids have been convicted of committing horrible crimes. You don’t get life without parole for vandalizing the neighbor’s garage.

Some readers may remember Lynch’s murder. It was in 2006, when murder in north Minneapolis was becoming frighteningly frequent. Even with the body count rising daily, the Lynch killing was especially horrible.

According to the case, Lynch’s autopsy showed that he had been shot between 11 and 13 times. He had been with his cousin, a reputed gang member, when they were spotted by members of a rival gang and ran. Lynch stopped because he ran out of breath. Testimony indicated that Lynch was on his knees begging for his life when he was killed.

Nick Coleman’s Star Tribune column from May 14, 2006, recalled the scene. “They shot him everywhere — the face, the back, the butt,” said a neighborhood hairdresser cited only as “Barbara” in the story. “Then [emergency personnel] carried him away, like he was a sack of nothing.”

In one of the juvenile life sentence cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Sullivan, who already had a “lengthy juvenile record,” was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted of robbing, raping and beating a 72-year-old woman in her own home in 1989. He was 13 years old.

At the time of his sentencing, it was noted that Sullivan’s criminal record merited 846 points under Florida’s sentencing guidelines — well over the 583 points needed to impose a life sentence.

I was talking about these cases with my friend and classmate Rob Crist, who I think summed things up perfectly with a question: “What do you do with a kid like that?” For some states, the solution is to lock the kids up for the rest of their lives.

“The juvenile system has been utterly incapable of doing anything with Mr. Sullivan, even though Sullivan had been given opportunity after opportunity to upright himself and take advantage of the second and third chances he’s been given,” the prosecution’s brief states, quoting the trial judge.

Yet, despite the horror of the acts themselves, many argue that the kids deserve a second chance on account of their age. Sullivan’s defense team’s brief before the Supreme Court lists all the sociopsychological reasons against harsh sentences for children.

The brief argues that adolescents such as Sullivan lack the mental capacity to make responsible decisions and states that extensive punishments are unjust because children Sullivan’s age have not yet begun to form their own identities or to imagine their futures.

A partner case the Supreme Court will be hearing at the same time as Sullivan’s argues that none of the core principle purposes of criminal sentencing (retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation and deterrence) are served by sentencing minors to life without parole, especially in non-homicide cases.

A supporting brief filed on Sullivan’s behalf by a collection of religious organizations argues that Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism all “accord juveniles special treatment on account of their lesser mental sophistication.”

There is also the cost involved for taxpayers. Life sentences make minors de facto wards of the state in an already overcrowded prison system. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, 20 years from now, Florida taxpayers will still be picking up the entire tab for 53-year-old Joseph Sullivan’s existence because of acts he committed when he was barely a teenager. Is this economical?

In any case, Martin’s fate is sealed, as it is highly unlikely that the U.S. Supreme Court will declare life imprisonment for homicidal juvenile offenders unconstitutional in his lifetime. If future underage first-degree murderers are to avoid his fate, it will take state legislative action (if sentencing laws like this bother you, call your state legislators).

Any time a juvenile commits a violent crime, it’s already a tragedy. I can’t help but think that a child like Joseph Sullivan doesn’t do what he did unless a long line of adults — people like his teachers, parents or others in his surrounding community — had failed to teach him responsibility all along.

Somehow, the world has gotten to the point where kids are killers and rapists long before they can graduate from high school. As horrible as this is, I’m skeptical that the best way to deal with our youngest criminal offenders is to lock them up and throw away the key.

Jake Parsley welcomes comments at [email protected].

Will judge impose life in Florida case? National experts watching

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With Supreme Court case hanging over it, sentencing may highlight questions, debate in life sentences for juveniles

By JANE MUSGRAVE

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

WEST PALM BEACH — Jakaris Taylor was 15 and Nathan Walker was 16 when they joined as many as eight other young men who barged into a Dunbar Village apartment two years ago, gang-raped a 35-year-old woman and tortured her 12-year-old son.

If they lived in almost any other state in the nation, they wouldn’t be facing life in prison with no chance for parole when they go before a judge for sentencing today.

Few other states send juveniles to prison for life for crimes other than murder. Outside the United States, it’s almost unheard of.

Florida, in contrast, leads the nation and therefore the world in the number of juveniles sentenced to life for crimes varying from rape to carjacking to robbery. Nationally, there are 109 inmates who were younger than 18 when they committed crimes other than murder that sent them to prison for life. Of those, 77 are in Florida prisons.

Attorneys representing Taylor and Walker said Monday they intend to point out Florida’s disturbing track record to Circuit Judge Krista Marx in hopes she will ignore those who are clamoring for her to mete out the harshest punishment for the vicious crime.

Even if Marx imposes life sentences, the attorneys said they are hopeful the U.S. Supreme Court may reverse her decision.

The high court in November is expected to hear arguments from lawyers in two Florida cases who claim that sentencing juveniles to life in prison without parole for crimes other than murder violates U.S. constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.

Mirroring arguments raised by those involved in the Supreme Court case, Taylor’s attorney, Chris Haddad, points out what anyone who has raised kids knows: They think differently from adults. Haddad said he plans to call a mental health expert to explain why.

Psychologists disagree

However, even psychologists who have studied troubled youths don’t agree on whether juveniles should be held to the same standards as adults.

Deborah Leporowski, a Jupiter clinical and forensic psychologist, said countless studies have shown that adolescent brains are works in progress. The prefrontal cortex, which controls the ability to plan, prioritize, understand consequences and moderate behavior, isn’t fully developed until a person is 21, she said.

“We know most juveniles have trouble with abstract thinking,” she said. “They’re still growing, still learning from their mistakes. Their decision-making capacities aren’t fully developed.”

“The analogy I give people,” she continued, “is that you wouldn’t take even a brilliant second-grader and try to teach them algebra. Other than a prodigy, they just wouldn’t get it. It’s too abstract. You can’t force it.”

While she understands society likes its pound of flesh, it also embraces those who turn their lives around. Because juveniles’ brains are still growing, they are good candidates for rehabilitation.

“We could help them. We could teach them. We could change them,” she said.

Laurence Miller, a clinical, forensic and police psychologist in Boca Raton, scoffs at the notion that an undeveloped prefrontal cortex explains juvenile crime. He cites studies that show the cortex grows until people are in their late 30s.

“It’s a red herring,” he said. He said he knows 40-year-olds who act without thinking and 12-year-olds who are more emotionally mature than their parents.

Decisions about whether a person understood the consequences of his acts should be made on an individual basis, he said. “Simply because someone is 14, not 18, is a poor reason to make a determination that they should receive a lighter sentence,” he said.

One of the men who is to be sentenced today was 18 when the rape took place. Tommy Poindexter, who tested positive for cocaine at birth and has scored borderline mentally retarded on IQ tests, would not be eligible for a lighter sentence based solely on his age regardless of what the Supreme Court does.

Avion Lawson, who at 14 was the youngest of the four rapists, pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony and information about others who haven’t been charged.

Lawson, who is to be sentenced in December, described Poindexter as the gun-wielding mastermind of the attack.

Role of peer pressure

Paolo Annino, a Florida State University law school professor who led a recent study of juvenile sentencing, said 89 percent of juvenile crimes occur in groups.

Though not familiar with the Dunbar Village rape case, he said peer pressure plays a huge role. Older youths browbeat younger ones into committing crimes.

He said Florida’s harsh treatment of juvenile offenders was neither intentional nor well thought out. In a tough-on-crime frenzy, lawmakers eliminated parole for adults. Then, in a separate action, it gave prosecutors, not judges, the ability to determine whether to try juveniles as adults. The number of youths tried as adults skyrocketed from a few to 7,000 in one year.

“It was the perfect storm,” he said.

He said he is hopeful that the high court will agree that juveniles should not receive what he considers the equivalent of the death sentence for crimes that don’t involve murder. Such a decision would be a logical extension of the 2005 ruling that outlawed the death penalty for juveniles, he said.

While not discounting the brutality of the rape, Haddad said the demonization of his client and the others is upsetting.

“You’re going to see an (18-year-old) tomorrow watch all his dreams torn apart because of 20 minutes of his life,” he said.

Judge Marx known for tough sentences, tough words

A former prosecutor, Circuit Judge Krista Marx is no stranger to high-profile cases. She has handed down some tough sentences and tough words in her 11 years on the bench.

  • In this year’s high-profile trial of a Delray Beach priest who stole from his parish, she ordered him to serve four years in prison, calling his crimes acts of ‘unmitigated greed and unmitigated gall.’
  • Last year, she rejected a woman’s insanity defense in the stabbing of her boyfriend, handing her a manslaughter conviction. Conceding the woman had probably been abused, she said ‘in my estimation, it’s a classic woman scorned.’
  • ‘I’m surprised you didn’t kill Maryann Davis sooner,’ she told the man who beat and strangled Davis, his girlfriend. Then she sentenced him to the maximum sentence of 30 years.Juvenile sentences: An analysisA study by Florida State University found that Florida is 19 times more likely than comparable states to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole for crimes that don’t involve murder. Here are the numbers behind the recent findings:109: The estimated number of juveniles who received life without parole for crimes other than murder.

    8: The number of states that have juveniles serving life without parole for crimes other than murder.*

    84: The percentage of blacks who are among juveniles serving life without parole for crimes other than murder in Florida.

    13: The youngest age of youths sentenced to life without parole for crimes other than murder.

    7: The number of states that do not legally permit juveniles to be sentenced to life without parole for any offense. (Texas doesn’t allow such sentences for youths under 17.)

    *Nevada, Utah and Virginia did not participate in the study.

    County totals

    How Palm Beach County compares with some of the state’s other 66 counties in the number of juveniles sent to prison for life for crimes that don’t involve murder:

    Hillsborough 11

    Miami-Dade 8

    Broward 8

    Orange 8

    Escambia 6

    Palm Beach 5

    St. Lucie 3

    Martin 0

    Florida cases

    Two Florida cases about whether juveniles can be sentenced to life in prison without parole for non-homicide crimes will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 9:

    Joe Sullivan, in 1989 broke into a Pensacola house with a group of teens, raped a 72-year-old woman and stole some jewelry and coins. He was 13.

    Terrance Graham, at age 16 joined another teen in the armed robbery of a barbecue restaurant in Jacksonville. His co-defendant hit the manager with a steel pipe.

    • The juvenile damned

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    OPINION

    Sentencing children to life without parole is cruel and unusual.

    Lara Bazelon

    October 12, 2009


    After a one-day trial in 1989, Joe Sullivan was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was 13 years old.

    Sullivan’s case arose in Florida, which forbids anyone that age from driving, voting, marrying without judicial consent or even riding a bicycle without a helmet. These prohibitions rest on the sound logic that teenagers are still children — too immature and impulsive to be trusted with such grave responsibilities and weighty choices. But when it comes to breaking the law, Florida inexplicably abandons this reasoning. If the transgression is considered sufficiently serious, the child is tried as an adult.

    That is what happened to Joe Sullivan. Then it got worse. Following his conviction for the noncapital offense of sexual battery, the judge imposed the kind of punishment reserved for the most violent, incorrigible and irredeemable felons: permanent incarceration in an adult prison. With that sentence, Sullivan took his place among the juvenile damned, a tiny class of child offenders locked up for life in this country with no hope of release. There are a total of nine 13-year-olds in this group. When 14-year-old offenders are added, the number rises to 73.

    Sullivan’s lawyers, a team led by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, hope to reduce that number to zero. On Nov. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear Sullivan’s case, will decide whether a life-without-parole sentence for someone younger than 18 amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The Court will also hear the companion case of Terrance Lamar Graham, who received a life-without-parole sentence for a noncapital offense at the age of 17. Because the punishment was imposed at a probation violation hearing, Graham was sentenced to die in prison without the benefit of a trial, a jury or proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

    Boiled down to its essence, the petitioners’ position is that a ruling in their favor is a logical extension of the Court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, which outlawed the death penalty for children younger than 18 years of age on identical grounds. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court declared: “When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to obtain a mature understanding of his own humanity.”

    A STRONG, PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT

    Sullivan and Graham’s argument — that adherence to Roper‘s teachings requires the abolition of life-without-parole sentences for adolescents — is strong and persuasively presented. A punishment is “cruel” if it is excessive and therefore contravenes the “basic precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportional.” A punishment is “unusual” if it is implemented so rarely “that a national consensus has developed against it.” The petitioners have shown, relying in large part on empirical data, that permanently depriving adolescents of their liberty is both cruel and unusual.

    In Roper, the Court found that capital punishment for juveniles was cruel in part because the inherent immaturity of child offenders makes their conduct “not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult.” The Court noted that juvenile offenders have difficulty appreciating the long-term consequences of their actions and controlling their impulses. The short-sightedness and impetuosity of teenagers, combined with their greater susceptibility to the influences of their peers and their inability to extricate themselves from dangerous or negative surroundings, mean that juveniles have a “diminished capacity” that makes them less blameworthy — and thus less deserving of retribution — than their adult peers. Additionally, young adolescents are a work in progress — trying on and discarding a number of identities in the fraught and complicated process of growing up. Their adult selves may bear little physical or emotional resemblance to the angry, destructive teenagers they once were, undercutting the argument that they must be permanently removed from society.

    The findings of neuroscientists and developmental psychologists lead to the same conclusion when applied to life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders like Sullivan and Graham: They are cruel within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Anyone who has ever raised a teenager, befriended one or been one knows the extent to which that teenager can be self-involved, present-oriented, misguided and overly influenced by a peer group. But it is also true that upwards of 90% of them outgrow it. An amicus brief filed by former juvenile offenders, who grew up to be a U.S. senator, an assistant U.S. attorney, a best-selling author and a Tony-nominated actor, makes this point powerfully. Life-without-parole sentences, had they been handed down in those cases, would have made these accomplished and productive lives impossible. By disallowing the great probability that young offenders will grow and change profoundly and for the better, life-without-parole sentences are not only pitiless, but are excessive in a way that the Eighth Amendment forbids.

    The Court in Roper found that the death penalty for juveniles was unusual because 30 states outlawed it and even where it was “on the books,” it was seldom used. Similar statistics hold for life-without-parole sentences for 13- and 14-year-olds. The data assembled by Sullivan’s lawyers demonstrate that only six states have 13-year-old offenders serving life-without-parole sentences, and only 12 additional states have 14-year-olds doing so. When one looks beyond our borders to the practices of other nations — as the Court did in Roper — the numbers become even starker: “The United States,” Sullivan’s lawyers wrote, “stands alone in sentencing children to die in prison without hope of ever winning release.”

    It is time the Court put an end to this shameful practice by applying Roper to life-without-parole sentences for juveniles. Our evolving standards of decency demand nothing less.

    Lara Bazelon will be the 2010-2012 civil justice clinic fellow at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

    Florida a leader in putting kids in jail for life

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    By FRED GRIMM

    [email protected]

    The latest measure of Florida’s medieval mind set comes in at 77.

    Juxtapose that number against the 109 juveniles in all of the United States who have been consigned to prison until death for crimes not involving murder or attempted murder.

    Of the 109, 77 are locked up in Florida prisons, according to a study by the Public Interest Law Center at Florida State University.

    Florida may skimp on educating children, but when it comes to perpetual incarceration for kiddies, we’re like no place else.

    “We’ve far exceeded what goes on in the rest of the nation,” said Paolo Annino, the center’s supervising attorney.

    The 50-state study found that 39 states have no juvenile convicts in non-homicide cases serving life without parole. After Florida, with 77, Louisiana is the next-most-draconian state on the law center’s list with 17.

    ALONE AMONG NATIONS

    If Florida stands alone amid the states in its fervor to lock up juveniles for life, even for nonlethal crimes, then we’re also set off from the rest of the world. Amnesty International, in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, stated: “Every other country in the world has rejected the practice of giving this sentence to offenders who were under 18 at the time they committed a crime.”

    The Supreme Court, during this fall’s term, will hear arguments over whether life sentences for kids convicted of crimes like armed robbery, rape and burglary so violates civilized norms that it constitutes cruel and usual punishment.

    In 2005, the court tossed out the death penalty for juveniles, citing “evolving standards of decency.”

    Florida, of course, would be the last place to recognize evolving standards of decency in criminal justice. (An evolving standard of decency, in more-civilized locales, would not contemplate the state stashing sex offenders into a homeless camp under the Julia Tuttle Causeway.)

    Both of the juvenile life-without-parole appeals up before the court (to be heard simultaneously) are Florida cases: a 13-year-old given life for rape in 1989 and a 16-year-old armed robber sent off for life in 2005.

    NOT INTENDED

    What is it about Florida? “I don’t think this was intended,” said Professor Annino. “It wasn’t as if Florida lawmakers decided, OK, let’s put all these kids in prison, life without parole, for non-murders. It wasn’t planned or intended as social policy,” he said. “It was more of an accident.”

    Back in the early 1990s, several deadly attacks on international tourists in Florida added a sense of urgency to a get-tough-on-juvenile-crime attitude in the Legislature. Juvenile offenders “were threatening the state’s bedrock tourism industry,” the state’s lawyers explained in their Supreme Court brief. Annino said the Legislature streamlined the process to try kids as adults, with adult sentences, with little consideration of the unintended consequences.

    Lawmakers surely didn’t envision 13-year-old non-killers trucked off to prison for life, although Florida has two such cases among the 77 prisoners.

    But undoing get-tough legislation, no matter how crazy, requires the kind of leadership missing lately among Florida’s risk-averse politicians. So we have kids sent to prison for life and sex offenders living under the Tuttle causeway, all to honor politically intractable laws that no serious criminologists find rational.

    It’s what sets Florida apart from the civilized universe.

    Teen sentenced to life without parole for death of St. Louis police officer

    /in /by

    ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
    10/10/2009

    ST. LOUIS — As Antonio Andrews was about to be sentenced Friday to spend the rest of his life in prison, he spoke out for the first time since being accused of killing a city police officer.

    “I hope y’all are happy,” Andrews, 17, said in St. Louis Circuit Court. “You are taking my life, and I didn’t do this. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

    In August, a jury had deliberated just over five hours before deciding Andrews was the right guy, the one who shot Officer Norvelle Brown rather than take a chance of being caught carrying a gun.

    Circuit Judge Dennis Schaumann imposed the only punishment available for the first-degree murder conviction — life in prison without the possibility of parole — adding 50 years more for armed criminal action.

    Several members of Andrews’ family wore T-shirts to court that read: “Free Tonio.”

    Some of Brown’s family was in the courtroom, too, but chose not to address the judge.

    Police Chief Dan Isom, who got to know Brown through the Police Athletic League’s track team, said later that he was pleased with the sentence but knew it was a sad day for everyone involved.

    “I hope this sends a message to young people to think before you act — your decisions can have life-altering consequences that you can’t take back,” he said.

    Andrews was 15 when Brown was shot to death in the 1600 block of Semple Avenue on Aug. 15, 2007. The court certified Andrews for trial as an adult.

    Jurors were faced with conflicting evidence. At least two eyewitnesses told detectives in video-recorded statements that they saw Andrews shoot Brown. But on the witness stand, they claimed police had coerced their statements.

    One teen who was with Andrews that evening testified that they were walking to a Chinese restaurant when Brown pulled alongside them. The teens ran, and Brown gave chase, according to testimony.

    The prosecutor said Andrews told his friend before opening fire that he was tired of running from the police.

    Andrews did not testify.

    Brown, 22, on the force for one year, had fired a single shot from his pistol before it jammed, according to testimony. Fellow officers found the gun lying near him. Brown had been hit once in the shoulder, through an opening in his bullet-resistant vest.