11-2-2009 National:
Two cases in the U.S. Supreme Court could alter the fates of over 2,500 people serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.
Sara Kruzan was 11 years old, a middle school student from Riverside, Calif., when she met a man -- he called himself GG -- who was almost three times her age. GG took her under his wing; he would buy her gifts, take her and her friends rollerskating. "He was like a father figure," she recalls.
Despite suffering severe bouts of depression as a child, until then, Kruzan was a good student, an "overachiever" in her words. But her mother was abusive and addicted to drugs; as for her father, she had only met him a couple of times. So, more and more, GG filled in.
"GG was there -- sometimes," she said. "He would talk to me and take me out and give me all these lavish gifts and do all these things for me …" Before long, he started talking to her about sex, giving her his expert advice on what men were really like and telling her that she didn't "need to give it up for free."
Unbeknownst to her, GG was grooming Kruzan to be a prostitute. When she was 13, he raped her. "He uses his manhood to hurt," Kruzan recalls, "Like, break you in. I guess."
Kruzan worked for GG as a prostitute for three years. The hours were 6 p.m. until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. She and "the other girls" would come back and hand over their earnings to him. "He was, like, married to all of us I guess," she says. " … Everything was his."
After years of prostitution and sexual abuse, when she was 16, Kruzan snapped: She killed GG, was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder. Despite attempts by her lawyer to have her sentenced as a juvenile, the judge described her crime as "well thought-out" and sentenced her to life without parole.
"My judge told me that I lacked moral scruples," she recalls, a term she did not know the meaning of.
But the meaning of her sentence was all too clear. Life without parole, she says, "means I'm gonna die here."
'These Children Were Literally Lost In Adult Prison'
A few years ago, Sara Kruzan's story grabbed the attention of California State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who introduced legislation to abolish the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for youth offenders. The bill was no get-out-of-jail pass; under his legislation, a juvenile who committed a felony before the age of 18 would serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible to go before a parole board (also not a get-out-of-jail pass).
Yee is also a child psychologist. When it comes to judging the actions of teenagers versus those of adults, he argues, "the neuroscience is clear; brain maturation continues well through adolescence, and thus impulse control, planning and critical-thinking skills are still not yet fully developed."
Condemning teenagers to die in jail, then, means curtailing the lives of potentially productive members of society. "Children have a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults," Yee said. Anyway, didn't California's prison system rename itself the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation?
In politics, however, punitive almost always wins out -- particularly in California, where "three strikes" laws have led to a prison crisis unparalleled anywhere else in the country. Yee's bill met intense political resistance and eventually died.
This past February, he introduced a new, watered-down bill that, instead of eliminating life without parole for juveniles would provide a review of a youth offender's sentence after 10 years.
In 2005, Human Rights Watch published an unprecedented study, "The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States," which found "at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children." Today, the number is even higher: 2,574.
It's only recently that the plight of juveniles serving life in adult prisons came across the national radar. Alison Parker, deputy director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch told AlterNet, "these children were literally lost in adult prison. Nobody paid attention to the fact that they were under 18 at the time of their offense."
But this could soon change. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pair of cases -- Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida -- that will decide whether life sentences for juveniles violate the Constitution's ban on cruel-and-unusual punishment.
These cases follow the Court's landmark ruling in Roper v. Simmons four years ago, which struck down the death penalty for juvenile defendants on Eighth Amendment grounds. Echoing the opinion of Yee, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority that juveniles have an "underdeveloped sense of responsibility" that leads to "impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions," as well as being "more susceptible to negative influences and peer pressure."
Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, the lead attorney in Sulliivan, argues that sentencing children to life without parole makes no more sense than sentencing them to death. In court filings for Sullivan, he writes, "The essential feature of a death sentence or a life-without-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 human being forever unfit to be a part of civil society."
Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners, including juveniles. According to EJI, out of the prisoners serving juvenile life without parole, more than half are first-time offenders. At least 74 involve defendants who were 14 years old or younger when they committed their crime.
"Almost all of these kids currently lack legal representation, and in most of these cases the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences has never been reviewed."
'Beyond Help'
Among these 74 is Joe Sullivan, the defendant in Sullivan v. Florida. Sullivan, who is reportedly mentally disabled, was 13 years old in 1989 when he was accused of raping an elderly woman after a burglary carried out by an older group of teenagers. The older teenagers confessed to the burglary but pinned the rape on Sullivan, a charge he denied.
The older boys did time in juvenile prison and were then freed. Sullivan became the youngest prisoner to be sentenced to die in prison for a crime other than murder. "I am going to try to send him away for as long as I can," his trial judge said. "He is beyond help."
At 14, Sullivan was sent to an adult prison, where he was repeatedly sexually assaulted. Sullivan now is 33 years old. Stricken with multiple sclerosis, he is confined to a wheelchair.
Sullivan's case is emblematic of a number of problems when it comes to juveniles sentenced as adults, not the least of which is the phenomenon of youths either being coerced or getting caught up in criminal situations orchestrated by older teenagers or adults.
Among juvenile offenders, many have participated in violent crimes as a result of their relationship with a grown-up. Incredibly, this can mean getting a harsher sentence than the adult in question.
"There is this tendency to point the finger towards the younger co-defendant, sometimes because of the perception that the younger person will get a lesser sentence," says Alison Parker. "There's still this perception out there that kids will be treated differently, but the reality is that kids are treated like adults."
Another major factor is race. During Sullivan's trial, "the prosecutor and witnesses made repeated, unnecessary reference to the fact that Joe is African American and the victim (was) white," according to EJI. "One witness repeatedly said the perpetrator of the assault was a 'colored boy' or 'a dark colored boy.' "
It is not news that the American criminal justice system disproportionately targets people of color. But when it comes to juvenile offenders, Alison Parker calls the disparities "absolutely shocking." On a national level, "African American youth are serving the sentence at a rate of about 10 times that of white youth," Parker told AlterNet. "In some states, the rate is even higher."
In both cases before the Supreme Court, the defendants were sentenced to life for crimes that fell short of murder, a phenomenon that is especially prevalent In Florida, where the number of prisoners who will die in jail for non-homicide crimes hovers at 77.
Terrance Jamar Graham, the defendant in Graham v. Florida, was 17 years old and on probation for a crime he committed when he was 16, when he took part in an armed burglary. His co-defendants got minor sentences. He was slapped with life without parole.
"Mr. Graham, as I look back on your case, yours is really candidly a sad situation," the judge told him. "The only thing that I can rationalize is that you decided that this is how you were going to lead your life and there is nothing that we can do for you."
This is classic "three strikes" logic, which, along with the conspiracy and felony murder statutes have led teens to be sentenced to life for crimes in which they played only a minor role.
Take Christine Lockhart, the first female juvenile to be sentenced to life without parole in Iowa. She was 17 years old and sitting in a car when her boyfriend killed someone during an armed robbery. Today, she has been in prison for more than half her life.
Lockhart, along with Sara Kruzan are a relative minority, two out of some 175 women serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. But their stories reveal how young people can get caught up in dangerous, harmful, and ultimately deadly, situations often simply by being with the wrong people at the wrong time.
"Sara's story is compelling," says Parker. "But it is really one that is shared across the country. There are many, many people with similar circumstances who are serving life sentences without any possibility of parole."
Kruzan, in fact, is one of the lucky ones. She now has attorneys who are working on appealing her sentence, pro bono. Most other prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles have no post-conviction representation at all.
Today, Kruzan is 32 years old and described as a "model inmate," despite any real lack of incentive. ("Who wants to excel in prison?" she says.) Asked what she would say if she had a chance to appear before a a parole board, she says that she believes she can now be of some value to society, perhaps even a "positive example."
Also, she says, "I've learned what moral scruples are." ..Source.. by Liliana Segura, AlterNet.
November 2, 2009
16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp -- Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?
September 15, 2009
MI- Teen lifers a burden for state's prisons
9-15-2009 Michigan:
Mich. ranks second in number of young killers behind bars
Lansing-- Michigan's high number of teens sentenced to life in prison without parole has child advocates questioning laws that give judges that option.
Behind bars are 346 teens who are serving life without parole for crimes they committed between the ages of 14 and 17, according to the Department of Corrections.
A study by the University of Texas says Michigan has the second most such inmates in the country. The report also says Michigan is among the harshest in the way it treats teens accused of major crimes.
Michigan's laws are unusual in that they allow juvenile judges to impose adult penalties on children too young to be transferred to adult criminal court, according to the report by the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs.
"Children simply aren't as culpable as adults because their brains aren't fully developed yet, and they are much more capable of rehabilitation," said Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas and principal investigator of the study.
The number of teens sentenced to life in Michigan could climb following a recent rash of crimes in Metro Detroit that police say were committed by teens. In one of the more high-profile incidents, 12-year-old Demarco Harris is charged with shooting a 24-year-old woman to death as she sat in her car on West Outer Drive. His preliminary exam is set for Sept. 25.
Harris was charged as a juvenile, but with "adult designation" -- meaning Judge Leslie Kim Smith, who will oversee his trial in Wayne County Juvenile Court, has wide discretion when it comes to sentencing. If Harris is found guilty, he can be charged as a juvenile or an adult, or the judge can opt to review his conduct at age 19 and resentence him as an adult or juvenile.
If sentenced as an adult, Harris could face life in prison with no chance for parole.
The option to sentence juveniles as adults is "harsh" treatment, the study's authors said. Michigan's guidelines -- unlike most states' -- require a child who is convicted as an adult of first-degree murder to receive the same sentence as an adult: mandatory life in prison without parole.
The report, released this summer, gave Michigan the dubious distinction, along with three other states -- Pennsylvania, Florida and South Carolina -- of having children most likely to end up in adult prisons, because of mandatory sentencing laws and the ease of transferring juveniles into the adult system or imposing adult sentences.
One of the most notorious cases of a juvenile being prosecuted as an adult was that of Nathaniel Abraham of Pontiac, who was 11 in 1997 when he fatally shot Ronnie Greene Jr.
Abraham was convicted of murder as an adult at age 13 under a new sentencing law that allowed the judge to sentence him as an adult or a juvenile. Judge Eugene Athur Moore sentenced him to eight years in a juvenile facility.
Abraham, now 22, was sentenced in January to four to 20 years for drug trafficking.
'Cheapens value of life'
Advocates argue young teen criminals should get a second chance, as Abraham did. But many prosecutors and victims' relatives say some youths' crimes are so horrific that justice can be served only by a life sentence.
Greg King would agree. His daughter, 18-year-old Michigan State University student Karen Ann King, was at home in Saginaw visiting her parents on Jan. 3, 1997, when she was carjacked, kidnapped, raped, tortured and finally strangled by 15-year-old Shytour Williams and his cousin August McKinley Williams, 18, a prison parolee. Both were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.
"Thinking (of freeing them) cheapens the value of my daughter's life," said Greg King. "The murderers get to see their families, talk to their families, receive gifts from their families -- and now we want to let them go. Myself and my family can only visit my daughter Karen at her gravesite."
The Texas study raises policy questions as Michigan is moving to deplete its prison population to reduce costs.
As Michigan faces a $2.8 million deficit for the budget year starting Oct. 1, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has shut prisons and paroled about 3,000 more prisoners than usual to shave $120 million in costs. Granholm has commuted more prison sentences than any other governor since at least 1969 -- 100 in less than seven years, compared with 35 during Gov. John Engler's 12 years in office.
The question becomes 'why'
After 29 years in prison, Henry Hill Jr., 45, claims he has been rehabilitated by the state Department of Corrections. He got life without parole for a shooting in Saginaw's Veterans Memorial Park in 1980, when he was 16.
Though a court-appointed psychologist found Hill to have the educational level of a third-grader when he entered the system, he attained his GED, earned certificates in several skilled trades and has finished several college classes. At Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, which houses 770 adults and 440 youthful offenders in separate wings, he tries to act as a mentor for teenage felons.
Prison Warden Patricia Barnhart said some of those housed at her facility, who as teens were sentenced to life, could safely be released back into the community.
"Absolutely," she said. "The question becomes: Are you scared of them, or are you mad at them? When we're locking up people because we're mad at them, we're compromising our resources."
Mike Thomas, the prosecuting attorney in Saginaw County, said the focus should not be on whether kids should be jailed with adult sentences, but rather why kids are committing the crimes.
"To me, that's much more important to deal with than whether a teen should get life without parole for killing," said Thomas, whose county has put more teens behind bars with no chance of parole than any other in the state.
"The question the Legislature should be dealing with is why are these kids doing this stuff," he said. ..Source.. by Karen Bouffard / Detroit News Lansing Bureau
July 19, 2009
TX- Some say sex offender registry ruins a juvenile's 2nd chance
7-19-2009 Texas:
The faces of child sex offenders are startling – chubby cheeks, big eyes, a mop of hair, or wispy strands held back with barrettes. The descriptions on Texas' public registry are equally jolting: 4 feet tall, 65 pounds; 4 feet, 2 inches, 70 pounds.
"Those are not the people that we're walking around terrified of," says Michele Deitch, a University of Texas law professor.
The inclusion of children as young as 10 on the state's public sex offender registry is a little-known policy – even to juvenile justice experts such as Deitch.
"I'm absolutely a little bit shocked that kids that young can be on the list," says Deitch, who teaches juvenile justice policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
She's stunned because public registration contradicts the purpose of juvenile justice: to give kids a second chance. In the case of some juvenile sex offenders, their criminal records are off limits, but information about their crime is easily accessible on the Internet.
"It is a terrible situation," Deitch says. "The juvenile justice system is designed to rehabilitate kids and to make sure that they can change."
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, there is no minimum age for inclusion on the state list. But a child must be at least 10 to be handled by the state juvenile justice system, so a judge may order an offender that young to register.
No child can be certified as an adult in Texas until age 14.
Shocked though Deitch and others may be, Texas is actually more liberal on juvenile sex offender registration than some states. After experimenting with mandatory registration from 1999 until 2001, registration was left to judicial discretion. Juvenile registration lasts for only 10 years, and those on the list may petition for removal.
In some states, children can be registered at age 7, though Nicole Pittman, a Philadelphia attorney who monitors juvenile sex offender registration laws nationwide, says adjudication of children younger than 10 is rare.
Judge Tim Menikos of Fort Worth, past chairman of the juvenile justice section of the State Bar of Texas, says that since mandatory registration ended, judges rarely require juvenile registration. But according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of the Texas sex offender registry, there are about 4,000 people on the registry who were younger than 18 at the time of their crime, including 1,004 younger than 14.
Only two children currently under 14 are on the registry, but the inclusion of any child that young bothers many, including some victim advocates.
"I don't think it necessarily supports community safety to put really young children on the registry," says Annette Burrhus-Clay, executive director of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.
Burrhus-Clay has been working with sexual assault victims for decades and was stunned to hear young children are included.
She worries that sexual abuse may go unreported as a result. "If I found my 10-year-old child with my 7-year-old child, I would be very tempted – even after 30 years in the field – not to report my child just to keep them off the registry."
But not everyone opposes registration of young teens.
Dianne Clements, president of Justice for All, a Houston-based victims' rights organization, says the state's current system of judicial discretion with juvenile offenders works.
"We don't want to believe that children can do the types of horrible things that they do," she says. "But they do. And whether they're 13 or 23 years old, they can be as dangerous."
Nationally, the Adam Walsh Act calls for mandatory registration of sex offenders ages 14 and older. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says, "Congress got it about right by setting that 14-year level." He does, however, favor judicial discretion over mandatory registration.
"It's important, in our interest in protecting ourselves, that we not throw out all the protections of the juvenile justice system," he says.
But, he adds, those calling for juvenile registration often speak from painful experience.
In Wisconsin, teenager Amie Zyla pushed for public registration of juveniles after the 14-year-old boy who molested her when she was 8 assaulted other children after his release from a juvenile facility.
Texas has also had its share of juvenile sex offender problems. In 2005, Jeremiah Sexton, who had a juvenile record for molesting several children in another state, assaulted a 9-year-old girl in Arlington. Because he was not required to register publicly, neighbors were unaware of his past.
But most juvenile offenders do not re-offend, says Liles Arnold, chairman of the Texas Council on Sex Offender Treatment.
"With adolescent offenders, the recidivism rate is very, very low," he says. "Adolescents are not simply younger versions of adult offenders. They're highly treatable. They're good candidates for rehabilitation."
Their chances for rehabilitation may be hampered, Arnold says, by public registration.
Publicizing their names and addresses often leads to social isolation because parents don't want their kids associating with sex offenders. School officials must be notified of the offender's history, and registration makes getting accepted to college or finding work difficult.
"We're stigmatizing children who have a much better chance of success completing sex offender treatment and never perpetrating again," Burrhus-Clay says.
Clements, of Justice for All, agrees registration is a "tremendous burden" but says, "it may be a burden that they should bear."
Frank Zimring doesn't think so. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of An American Travesty: Legal Responses to Adolescent Sexual Offending.
Zimring says the laws allowing juvenile registration are an accidental byproduct of adult policies.
"Nobody is making policy for 12-year-olds in American legislatures," the professor says. "What they're doing is they're making crime policy and then almost by accident extending those policies to 12-year-olds – with poisonous consequences."
Zimring thinks it's inappropriate to register anyone adjudicated as a juvenile – which would be anyone under 18 in Texas.
"We have a cure for youth crime," he says. "It's growing up." ..Source.. by DIANE JENNINGS / The Dallas Morning News
March 15, 2008
States reconsider life behind bars for youth
With nearly 2,400 inmates sentenced to life as juveniles, the U.S. is the only nation imposing the mandate on children.
3-12-2008 National:
Chicago - How should a society treat its youngest criminal offenders? And the families of victims of those offenders?
Half a dozen states are now weighing these questions anew, as they consider whether to ban life sentences for juveniles that don't include a option for parole – and whether those now serving such sentences should have a retroactive shot at parole.
Here in Illinois, proposed legislation would give 103 people – most convicted of unusually brutal crimes – a chance at parole hearings, while outlawing the sentence for future young perpetrators.
The proposal has victims' families up in arms, angry that killers they had been told were in prison for life might be given a shot at release and that they'd need to regularly attend hearings in the future, reliving old traumas, to try to ensure that these criminals remain behind bars.
Advocates of legislation, meanwhile, both in Illinois and elsewhere, note that the US is the only country in the world with anyone – nearly 2,400 across the nation – serving such a severe sentence for a crime committed as a juvenile. They criticize the fact that the sentence is often mandatory, part of a system devoid of leniency for a teenager's lack of judgment, or hope that youth can be reformed.
"Kids should be punished, and held accountable. The crimes we're talking about are very serious crimes," says Alison Parker, deputy director of the US program of Human Rights Watch and author of a report on the issue. "But children are uniquely able to rehabilitate themselves, to grow up and to change. A life-without-parole sentence says they're beyond repair, beyond hope."
The sentence is automatic for certain crimes in more than half of all states, part of a wave of "get tough" laws aimed at cracking down on rising crime rates during the 1980s and '90s. Which means judges often have little to no discretion when they mete out punishment. In many instances, they are prohibited from considering age or even whether the juvenile was the one who pulled the trigger. About a quarter of the juveniles serving life without parole sentences nationally were convicted of what is known as "felony murder," says Ms. Parker. They participated in a felony in which murder was committed, but they weren't the ones who did the actual killing.
In Illinois, that list includes Marshan Allen, a 15-year-old who accompanied an older brother and some friends on a drug-related mission, and says he didn't know they were going to kill several people.
In California, another state considering doing away with the sentence, it includes Anthony, a 16-year-old painting graffiti with a friend when the friend produced a gun and decided to rob an approaching group of teenagers. His friend pulled the trigger, but Anthony – who turned down a plea bargain because he couldn't imagine paying for a crime he didn't feel he'd committed – got a life-without-parole sentence.
"There are people in prison for crimes they committed as juveniles that should never see the light of day," says Rich Klawiter, a partner at the law firm DLA Piper and part of the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children, which produced a report on the issue last month and advocates reform. "But those that show themselves worthy of redemption ought to be given an opportunity before a parole board."
The frequent citing of cases like Allen's bothers supporters of the sentence, who say such examples are hardly representative. Generally, the mandate is saved for such extreme offenses as multiple murders, killing of a police officer, aggravated sexual assault, and murder of a child.
"These guys are the worst of the worst," says Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose pregnant sister and brother-in-law were murdered by a 16-year-old in their Winnetka, Ill., townhome in 1990. She acknowledges automatic sentencing has probably punished a few juveniles unfairly, but notes that such individuals can always appeal for clemency. What she doesn't understand is bringing offenders back for hearings that, in her mind, would only unearth the past for the families of victims who thought they'd seen their loved ones' killers put away forever.
Ms. Bishop-Jenkins and her sister, Jeanne Bishop, are both prominent victim activists against the death penalty, and helped in the case that got the juvenile death penalty overturned by the Supreme Court three years ago. Now, they both say, they feel betrayed by the same allies with whom they fought against the death penalty, who never sought their input on this issue.
"Once you say this person could get out someday through this mechanism, you've just placed a crushing burden on the hearts and minds of the victims' families," says Jeanne Bishop, a Cook County public defender who has also defended juveniles. She and her sister both support getting rid of the mandatory sentencing and giving judges more discretion, but worry that in all the talk of the human rights of juvenile offenders, the rights of victims are being forgotten.
The current legislation in Illinois is unlikely to go anywhere, with its key sponsor backing away last week and saying more time is needed to dialogue with victims. Reform advocates hope to have new legislation introduced in the near future. Colorado outlawed juvenile life without parole in 2006, and legislation is pending in Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, and California, while a few other states are experiencing grass-roots efforts.
Some activists against the sentence say they hope they can work with victims' families to take their concerns into account even as they do away with the sentence. In Michigan, where a set of bills is before both the Senate and the House, activists have had some success building dialogue with victims, says Deborah LaBelle, a human rights attorney based in Ann Arbor and director of the ACLU's Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative.
"We need to allow both voices to be heard," says Ms. LaBelle. But she feels strongly that the sentence is inappropriate for youth. "As every parent knows and as every social scientist understands, this is a time of ill-thought-out, impulsive lack of judgment, problematic years… To throw them away and say you're irredeemable as a child is a disturbing social concept." ..more.. by Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
