What is the age of responsibility? Laws send young people mixed messages

/in /by

http://www.governing.com/article/what-age-responsibility

From sex to driving to juvenile justice to drinking, state and local laws send young people mixed messages about their own maturity. Is there a better way?
By Alan Greenblatt | October 2009

Justin McNaull grew up in a hurry. By the time he was 23, McNaull had graduated from college, married and gone to work for his local police force in Virginia. But McNaull, now 36, still bristles at the memory of something he wasn’t allowed to do at 23: go down to the airport counter and rent a car. “I’d been involved in police pursuits at more than 100 mph,” he says, “and yet they still wouldn’t rent me a car.”

To many young people, rental-car restrictions are more than an annoyance. They’re also a confusing contradiction, in terms of what society expects of them. After all, states trust people to drive at a much younger age: Most states issue driver’s licenses to persons as young as 16 years old. Yet nearly a decade must pass before the same persons can earn the trust of Hertz or Avis.

By the time adolescents become adults, they are accustomed to such inconsistent treatment. Practically from puberty, young people are bombarded with mixed signals about the scope of their rights and the depth of their responsibilities. And most of those mixed signals come from the laws of state and local governments. In most respects, people are considered adults at 18. That’s when they can vote and enter into legal contracts—including the purchase, if not rental, of a car. But a 20-year-old Marine, just back from patrolling the streets of Baghdad, would have to turn 21 before he could join a local police force in most cities in the United States. A 20-year-old college junior, far more educated than the average American, cannot buy alcohol or enter a casino. In 10 states, a single 20-year-old cannot legally have sex with a 17-year old. But in nearly every state, a 16-year-old can marry—if he has his parents’ permission. (A handful of states allow girls to marry before boys.)

The most glaring examples lie within the criminal justice system. A spike in juvenile violence two decades ago spurred state legislators to adopt the mantra “adult time for adult crimes.” Consequently, in most states, a 10-year-old charged with murder can be tried as an adult. Slightly older teens can be tried in adult courts for virtually every other crime. Even when states wait until 18 to treat criminals as adults, they don’t like to wait long. Until recently, inmates at youth detention facilities in New Mexico were woken up just one minute after midnight on their 18th birthdays, in order to be moved to adult prisons.

Recently, many of these lines drawn between adolescence and maturity have been called into question. For example, the presidents of 135 universities are campaigning to consider lowering the drinking age from 21. They note that binge drinking on campus is rampant despite the stricture, and argue that if students were given the right to drink at an earlier age, they might handle it more responsibly. Another argument is a reprise of the one that came up 40 years ago when servicemen came home from Vietnam. Then, the complaint was that soldiers were old enough to die but not to vote. (The 26th Amendment took care of that problem by lowering the voting age to 18.) Today, military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are left to question why they can fight America’s wars but still can’t patronize its bars.

Meanwhile, legislatures and courts are hearing a very different argument from a group of people that haven’t traditionally testified before them: neuroscientists. Using advanced brain-scanning technology, scientists are getting a better view of how the human brain develops than ever before. And what they’ve found is that in most people, the prefrontal cortex and its links to other regions of the brain are not fully formed until age 25—much later than anyone had realized. These areas are the seat of “executive decision making”—the parts of the brain that allow people to think through the likely consequences of an action, weigh the risks and benefits and stop themselves from acting on impulse. In other words, the stuff that makes you a mature person.

To state and local lawmakers and judges, the brain research can come as a revelation: Maybe the car-rental companies were right all along. What to do about this is another matter. In America, “adulthood” already has its familiar compass points, 18 and 21. But what is the age of responsibility? And what if that age—the point when citizens are responsible enough to earn all of the rights a democracy confers upon its people—bears no resemblance to the ages already enshrined in law? Finding the answers to those questions is a more complicated task than simply choosing a milestone birthday. “There’s been a growing recognition that most of our earlier law in how we treat adolescents and young adults was chaotic and not tied to any empirical rationale,” says Brian Wilcox, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska. “When many of these laws were established, there really wasn’t research on which they could be based.”

The age at which children are considered mature is rooted in a mix of culture, convenience and historical precedent. Aristotle wrote of 21 as the age when a person would have completed three 7-year stages of youth development. During the Middle Ages, legend has it that 21 was considered the age of adulthood because that’s when men were capable of wearing a full suit of armor. Arbitrary as such reasoning may sound to modern Americans, 21 stuck as a threshold age through the 19th century and into the 20th. Until they turned 21, young people owed their parents either their labor or their wages, whether that meant working on the family farm or operating a machine in an urban factory and handing over their pay.

But during the Progressive Era, reform efforts and adolescent research began to change notions about growing up. States, and eventually the federal government, enacted child-labor laws, keeping kids from working and ultimately making their attendance in high school compulsory. Such laws were opposed by business groups, which hated to let go of the cheap labor, and supported by unions, which didn’t like the cheaper competition.

Through the middle of the 20th century, the onset of adulthood seemed to come earlier and earlier. War was partly responsible for that, as 18-year-olds went off to fight in World War II, followed by the wars in Korea and Vietnam. On the home front, manufacturing jobs didn’t require a high-school diploma. It was thus common for 18-year-olds to support themselves and start their own families. And the rise of youth culture in the 1950s and 60s turned the teen years into their own distinctive stage of development—and consumer spending. There was a new sense that reaching the end of this life phase was a rite of passage in and of itself.

Nowadays, teens face more cultural pressure than ever to grow up fast, in certain ways. Recent controversies over whether 16-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus has sexualized her image is the latest symptom of that. Yet there’s a strong pull in exactly the opposite direction, too. Many more 18-year-olds are choosing college over work now than a generation or two ago. They live independently at school for part of the year but under their parents’ roofs for the rest. People are getting married later than they used to, and many have become slower about starting their own careers. Even before the current recession, plenty of college grads and dropouts had “boomeranged” back to Mom and Dad’s house. Sociologists now talk of “extended adolescence” and “delayed adulthood.”

That means that the window of time during which teens and young adults “grow up” is opening wider. This partly explains why state and local governments are so haphazard when it comes to young people: The law, and the people who write and interpret it, are just as befuddled about how to handle this situation as any anxious parent. Mostly, they have responded by cracking down. On an annual basis, the number of laws regulating the behavior of people under 18 has more than tripled since the 1950s. Curfews are now common. Recently, states have banned minors from purchasing items such as nitrous-oxide inhalants and fruit-flavored mini-cigars. Various jurisdictions have restricted “sexting”—sending lewd photos via cell phones. And 20 states ban only those under 18 from talking on cell phones while driving, despite evidence that the behavior (even using a hands-free device) is treacherous among drivers of all ages.

So there is a bit of hypocrisy, too, in the way governments define the age of responsibility. While nearly every state recently has put new limits on teen drivers, no state has begun restricting—or even testing—elderly drivers, some of whom may, like teens, lack mastery of their vehicles. Franklin Zimring, a UC Berkeley law professor, suggests that it’s easier to block youngsters from obtaining rights than it is to take away rights to which adults have grown accustomed. That’s because states aren’t really denying young people rights, Zimring says. They’re asking them to wait.

As Jack McCardell sees it, the wait can be counterproductive. McCardell is the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. He’s also the leader of the group of college presidents calling for a national debate about the drinking age. Technically, states hold the power to set their own drinking ages. But since the mid-1980s, Congress has all but required the age to be set at 21. If states were to set it any lower, they would forfeit 10 percent of their federal highway funds.

McCardell points to surveys showing that upwards of 90 percent of young people have had drinks or gotten drunk before turning 21. Those numbers only confirm what everyone knows—that binge drinking is out of control on college campuses. Of the current drinking age, McCardell says, “it’s pretty hard to argue on the most basic terms that it’s been at all successful, given the number who continue to consume.”

McCardell believes that the current laws not only are ineffective and unenforceable but are in fact leading students to drink more heavily in illicit and unsafe circumstances. The problem, he says, is that underage kids don’t actually consider themselves underage. McCardell believes this is a direct consequence of the mixed messages states send teenagers about responsibility. “We have a law that is out of step with social and cultural reality,” he says. “In the eyes of a culture and a polity that understands in the most general way that 18 is the age of adulthood, the most glaring exception is the prohibition on alcohol, and that is why we’ve had such a difficult time enforcing this law.”

A half-dozen states have taken McCardell up on the challenge of at least debating the idea of lowering the drinking age. But McCardell is the first to admit that none of them will ever pass legislation as long as a big chunk of their highway dollars is at risk. In fact, if there’s any trend among states, it’s to crack down further on drinking by those under age 21. States have created new keg-registration requirements, stepped up enforcement of carding at convenience stores and passed “social host” laws that impose liability on adults who serve alcohol to teens at parties.

Some supporters of holding the drinking age steady acknowledge that 21, when it comes right down to it, is an arbitrary age. Twenty-five might be better, if unrealistic. But they argue that enforcement is a problem at any age, and lowering the legal limit to 18 would only mean pushing the drinking problem further down to 16- and 17-year-olds. Alexander Wagenaar, a health policy professor at the University of Florida, goes further. He believes that lowering the drinking age would be disastrous. After states set the age at 21, he says, teen highway deaths immediately dropped by 15 to 20 percent. “The people who are advocating going down to 18,” says Wagenaar, “should acknowledge that they’re willing to risk an extra thousand deaths per year and double that number of injuries.”

The debate about drinking hinges on the question of whether the age of responsibility has been set too high. But in the juvenile justice world, a parallel debate has been going on about whether the age of responsibility has been set too low.

In the early 20th century, every state created stand-alone legal systems for handling juveniles, defined as those under 18. Advocates of that era described the states as “a sheltering wise parent” that would shield a child from the rigors of criminal law. By the 1980s, however, the idea that rehabilitating such offenders should be the main goal of the system had lost credibility. Due to a spike in juvenile homicides involving handguns—and concerns that young “superpredators” presented an extreme and growing danger to society—legislators passed countless laws that made it easier to try minors as adults. This was true not only for serious matters such as murder and drug crimes but also for minor infractions and misdemeanors. Some plea bargains are available to teens only if they agree to adult handling. Specific numbers are hard to come by, but on any given day, an estimated 10,000 minors are housed in adult facilities.

Now, states are just starting to rethink the wisdom of sending 13-year-olds to spend hard time among older, more experienced criminals. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, youths who had previously been tried as adults are 34 percent more likely to commit a crime again than those who went through the juvenile justice system. Not only do young offenders treated as adults reoffend sooner and more frequently, they’re also more likely to go on to commit violent crimes.

On this matter, states are finding, nothing is more persuasive than crime data. Despite all the media attention given years ago to superpredators, the vast majority of youth crimes involve property theft and drugs and seldom involve murder. And while there are still roughly 250,000 juveniles tried each year, the rate of crime for this cohort, as measured by arrests, has gone down in each of the past 15 years.

Tough policies toward juveniles remain prevalent, but a few states have begun loosening up. In 2005, Illinois ended its policy of automatically transferring juvenile misdemeanor cases to adult courts, leaving the decision up to judges. A follow-up study found a dramatic drop in the number of cases referred to adult court, suggesting that most of the old automatic transfers had not involved serious crimes.

As of January 1, Connecticut will end its policy of treating all offenders 16 and up as adults. A similar proposal in North Carolina stalled this summer. While the latest research and crime statistics have opened up room for a fresh debate about juvenile justice, that space could evaporate at any time. There’s no telling when a high-profile teen crime may catch the attention of cable news. “If we have another crime wave for whatever reason,” says Shay Bilchik, of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, “it will be very difficult to resist going back to lock ’em up.”

It’s precisely because policy toward teens can be so random and emotionally charged that some people find the discoveries about brain development reassuring. The brain scans are putting hard science behind what anyone who has raised an adolescent knows—that young people simply aren’t always capable of making good decisions.

Increasingly, this scientific evidence is being introduced in regard to juvenile justice. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the juvenile death penalty after receiving stacks of briefs summarizing the latest adolescent brain research. The justices will surely get an update on the science this fall when they hear a pair of cases from Florida meant to determine whether sentencing juveniles to life without parole constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Scientists now regularly appear before legislative committees, showing pictures that make clear the developmental differences between a 16-year-old brain and that of a 25-year-old. The scans show, in the words of Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg, that juveniles may be “less guilty by reason of adolescence.”

But while brain research is “sexy,” Steinberg says, it hasn’t necessarily persuaded legislators that they need to change laws regarding crime and punishment. Nor has it fundamentally changed the way policy makers view the age of responsibility in terms of when young people can drink, smoke or drive. The conclusion that 25 might be the most scientifically defensible age for any of those things is simply a nonstarter politically. Texas state Representative Jerry Madden says he’s sympathetic to the argument that “the brain isn’t fully developed until 25, and that’s when people should be allowed to do certain things.” But he says he suggested to a brain scientist who once made that case to him that “she could carry that bill—I wasn’t going to.”

Even scientists are cautious about leaning too hard on the neurobiology. Research linking brain structure to actual human behavior is still limited. And neuroscientists are clear about the fact that different parts of the brain mature along different timetables. In other words, executive thinking may not reach its peak until 25 but most people are capable of performing many adult functions adequately at an earlier age—probably between 16 and 21. “We’re very early in the curve of finding out how the brain research should be interpreted,” says Ronald Dahl, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

The fact that every person is different and develops at his own pace doesn’t make the creation of policy any easier. Parents can guide their children, let them learn from their mistakes when they need to and bail them out when they have to. But laws are less sympathetic. Laws must draw lines, in order to be fair and comprehensible. And there will never be enough brain scans to go around to draw those lines as accurately as we might like.

What those laws can do, however, is acknowledge that growing up is a process, not a birthday. And in at least one major policy area—the driving age—states are finding ways to recognize this by introducing youngsters to increasing levels of responsibility, rather than foisting it upon them all at once.

The driving age is more rooted in practical experience than the arbitrary conventions that define the drinking age and most other adult responsibilities. Early in the 20th century, there essentially was no regulation. As soon as someone’s feet could reach the pedals, he or she was free to drive. Driving tests didn’t come into widespread practice until the 1940s. And until recently, many states, particularly in agricultural areas, gave licenses to kids who passed the test when they turned 14. South Dakota will still grant a driver’s license to a person as young as 14 years, 3 months. On the other end of the spectrum, New Jersey is the only state that makes teenagers wait as late as their 17th birthdays.

Of the rights and rites of adulthood, driving holds a special place. On one hand, in a country with meager access to public transit, being able to operate a car is tantamount to mobility. Learning to drive is as essential to taking a first job as it is to going out on a first date—or at least doing those things without being chauffeured around by parents. On the other hand, driving is by far the most likely way that a young person will kill himself or others. According to the CDC, 4,500 Americans between 16 and 19 die from motor vehicle crashes annually, while another 400,000 are injured seriously enough to require emergency treatment. Obviously, driving is a responsibility that must be given to young people with great care.

The new approach that has taken hold among the states is called “graduated driver licensing,” or GDL. The idea is to license kids to start driving at a certain age, but on a probationary basis. They might have to put in more hours driving with their parents or with professional instructors. They might not be allowed to drive at night. Or they might not be permitted to drive in the company of friends—peer pressure is often a factor when young drivers make bad decisions behind the wheel. GDLs have been implemented in some form in every state except North Dakota.

One reason why GDLs have become popular with state lawmakers is because they represent the middle ground in a highly emotional debate. Following a horrific car crash in his district, Illinois state Representative John D’Amico introduced legislation to raise the driving age in his state from 16 to 18. But D’Amico, who is from Chicago, quickly found out that the rural roots of early driving run deep. “I couldn’t get Southern Illinois to agree to it,” he says. Instead, D’Amico proposed a GDL. The law that passed in 2007 tightened nighttime driving curfews for 16- and 17-year-olds and required new drivers to wait a full year before they can carry more than one non-relative.

The impact was immediate. In 2007 in Illinois, 155 teens between the ages of 16 and 19 died in automobile crashes. In 2008, that number fell to 92. Those results track with findings on GDLs nationally. According to a Johns Hopkins University study, states with strong GDL laws have cut accidents among young drivers by 40 percent, with injuries down 38 percent.

Would the roads be even safer if the driving age were 25? Probably. But the GDL approach at least recognizes that young drivers are at their most dangerous in their first six months on the road. GDLs give adolescents time to practice, with less risk to themselves and other drivers. Their brains may not always make the best judgments about how fast to drive at night or in the rain. But that’s somewhat compensated for by the experience they’re getting behind the wheel. “The science says that what you want to do with kids is what parents and grandparents know,” says Dahl. “If you give them freedom and they can handle it, then they get a little bit more.”

That’s what Justin McNaull thinks, too. Having complained about not being able to rent a car as a 23-year-old cop, McNaull now works for AAA, where he lobbies for restrictions on young drivers. The key, he says, is finding the right balance between safety and responsibility. “We could maximize safety by raising the driving age to 25, but that’s not practical,” he says. “We know we’re not going to push the driving age anywhere near 25 and none of us is trying to.”

Could a GDL-type approach work in other policy areas? McCardell, the former university president, believes it could. He favors subjecting young people to testing to receive drinking permits that could be revoked if they in some way abuse the privilege. The idea needs some work: How, exactly, would states go about designing a drinking test? But he has a point. A right such as drinking could be made more contingent on one’s ability to handle it responsibly and less a function of merely reaching a milestone age.

Robert Epstein, a psychologist and author of Teen 2.0, says states could learn something from the way they regulate pharmacists and masseurs. Just as those groups are licensed based on the competence requirements of their professions, adolescents could accrue rights based on somehow proving they’re up to the task. Teens would do pretty well under such a system, he argues. He’s just completed a study of more than 30,000 people showing that 30 percent of American teens are more competent than the median adult in a variety of areas. “If we’re trying to decide what rights and privileges to extend,” Epstein says, “we have to look at individual competence.”

Which brings us back to the problem of there not being enough brain scans to go around. States are never going to spend the time and money needed to test individuals on their ability to drink or understand legal contracts. Should government really decide when an individual is ready to have sex? And there’s certainly a long and sordid history that argues against the idea of testing people on their competence to vote. Franklin Zimring, the UC Berkeley law professor, suggests that the GDL approach may be uniquely suited to the particular skills and risks of driving.

It would be useful, however, for states to think more broadly when it comes to the age of responsibility. States have been acting in ever-more-punitive ways toward teens. Yet the point of laws regulating the behavior of young people should not be to restrict them. It’s to begin educating them in the ways of responsible adulthood. What’s important, after all, is not passing a test or meeting an arbitrary age requirement, but learning lessons and applying them to real life.

Juvenile life without parole sentence too harsh report says

/in /by

Advocates seek Mass. law change

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff  |  September 30, 2009

Despite its liberal reputation, Massachusetts has one of the harshest laws in the country for sentencing murderers as young as 14 to life in prison without parole, and many of the 57 people serving such mandatory sentences are first-time offenders, according to an advocacy group that wants them to become eligible for parole.

The Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, in what it said was the first comprehensive study of the 1996 law that resulted in such sentences for first-degree murder, found that a disproportionate percentage of the children locked up for the rest of their lives are black. Many of the offenders were convicted with adult codefendants, some of whom got milder sentences and have been freed.

The report, which is scheduled to be released today, followed a two-year review of most of the cases in which children ages 14, 15, and 16 were tried in adult court and sentenced to life. The study says that penalties for juvenile murderers were inadequate in the 1980s but that the Legislature went too far when it passed the current law in response to what the center describes as overblown fears of young super predators.

The group wants Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature to change the law to at least make juveniles convicted of first-degree murder eligible for parole after 15 years, as is true for people convicted of second-degree murder.

“Life-without-parole sentences may be an appropriate response to some adult crimes, especially in a state like Massachusetts that does not impose the death penalty,’’ the 33-page report said. “But the current law treats youths as young as 14 exactly like adults, regardless of their age, past conduct, level of participation in the crime, personal background, and potential for rehabilitation.’’

Geline W. Williams, executive director of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said yesterday she could not comment on the report until she reads it. But, “There’s no question that there are some juveniles who commit absolutely horrific crimes and have absolutely horrific records before they commit the ultimate crime of murder,’’ she said.

The two state lawmakers who chair the joint Committee on the Judiciary, Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty and Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, said they were willing to reexamine the 1996 law.

O’Flaherty said a few notorious crimes can often result in “legislative overreaction, and usually it takes a few years to see the unforeseen consequences of getting too tough, too quickly, and not being smart about getting tough.’’

Massachusetts is one of at least 39 states with youths serving sentences of life without parole; about 2,500 inmates around the country serve such sentences. But only Massachusetts and Connecticut give adult courts exclusive jurisdiction over murder cases against children as young as 14 and then impose a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for all first-degree murder convictions, regardless of the circumstances, the report said.

Several states are considering changing their laws to give youth offenders an opportunity to earn parole, in part because scientific research into the difference between the adolescent and adult brain shows that teenagers often cannot appreciate the consequences of their actions.

Last year, after citing similar neuroscientific evidence, Human Rights Watch called sentences of life without parole for juveniles “cruel, unfair, and unnecessary.’’

Massachusetts enacted the current law, partly in response to insufficient juvenile court sentences in the 1980s, when the harshest punishment for a juvenile who was not transferred to an adult court – even for murder – was incarceration until 21.

In the 1990s, a number of widely publicized juvenile murder cases prompted the Legislature to mandate that all juveniles charged with first- or second-degree murder be tried in adult court and that conviction for first-degree murder result in an automatic sentence of life without parole.

One of those cases involved Edward S. O’Brien, the 15-year-old who stabbed his best friend’s mother 98 times across the street from his Somerville home in 1995. After two years of hearings and intervention by the state’s highest court, O’Brien was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole.

The Children’s Law Center contends that crime rates do not justify such harsh sentences. Homicide rates for Massachusetts youth under 18 peaked in 1992.

Since 1998, the homicide rate among adolescents has been lower than it was 30 years ago.

The center, which reviewed in detail 46 of the 57 juvenile murderers serving life sentences without parole, said 41 percent had no prior record. Forty percent of the offenders had been convicted along with adult defendants, but many of the adults got lighter sentences.

“Frequently, the adults who are actually the primary actors [in the murders] and are in possession of the knowledge that matters are in a better position to offer information in exchange for better treatment from prosecutors,’’ said Lia Monahon, the lawyer for the center who wrote the report.

Blacks make up 47 percent of the juveniles sentenced to life without parole but account for less than 7 percent of children under 18 in Massachusetts, said the report. Monahon said the disparity could reflect bias in the criminal justice system.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at [email protected]

Supreme Court to consider juvenile ‘lifers’

/in , /by

Does life without parole for minors who didn’t kill constitute cruel and unusual punishment?

By David G. Savage

September 28, 2009

Reporting from Washington –

Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole.

The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, “The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles.”

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

Sullivan’s and Graham’s lawyers do not claim the young men deserve to go free.

“We are not asking for Mr. Graham to be released any time soon,” attorney Bryan Gowdy said. “We are asking the court to declare unconstitutional a sentence of life without parole for these crimes. It would be entirely different if Mr. Graham had a meaningful opportunity for parole.”

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court’s tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Sullivan’s and Graham’s cases will be heard in November. Many lawyers and prosecutors said that until the Supreme Court agreed this year to take up the issue, they were unaware of juveniles receiving such sentences.

Sullivan, now 33, has been in prison for 20 years. The Florida appeals court and the state Supreme Court refused to review his sentence. When his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum said the appeal should be dismissed on the grounds that it was too late to raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment.

A lawyer for Graham has called his client’s life sentence freakish and unfair. A second youth who participated in the restaurant robbery hit an employee with a club. He was later arrested for robbing a gas station and sentenced to three years in prison. He has since been released.

Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape. It has at least 77 such inmates. California and six other states also have at least one.

“This is a hidden group. They don’t get a lot of attention because there was no homicide,” said Paolo Annino, a law professor at Florida State University who has compiled national data on these prisoners.

California officials said they were unaware of having four such inmates until they checked their database at Annino’s request. Two years ago, California joined many other states in prohibiting the sentencing of young offenders to life in prison.

But that measure did not affect inmates who had already been sentenced.

Annino and others point to two trends in the 1980s that led to juveniles serving life terms. First was the national move to abolish parole, reflecting fears that violent criminals could not be safely released. Second was the increased prosecution of young criminals as adults.

In defense of its life-in-prison policy, Florida’s lawyers have pointed to several deadly attacks on European visitors carried out by young criminals.

These violent incidents were “threatening the state’s bedrock tourism industry,” Florida’s lawyers said in the opening paragraph of their brief to the Supreme Court in the Graham case.

Is a child still a child if he is also a felon?

/in /by

Montez wants a future. He wants to attend community college, study nursing and be a good role model for his little brother and sister. He doesn’t want to end up like his father, “in and out of jail.”

The 19-year-old shared his hopes over pizza and lemonade Friday inside the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red Wing. The facility, whose facade resembles a tony private college save for the intimidating security fences, houses up to 175 of the state’s most violent and chronic juvenile offenders.

Montez was sentenced to Red Wing 13 months ago for burglary and drug offenses. Now he attends high school on campus, sings in a choir and volunteers. He also gets round-the-clock observance, counseling, life skills training and tough love from a staff trained in adolescent development.

He likely has no idea how lucky he is.

More than 2,000 young offenders nationwide never had a Red Wing option. Instead, they landed immediately in adult prisons. In Minnesota, 33 offenders serving life sentences in adult prisons were under 18 at the time of commitment.

Whether this is best for the offender or society is a question re-emerging on Minnesota’s and the nation’s radar. We should all pay attention.

In a few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether sending a juvenile in non-homicide cases to life in adult prison, with no chance of parole, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. This comes on the heels of a comprehensive study from the University of Texas at Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs that reviewed juvenile conviction practices across the country.

Author Michele Deitch found that 27 states allow children ages 12 and under to be prosecuted as adults. In 22 of those states, children as young as 7 can face adult punishment.

In Minnesota, a child must be 14, but some lawmakers keep working to make it 13 in the most egregious cases. Their mantra: Adult crime, adult time.

Here’s the problem: If the goal is keeping kids from becoming career criminals and increasing public safety, adult lock-ups typically are counterproductive. Young offenders face increased risks of physical and sexual assault in adult settings. If they don’t commit suicide (the rates are high) many adolescents are released more wounded and angry than when they went in. Deitch also is alarmed that determinations about whether a child is tried as an adult are marked “by extreme arbitrariness, unpredictability and racial disparities.”

Perhaps most compelling is a growing body of research showing that the brain is not fully developed until age 25, leading to more risk-taking and less understanding of consequences, but also more hope for rehabilitation.

“There are exceptions, but public safety is best served by not making adult sentencing the rule,” said Josh Milow, chair of the Minnesota Corrections Association Legislative Committee, which vigorously opposes lowering the age at which a child can be tried as an adult.

Not everybody buys it.

Rep. Bud Nornes, R-Fergus Falls, has tried three times to pass legislation to lower the age of adult certification to 13, after a boy that age killed the little girl of a family in his district. Suffering the worse loss imaginable, “they felt that this was one way to get through this, which is pretty impossible to do,” Nornes said. “It’s not dramatically changing state law.”

He’s adamant that 13-year-olds “know the difference between right and wrong. I have grandkids that age. A 13-year-old is able to do a lot of things, including drive a four-wheeler and hunt with Dad. It takes judgment, and I think a 13-year-old has some.”

Those on the other side respect the pain of crime victims.

“When I go to Capitol hearings, my God, the scenarios you hear are just horrendous. … But reducing public policy to emotion-level decision-making is never good public policy,” said Curt Peterson, director of the Juvenile Justice Coalition of Minnesota.

At Red Wing, which houses sexual offenders, gang members and some teenagers there for murder, the rehabilitation rate is 65 percent. Warden Otis Zanders, who spent 20 years in adult facilities before coming to Red Wing 13 years ago, calls those results “extremely good.”

Could those young men have been rehabilitated in adult prison? He’s seen it happen. But he believes good outcomes are far more likely at a place like Red Wing, which zeroes in on impulse and anger control, moral reasoning and basic skills training.

“Our job is to repair kids,” Zanders said.

The fully supervised youth eat meals together and visit a senior center to dance with residents. Many sing in a choir directed by Metropolitan Boys Choir director Bea Hasselmann. Music, said Hasselmann, who has made a weekly trek to Red Wing for eight years, reaches them in powerful ways. One perplexed inmate told her: “When I sing, my eyes water.”

Seventeen-year-old Marvin, in for first-degree assault, sang in Hasselmann’s choir during Friday’s quarterly graduation, and won the campus-wide Peacemaker Award. “I don’t think it will be tricky at all to stay on track,” said Marvin, who departs next month on parole. Time will tell.

Ultimately, said MCA’s Milow, “95 percent of offenders who go into prison are going to come out. We really have to look at what they’re going to be.”

Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350 • [email protected]

Jail wasted on juvenile offenders: study

/in /by

LOCKING up juvenile offenders appeared to have no greater deterrent effect on the rate of reoffending than lesser non-custodial penalties, a new study revealed.

The finding broadly contradicted two earlier studies, one which found juveniles given custodial sentences were more likely to reoffend and another which found lower reoffending rates for jailed car thieves but higher rates for those locked away for other offences.

The latest study, released today by the Australian Institute of Criminology, involved a detailed assessment of 152 juvenile offenders given detention sentences and 243 handed a non-custodial sentence, all in NSW.

All were interviewed at length about family life, school performance, drug abuse and association with delinquent peers.

“The results of this study suggest that, other things being equal, juveniles given custodial orders are no less likely to reoffend than juveniles given non-custodial orders,” the study authors concluded.

The differing findings of the latest study were probably due to more detailed consideration of the juveniles’ prior criminal records, they said.

On an average day almost 1000 young people were in custody across Australia, at a high cost to the community.

In NSW, only 10.3 per cent of juveniles appearing in the NSW Children’s Court in 2007 were locked up, but they accounted for almost half the budget of the NSW Department of Juvenile Justice.

Despite that cost, actual research on the impact of juvenile detention was scanty, with previous research conducted in 1974 and 1996.

The latest study found about half of each group reoffended during the follow-up period, with mean time to reconviction about five months.

That is consistent with overseas studies which pointed to significant future penalties imposed on those who had served jail time, particularly reduced employment prospects.

Mental Health America adopts policy opposing JLWOP

/in /by

Mental Health America has adopted a strong policy opposing sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders, calling such punishment “inconsistent with any of the purposes which ordinarily guide sentencing.”

The policy was adopted by Mental Health America’s Board of Directors at its September meeting. The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether such sentences are cruel and unusual punishment this term.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that sentences juveniles to life without parole. In 42 states and under federal law, children who are too young to legally buy cigarettes are being tried for crimes as adults and if convicted can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

There are currently at least 2,500 youthful offenders serving life without parole in U.S. prisons. Nationally, 59 percent of these individuals received their sentences for their first ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between the ages of 13 and 15 when they committed their crimes, and 26% were sentenced under a felony murder charge where their offense did not involved carrying a weapon or pulling a trigger.

“Sentencing, including sentencing to imprisonment, has long been guided by four considerations: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation and rehabilitation. None of these purposes are served by sentencing juveniles to life without parole,” the policy position states.

“Victims of child abuse and neglect are over-represented among incarcerated juveniles, including those serving life without parole. Studies of this population also consistently demonstrate a high incidence of mental health and substance use disorders, serious brain injuries, and learning disabilities. In many instances, these juveniles have not received adequate diagnostic assessments or interventions.”

The policy also notes that such sentences violate international law and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by every country in the world, except Somalia and the United States.

Mental Health America is also encouraging its more than 300 affiliates to work to repeal laws in those states which permit a sentence of life without parole. And it urges mental health advocates, professionals and other service providers work to ensure that juveniles are provided with appropriate services while incarcerated whose goal is to identify and ameliorate those problems which may have led to the crime and which need to be addressed before release will be safe and appropriate.

Source
Mental Health America

Man serving life without parole, finds support from unlikely people

/in , /by

(NECN: Brad Puffer) – It was 1992. A murder of an MIT exchange student by a Cambridge teenager fueled tensions between the city and university. But of the three Cambridge teenagers involved in the fight that night, only one remains in prison. Now an effort is underway to ask the Governor to commute his sentence. And as NECN’s Brad Puffer found out, he has found support from some unlikely people.

Joe Donovan is just 33 years old, and has already spent more than half his life behind bars. He is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.

Joe Donovan, Convicted of Murder: “You’re a kid your hoping its all a dream you know like oh man maybe I’ll wake up in your bed and it will all be over I am still hoping for that but its not the case you know.”

Donovan is one of three teenagers convicted in the stabbing death of an MIT student from Norway back in 1992.

Joe Donovan: “It was me being an idiot punching a kid but not it my wildest dreams did I think that was going to turn into this.”

On that Friday night in September, Donovan says he was walking down Memorial Drive on the edge of campus. He was walking with two other teenagers from the neighborhood, teenagers he apparently did not know well. Donavan says he literally bumped into a young man speaking in another language.

Joe Donovan: “I said what the hell was that? And I heard him laughing.”

Donovan admits he started the fight. The punch broke his hand. But 15 year-old Shon McHugh pulled the knife and stabbed Yngve Raustein, killing him. Donovan claims he did not even know Raustein was stabbed until the group of boys had run away.

Joe Donovan: “He’s wiping something off and it’s a knife and I said what you are you doing and I said did you stab someone?”

Police said a wallet was stolen during the fight, that the teenagers had planned to steal from student’s lockers. Donovan was charged with felony murder – the same as first degree murder – because the murder happened “in the commission or attempted commission of a crime”.

Joe Donovan: “I didn’t kill anybody so who would think you could be charged with murder. I even ask him how do you charge all the people and he started telling me its joint venture we just charge everybody involved. And I am like how does that work? And he’s like hey it’s how the law goes you know.”

Donovan quickly learned that if prosecutors could prove he knew about the knife, the robbery plan and was willing to help, the murder charge could apply to him under the joint venture theory of law. These are facts that to this day Donovan denies he ever knew.

Joe Donovan: “I had no idea that any of this stuff happened because who would do something like that it’s kind of crazy.”

Shon McHugh, the teen who murdered Raustein was tried as a juvenile. He spent less than 11 years behind bars. The other teenager, Alfredo Valez, testified against Donovan at trial as part of a plea deal. He was released after serving less than a decade, is now married and has children.

Judge Robert Barton, Retired, Middlesex Superior Court: “When you look at what happened to the co-defendants in this this case it is unfair to have him doing any more time than he has done.”

Judge Robert Barton oversaw Donovan’s trial. He spent 22 years on the bench, sat through more than 100 murder cases. Now retired, he says this is the one case that sticks out.

Judge Robert Barton: “I see where a Martorano who gave evidence against an FBI agent who is a self-proclaimed assassin hired gun killer. He’s walking the street after doing 10 years he’s walking the street going to get a movie offer and Joe Donovan who is the least involved in my humble opinion in a felony murder is still doing time that’s not fair that’s not equitable.”

And because Donovan had just turned 17 years old – it meant he was tried as an adult.

Judge Robert Barton: “If this happened a couple weeks or months beforehand he would be treated as a juvenile he would be out on the street by now. ”

As Judge Barton looks over his notes from the trial- something else jumps out at him.

Judge Robert Barton: “Went to jury at 4pm on Oct 27th. Next day at 2pm verdict is back. They weren’t out long. They had to have had lunch. That’s not a hell of a lot of deliberations.”

Carolyn Butterworth, Juror: “It disturbed me for years and it still disturbs me.”

Carolyn Butterworth was one of those jurors. She was also one of several jurors with serious reservations about a guilty verdict. She is speaking publicly about the case for the first time.

Carolyn Butterworth: “Whether we thought he did it or didn’t do it it didn’t; matter what mattered is if someone died during an armed robbery it was murder. That was the law but in my heart he wasn’t guilty of murder.”

There was no option for manslaughter or a lesser charge. The jury was sequestered and wasn’t going home until a verdict was reached. Butterworth says many jurors had young children and were eager to return home.

Carolyn Butterworth: “You know you kind of had to turn because if you don’t turn we were never going home, and I had no idea we didn’t have to come up with a verdict we could have had a hung jury I don’t know how long it would last but there were many people who didn’t want to go back to that hotel room.”

So while there were questions over who had stolen the wallet and who knew. Whether the testimony of the key witness had been truthful. Those questions did not change the verdict.

Carolyn Butterworth: “Did I think the kid stole the wallet? No. Did he have a knife? No”

After less than a day of deliberating the jury found Donovan guilty of felony murder.

Carolyn Butterworth: “Did you know going in that when you convicted him of felony murder it would automatically be life without a parole? No I did not and the people in our jury pool I remember people saying oh he will get out in a few years, people said that.”

Now Butterworth looks back, wishing she had been older, had spoken up more, had stood her ground.

Carolyn Butterworth: “I feel there is an injustice I don’t know if he should be in jail I don’t know if he ever should have gone to jail.”

Joe Donovan Sr., Father: “I don’t think they really cared about justice they cared about conviction.”

Donovan’s father, Joe Sr., continues to relive the night of the murder, the choices made, the trial, and the conviction that sent his son to prison for life.

Joe Donovan Sr.: “I’m depressed. It’s been hard doing this for this long especially knowing he doesn’t deserve what he got.”

He also knows it could have been different had Joe just pled down to a lesser charge.

Joe Donovan Sr.: “They offered him second degree but he said Dad all I did was throw a punch, I don’t want to be known as a murderer for the rest of my life.”

Now Joe is working with several friends and advocates to ask the Governor to commute Donovan’s life sentence. A commutation hasn’t happened in Massachusetts since Governor William Weld held office. But he still holds out hope.

Joe Donovan Sr.: “If the Governor gives me a few minutes of his time and he looks at this case I am sure he would say this isn’t right.”

Even the family of Yngve Raustein apparently agrees. They would not speak directly to NECN, but referred us to a petition they signed for Donovan’s release, saying quote “the life without parole sentence was way too harsh”, and “he should be given a new chance.”

Joe Donovan: “They have a lot of heart you know, to forgive. I hurt his whole family probably hurt the science community the guy was a genius.”

Donovan says he wrote to the Raustein family so they would know he feels remorse for his actions.

Joe Donovan: “There was no way I could have ever known that what I did that it would lead to someone, their son dying, that was not my intention and I feel bad about it everyday.”

Donovan now spends a lot of time doing pencil drawings. He once had dreams of becoming an EMT. He now just dreams of being with his family, holding a job, outside of prison walls.

Joe Donovan: “It’s an existence I’m not sure I have a real life here. Do you believe you will get out one day? I hope it. I would like to believe it. I hope it.”

But it will take a Governor’s action to make that happen. Donovan’s attorneys will submit a formal request in September. More than 50 requests for commutation were denied even a hearing last year. But Donovan hopes maybe his case will be different.

NECN also contacted former Attorney General Tom Reilly. He was the District Attorney at the time Joe Donovan was convicted.

He declined comment and referred us to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office. They also chose not to comment for this story.

Clemency ruling delayed for lifers in Pa. prison

/in /by

National / World News 4:21 p.m. Thursday, September 3, 2009

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM

The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Two Pennsylvania inmates who have won plaudits for their decades-long efforts to reduce prison violence and counsel troubled youths will have to wait a little longer to hear whether their life sentences will be commuted.

The inmates, convicted murderers Tyrone Werts and William Fultz, were the first lifers to go before the state Board of Pardons since a federal judge decided that thousands of Pennsylvania inmates sentenced to life should have an easier path toward clemency.

U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo ruled June 11 in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a 1997 state constitutional amendment that toughened commutation standards for lifers. The pardons board has appealed the ruling, leading to Thursday’s vote to delay a clemency decision for Werts and Fultz until the appeal is decided.

The inmates’ supporters, who had anticipated that the board would vote to recommend commutation to the governor, said they were stunned and disappointed.

“This is heartbreaking. This is rough. I can’t believe it,” said the Rev. Paul Werts, who presented his brother’s case. “I expected a yes.”

Despite their good deeds in prison, the pair faced incredibly steep odds. Only three life sentences have been commuted since 1997, when Pennsylvania voters — outraged over a killing at the hands of a commuted inmate — amended the state constitution. Clemency for lifers hasn’t been common in Pennsylvania since the 1970s, when then-Gov. Milton Shapp freed 251 inmates.

The1997 amendment requires that inmates sentenced to life must receive a unanimous vote of the five-member pardons board before the governor may consider their commutation request — giving a single board member the power to block any inmate’s bid. Before then, lifers needed only a majority vote to get their case before the governor.

Opponents of the referendum argue it deprives lifers of any meaningful chance to win clemency. Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of inmates serving life sentences who were juveniles when they committed their crimes. It’s also one of only six states in which a life sentence automatically means life without parole — so commutation is the only way lifers who have already spent decades behind bars can get out of prison.

“You can’t have a right without a remedy,” said Philadelphia attorney Stephen Whinston, who represents the Pennsylvania Prison Society, a prisoner advocacy group, in its long-running legal bid to get the amendment declared unconstitutional.

In his ruling, Caputo said the pardons board may not apply the tougher 1997 standard to inmates who committed their crimes before 1997 because the U.S. Constitution forbids ex post facto punishment. The decision — the latest ruling in the prison society’s 12-year-old lawsuit — could affect more than 3,000 of the 4,868 lifers in the state’s prisons.

The pardons board has asked the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the lower court ruling. The board also asked to Caputo to stay his decision while the circuit court appeal is heard — meaning it could continue to operate under its preferred unanimity standard — but Caputo did not act on the request in time for the hearing.

Lt. Gov. Joe Scarnati, the pardon board’s chairman, said Thursday that the board had little choice but to delay decisions on Werts and Fultz because of the uncertainty over which legal standard it should use.

“We’re not clear if we need three votes or a unanimous vote in order to pardon these two lifers. And to take a vote that may conflict with a court ruling weeks down the road, I think, would be inappropriate,” he said.

The 1997 amendment was part of an anti-crime package advocated by then-Gov. Tom Ridge in the wake of a decision by his predecessor, Robert Casey, to grant clemency to convicted killer Reginald McFadden. After he was released, McFadden killed two people in New York and raped a third.

Supporters of the amendment say the murderers who make up Pennsylvania’s lifer population should face a high hurdle to freedom.

“We owe it to the victims and to society to ensure that while we do offer an avenue to clemency, it has to be a very high threshold,” said Michael Piecuch, a former prosecutor and executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. Clemency, he noted, is “not a right, it’s not an entitlement.”

Indeed, the family of Werts’ victim, William Bridgeman, opposes commutation of his sentence, according to state Victim Advocate Carol Lavery.

Werts, 57, of Philadelphia, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1975 for his role in Bridgeman’s slaying during a robbery at a speakeasy. Fultz, also 57 and from Philadelphia, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1975 in the fatal shooting of a teenager. Neither inmate was the triggerman, and both rejected plea deals that would have gotten them out of prison decades ago.

Werts and Fultz are considered model inmates at Graterford prison outside Philadelphia, where they have counseled at-risk teenagers and led efforts to reduce recidivism rates. Werts once prevented the rape of a prison teacher, while Fultz risked his life to deliver medicine to a prison staffer during a 1981 hostage crisis at Graterford.

“Allowing Mr. Werts to return to society is the right thing to do,” Upper Moreland TownshipPolice Chief Thomas Nestell III, who spent 23 years with the Philadelphia police department and has collaborated with Werts, told the board.

Fultz’s elderly mother, Barbara Fultz Green, sobbed as she begged the board to show mercy.

“I know my son, I love my son, and I’m praying every day I’ll live long enough to see him a free man again,” she said.

Calling Werts and Fultz “two remarkable men,” board member Russell A. Walsh, a psychologist, nevertheless recommended that the board postpone its decision.

The vote was unanimous.

___

September 03, 2009 04:21 PM EDT

Editorial: Parole reform

/in /by

Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 6:01 a.m.

Twenty-six years ago in Florida, the Legislature passed a landmark criminal-sentencing bill that called for the gradual elimination of parole. Since 1995, no one sentenced to life in prison is eligible for parole.

Today, no inmates sentenced to state prison are eligible for early release under the conditions and supervision of the parole system.

The changes occurred in response to inconsistencies in the application of parole policies, recidivism by inmates granted release and widespread dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system.

Still, there are several reasons for Florida to reconsider its blanket policies against the use of parole.

One of the most compelling reasons is Florida’s status as the state having by far the most juveniles, 77, imprisoned for life for crimes that didn’t involve homicide.

A bill filed by state Rep. Mike Weinstein, a Republican who works in a prosecutor’s office, would make 68 of Florida’s 100,000 inmates eligible for parole. Those inmates were convicted of “non-homicide” offenses committed when they were 15 or younger and have served at least eight years.

As Lloyd Dunkelberger of The Sun’s Capital Bureau reported last month: “Florida has handed out more life sentences to juveniles for non-murder crimes than have all other states combined.”

The prevailing idea that juveniles who commit serious crimes should “do the time” is difficult to overcome. Even Weinstein agrees that juveniles facing life imprisonment made a “major mistake,” and some were convicted of heinous crimes (such as rape).

Yet, a state and society should also recognize that juveniles so young that they aren’t permitted – for their own good – to drive a car, buy cigarettes or alcohol or enter into contracts, ought to be given some considerations in sentencing and have an opportunity for rehabilitation and redemption.

Weinstein’s bill would provide, but not mandate, those opportunities and a chance at parole under strict conditions. A bill in Congress – HR 2289 – would do the same.

Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of parole for inmates convicted as youths is this: Though Florida has some of the toughest penal codes in the nation – inmates must serve more than 85 percent of their sentences – thousands of adult inmates are released from prison every month. They are released with few, if any, conditions and little post-release oversight; either because their sentences, for serious offenses, expire or because of prison overcrowding.

The Department of Corrections has recognized that policies for releasing inmates is insufficient to protect public safety and give ex-prisoners a chance to be productive and crime-free. To that end, the DOC has turned two prisons into “re-entry institutions” that offer basic education, substance-abuse treatment and lessons in skills needed to transition into life on the outside.

A new, improved parole system would help the DOC choose the inmates best suited for release and then monitor their behavior, while keeping those beyond hope incarcerated.

Whether or not the juveniles serving life terms for non-murder charges would be suited for parole and release from prison, no one knows. Weinstein’s bill would at least let the Parole Commission make that determination.

Salisbury Teen Gets Life Sentence for Murder

/in /by

Written by Kye Parsons

Posted: Sep 3, 2009 11:38 AM

SALISBURY, Md.- A Salisbury teenager will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of a 25-year-old Salisbury woman.

A Wicomico County Circuit Court judge on Wednesday sentenced 16-year-old Kenneth Alvira to life in prison without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder. He was also given 30 years in prison for armed carjacking with that sentence to run consecutively with the life term.

A jury found Alvira guilty in July of the fatal stabbing of Anitra Pirkle which occurred earlier this year.

Authorities say that on Jan. 22, Alvira and two women forced Pirkle to drive them from Salisbury to a Delmar, Md. field where they are accused of stabbing her six times with a large sword or dagger before abandoning her there to die.

During Alvira’s trial, prosecutors presented evidence that tied Alvira to Pirkle’s car as well as the weapon used to kill her. In his defense, Alvira claimed that he did not stab Pirkle but blamed one of the women. But Alvira’s explanation did not convince the jury which only took a few hours to find him guilty of murder and related charges.

A jury in August convicted 19-year-old Brianna Brinkley of first-degree murder in Pirkle’s stabbing death. Brinkley is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 23.

Twenty-year-old Brittany Barkley, who was also arrested in connection with Pirkle’s slaying, is scheduled to go to trial on Sept. 28.