Just Cause For Criminal Justice Reform

30. March 2009 by Rev Young.

 The article posted below, is an example of what reform advocates have been saying for many years.  Our Criminal Justice System, from start to finish, is far from just and is accountable to no one.  We have asked for cases to be re-opened, questionable practices to be reviewed and have presented cases of blatant violations of constitutional rights.  The article below is a demonstration of what we see and hear all too often.  I believe it is only the tip of the ice berg.

March 26, 2009

Convictions Reversed in Pennsylvania

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 7:38 p.m. ET

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s highest court on Thursday overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions issued by a corrupt judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers.

The state Supreme Court ruled that former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella violated the constitutional rights of youth offenders who appeared in his courtroom without lawyers between 2003 and 2008.

”Today’s order is not intended to be a quick fix,” Chief Justice Ronald Castille said in a statement. ”It’s going to take some time, but the Supreme Court is committed to righting whatever wrong was perpetrated on Luzerne’s juveniles and their families.”

In one of the most egregious cases of judicial corruption ever seen, federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and another Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, with taking $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in privately owned lockups.

The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face sentences of more than seven years in prison.

Hillary Transue, 17, who appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom in 2007 and spent a month in a wilderness camp for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal, was elated that her record would be expunged.

She did not have an attorney when she went before Ciavarella, nor was she told of her right to one.

”I feel incredible, not even just for myself, but for everyone who is involved in this whole thing, all of the kids who are going to have clean records now,” Transue said.

The Supreme Court approved the recommendations of Berks County Senior Judge Arthur Grim, whom the justices appointed in February to review cases handled by Ciavarella.

He decided that expungement was the most appropriate remedy for low-level offenders who appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom without lawyers — a group he has said numbered ”easily into the hundreds.”

Under Pennsylvania law, a juvenile may not waive his right to an attorney unless the decision is made ”knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily.” The judge must also formally question defendants to make sure they understand their rights, something Ciavarella routinely did not do.

In a report to the Supreme Court released Thursday, Grim said he has determined that ”a very substantial number of juveniles who appeared without counsel before Judge Ciavarella … did not knowingly and intelligently waive their right to counsel.”

Grim next will review cases involving more serious juvenile offenses.

Prosecutors have described a scheme in which Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, shut down the county-owned juvenile detention center in 2002 and signed an agreement with PA Child Care LLC to send youth offenders to its new facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to the detention center and to a sister facility in western Pennsylvania while he was taking payments, prosecutors said.

PA Child Care LLC has not been charged. Former co-owner Robert Powell, who made the payments, has said he was the victim of extortion.

Even before the scandal became public in late January, youth advocates had complained for years that Ciavarella was a harsh jurist who deprived youths of their constitutional rights.

Youths were routinely brought before Ciavarella without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent to detention for offenses as minor as stealing change from cars and writing prank notes.

In his report, Grim said ”there was routine deprivation of children’s constititional rights to appear before an impartial tribunal and to have an opportunity to be heard.”

The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center asked the Supreme Court to intervene in Luzerne County last year, citing statistics that Ciavarella was opting for detention in far high numbers than would be expected. The justices rejected the request without comment in early January, then changed their mind after Conahan and Ciavarella were charged.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel of the law center, said that the unprecedented scope of the scandal will take time to fully address, but that Thursday’s order was a start.

”In a way it’s low-hanging fruit, but certainly the Juvenile Law Center’s position remains consistent — that all of these kids’ records should be expunged,” she said.

Levick said there are many inside the Luzerne County court system, including attorneys and probation officials, who had to know the rights of juvenile defendants were being routinely violated.

”Their failure to either individually or collectively speak out against what was going on in Judge Ciavarella’s courtroom, I think, let all of these kids down,” Levick said.

The judges and others tied to the scandal face at least three lawsuits, including one filed by the Law Center.

A defendant in two of the lawsuits, former Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Sandra Brulo, illegally tampered with juvenile court records last month in an attempt to evade liability. She pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of obstruction of justice.

——

Associated Press writer Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg contributed to this report.

Posted in Legal News, Juvenile Reform Advocates, Juvenile Offenders | Print | No Comments »

Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention Annual Report

30. March 2009 by admin.

Every year the Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention posts their annual report for the previous year.  The link is listed below.  Despite budget cuts and funding battles, this office continues to try and make an impact on our communities and in the lives of juvenile.  Thank you!

Annual Report Describes OJJDP’s Efforts on Behalf of Youth The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has released its 2008 Annual Report. The report provides information on OJJDP’s activities in fiscal year 2008 to promote early intervention and delinquency prevention, support faith-based and community organizations, expand mentoring, improve the juvenile justice system, ensure public safety, curb child exploitation, combat youth gangs, and serve tribal youth. The report concludes with an overview of the Office’s information dissemination efforts. Resources: To access OJJDP’s 2008 Annual Report, visit http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=247013. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice.

Posted in Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

One in Thirty One

28. March 2009 by Rev Young.

The PEW Charitable Trust released a new report on the impact of those who are currently in prison, on probation or parole.  The staggering number is 7.3 million Americans that are currently under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system.  If you add to this number the family members that are impacted by these statistics and you have 73 million Americans (at least) that are impacted by the criminal justice system.

We have created a large destructive machine in America through our war on drugs, our inability and unwillingness to find alternative solutions to mental health, addictive behaviors and gang related issues.  What we have done is create a perpetuating cycle for generations of Americans that are caught in cycles of addiction, or mental health issues and condemnation of these problems through incarceration.  We put extra stress on already vulnerable families and children, who need assistance not punishment. 

The PEW Charitable trust went even further in their report by making state specific recommendation to lower the number of people on probation, parole or in prison.  They also gave examples from other states, of the decisions and policy changes that have helped them to reduce the number of people that they are over seeing. 

We are thankful for organizations like these, that take the time, make the commitment and report useful information that help us to make better decisions for the future of Americans.

 Please follow the link to read the report.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/sentencing_and_corrections/PSPP_1in31_report_FINAL_WEB_2-27-09.pdf

Posted in Legal News, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

Canada’s Juvenile Law vs Ours

28. March 2009 by Rev Young.

 The United States has been very slow and reluctant to review our juvenile justice practices.  Partly because many of the legislators and prosecutors who enacted the extremely punitive legislation are still in places of influence. 

The current budget constraints that are effecting every state budget are pushing legislators to find alternative answers to our Department of Corrections spending.  They are also trying to find a solution to a completely broken and archaic system.  If you compare the cost of Canada’s rehabilitation program to the cost of juvenile incarceration, you will see that it is far more beneficial to rehabilitate than incarcerate.  At the rate of 100,000.00 per year for 6 years, Canada will have spent $600,000.00 on the rehabilitation of this juvenile.  The United States, which would sentence someone who had committed a similar crime to Life Without The Possibility of Parole, will spend $1,750,000.00 to incarcerate a juvenile for 50 years.  This, of course does not take into account the increase in housing expenses or any medical expense costs to the state.  On average statisticians believe that it cost about $2 million to incarcerate a person for life without the possibility of parole.  Add  to that, the fact that a rehabilitated person will then go on to be gainfully employed, purchase goods and services and make contributions to their community and society as a whole, and you have compounded the expense. 

Many countries around the world have moved away from punitive measure in favor of rehabilitation, restoration and redemption.  Isn’t it time we did the same?  Read on……

Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act and the Strange Case of JR

By Dr. Frances W. Kaye

University of Nebraska, Lincoln

            In April of 2006, a gory triple murder stunned the city of Medicine Hat, Alberta, and all of Canada.  A 12-year-old girl and her 23-year-old boyfriend had stabbed her parents and 8-year- old brother to death so that they could run away together and continue a life of drugs, parties, and weird werewolf fantasies.  After the killings, the two partied with friends, boasting of what they had just done.  Within 24 hours, the pair had been apprehended by an alert policeman in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan.  Although the boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, admitted killing the parents, the girl, identified only as JR to protect her, had at least taken an active part in the murder of her little brother and may well have been the one to cut his throat.  Steinke had grown up with alcohol and abuse, had been the subject of bullying, and had a criminal record, but JR was a middle-class girl who had done well in school before she started seeing Steinke.  That made her willing complicity in the murder of her family all the more horrific.

            At their separate trials, both were found guilty of murder.  Steinke received Canada’s most severe sentence, life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.  Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, JR could be sentenced to no more than six years in custody and four years of supervised  release, and so she is currently serving up to six years of intensive rehabilitative custody and supervision, costing $100,000 per year.  She will be free at age 22, and, if she has no further contact with the law, her record will be sealed five years later.  At age 27, she will be considered cured and her record sealed.  Today, nearly three years after the murders, JR’s therapists report that she is “making progress.”  The judge overseeing her case declares that he is satisfied and has ordered her treatment to continue, with another review coming up in a year. 

            JR participated freely in a particularly heinous crime and has considerable notoriety as Canada’s youngest multiple killer.  Not surprisingly, many Canadians question her sentence and believe that she should be punished, not necessarily rehabilitated.  Nonetheless, the primary focus of the Youth Criminal Justice Act is on protection of society and rehabilitation of young people.  The justice system and the mental health professionals involved with JR are committed to providing her with the best treatment Canada can offer.  She is at that time of life when the parts of her brain that control emotional responses, impulse control, and rational decision making are maturing.  With careful, systematic reinforcement, she can develop the skills she so disastrously lacked at age 12.

            Nebraskans, of all people, should know that JR, and killer children like her, have the ability to reform.  In 1958, Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, began a murder spree in Lincoln by killing hr family, including her toddler sister.  Starkweather was executed; Caril Fugate was sentenced to life in prison.  In 1976, she was paroled and moved to Michigan, where she has apparently lived a blameless life ever since.  Ironically, Starkweather and Fugate were the basis for the film Natural Born Killers, which JR and Steinke watched the evening before they murdered her parents.  Apparently the thoughts of execution and life in prison incorporated in the film did not deter them.  Perhaps an emphasis on redemption and rehabilitation, instead of more violence and vengeance, might deter future would-be killers.  The Canadian justice system and the people of Canada are betting on it.

Posted in Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

States Urged to Improve Probation/Parole

9. March 2009 by Rev Young.

 As our country has moved into this very large economic crises, states are scrambling to find solutions to budget short falls.  As they are looking for funds, organizations like the PEW Charitable Trust, continue to investigate and report on one of the largest budget drains in the United States.  The practice of incarceration, probation and parole.  When you read the staggering numbers below, I want to remind you that for every person that is currently under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections or Judicial Departments, there are at least 10 family members that are adversely affected.  With that said, if you take the number of people in this nation that are currently incarcerated, on probation or parole (at the state level only) and multiply that by 10, we have 73,000,000 people that are impacted by the our current practices.  If these practices were successful in rehabilitating and reforming individuals and families then this would be palatable.  However, we have created a huge revolving door of destruction and loss for a large portion of our population in the United States.  This oppresses our families, weakens our communities and drains our economies.  Isn’t it time we look for a better plan? 

States urged to improve probation, parole programs

By DAVID CRARY – 1 day ago

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of people on parole and probation across the United States has surged past 5 million, according to a new report which says financially struggling states can save money in the long run by investing in better supervision of these offenders.

The Pew Center on the States report, released Monday, says the number of people on probation or parole more than tripled to 5.1 million between 1982 and 2007. Including jail and prison inmates, the total population of the U.S. corrections system now exceeds 7.3 million — one of every 31 U.S. adults, it said.

The report also noted huge discrepancies among the states in regard to the total corrections population — one of every 13 adults in Georgia at one end of the scale, one of every 88 in New Hampshire at the other extreme. The racial gap also was stark — one of every 11 black adults is under correctional supervision, one of every 27 Hispanic adults, one of every 45 white adults.

The report notes that construction of new prisons will be increasingly rare as most states grapple with budget crises. It said improved community-supervision strategies represent one of the most feasible ways for states to limit corrections spending and reduce recidivism.

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” said Susan Urahn, managing director of the Center on the States. “The economy opens a window of opportunity to do things that are not always easy to do.”

At present, according to the report, prisons consume nearly 90 percent of state corrections spending, even though two-thirds of offenders under supervision are on parole or probation. Costs per year for a prison inmate average nearly $29,000, while average costs for managing parolees and probationers range from $1,250 to $2,750 a year.

Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project, stressed that violent and incorrigible criminals need to be locked up, but contended that many prison inmates could be safely overseen in their communities at far lower cost.

“New community supervision strategies and technologies need to be strengthened and expanded, not scaled back,” he said. “Cutting them may appear to save a few dollars, but it doesn’t. It will fuel the cycle of more crime, more victims, more arrests, more prosecutions, and still more imprisonment.”

Among the report’s recommendations for strengthening community corrections:

_Base intervention programs on sound research about what works to reduce recidivism.

_Use advances in supervision technology such as electronic monitoring and rapid-result alcohol and drug tests.

_Create incentives for offenders and supervision agencies to succeed, and monitor their performance.

_Impose swift, certain sanctions for offenders who break the rules of their release.

The report cited a probation program in Hawaii as a positive example. Under that program, which offers extensive counseling and treatment, failure to comply with random drug tests, office visits and treatment requirements is met with immediate sanctions — typically a few days in jail. Participants have proven far less likely than others on probation to be arrested for new crimes and sent back to prison.

Arizona was praised for a law enacted last year that creates performance incentives for offenders and the county-based probation supervision system. For every month that an offender complies with the terms of supervision, the length of probation can be shortened by up to 20 days. Slip-ups result in a loss of the earned time.

Kansas has made headway in curbing its prison population by offering grants to community corrections programs that cut down on the high number of probation and parole rule-breakers being sent back to prison solely for such rule violations.

The Pew report says strong community supervision programs for low-risk offenders not only cost much less than incarceration but, when properly funded and managed, can cut recidivism by as much as 30 percent. That could be a huge boon to the states, which, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, spent a record $51.7 billion on corrections last fiscal year — up 300 percent over two decades.

The five states with the highest rate of adults under correctional supervision were Georgia, Idaho, Texas, Massachusetts and Ohio, the report said. Those with lowest rates were New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia, Utah and North Dakota.

According to Pew’s figures, Idaho had 48,663 people on probation in 2007 — the key factor in its ranking. Idaho corrections officials said the figure was too high, based on their count of about 26,900 offenders on supervised probation, but they did not immediately provide figures on additional offenders on unsupervised probation.

Georgia, although only the ninth most populous state, had more people on probation in 2007 — 435,631 — than any other state, according to the report. The state Department of Corrections said the number might be inflated by double-counting of some offenders, but it has previously acknowledged that its probation population is the highest per capita in the country.

One consequence, according to the department, is that Georgia probation officers have had a caseload far higher than the national average.

Gelb said advanced technology could be used to improve supervision without necessarily hiring more personnel. For example, he said some states now allow parolees and probationers to periodically report to an ATM-like kiosk, rather than to a person in a state office.

In any case, said Gelb, states could double or triple the amount they spend supervising parolees and probationers, and still come out ahead financially if the result was a reduced prison population.

In Alaska, where construction is set to begin soon on a new medium-security prison, the corrections commissioner said he agreed with the thrust of the Pew report.

“Confinement is the foundation of the system, but we are trying to move away from the philosophy that incarceration will solve the problem,” said Joseph Schmidt. “What we are hoping is that we don’t grow our prison population to a point where we can’t afford it.”

On the Net:

• Pew report: http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/

Posted in Legal News, Prison Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

Eleven Year Old Charged As An Adult

9. March 2009 by admin.

MARCH 06, 2009

Eleven year old charged as an adult
by Pat Nolan
Would you put this 11 year old in prison for the rest of his life?

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have charged an 11-year-old boy as an adult for
murdering his father’s girlfriend. They said that they intend to ask that he
be imprisoned for the rest of his life under Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Life
Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP) statute. Let me be clear: what the
boy did is awful, and there should be consequences for it. But those
consequences should include reforming his moral compass, rather than writing
him off as unsalvageable. Putting him in an adult prison for the rest of his
life is essentially denying the young boy the possibility of redemption and
rehabilitation.

It surprises most people to realize that in forty-two states and under
federal law, a child under 18 who commits a serious crime is classified as
an adult for prosecution and punishment. In some states, children as young
as ten are transformed instantly into adults for criminal justice purposes.
Remember, these children are too young to buy cigarettes and alcohol, too
young to shave, often too young to drive. Many of these kids still have
stuffed animals on their beds. Yet, they are tried as adults, and if
convicted, they are sent to adult prison, often for life without any
possibility of parole.

There are currently at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States
who are imprisoned for the rest of their lives for crimes they committed as
children. These are not “super-predators” with long records of vicious
crimes. In fact, an estimated 59 percent of these youngsters received the
sentence for their first-ever criminal conviction.

The crime this boy committed was horrible. He hid a shotgun under a blanket
and calmly walked downstairs and shot his father’s girlfriend in the back of
her head. This is a shocking crime. But it was also his first run-in with
the law. Despite his clean record, state law requires that he be charged as
an adult. And the District Attorney said he expects the boy to spend the
rest of his life in prison.

Remember, this is an 11-year-old child. Yet he was imprisoned in the local
jail with other adults. The jail had no orange jumpsuit that could fit his
slight frame. To isolate him from the adult prisoners, the boy was held in a
10×10 cell. He could not take a shower because that would require the jail
to lock down every prisoner to allow him to walk to the showers without
coming in contact with the adult prisoners. Mercifully, after several days
the sheriff insisted that the boy’s needs be taken care of, and he was
transferred to a juvenile facility.

This brief bit of common sense and mercy may soon be eliminated by a justice
system intent on keeping him in prison until he dies.

You can hear the cry of frustration in the voice of a father facing a
similar future with a child in an adult prison:

I’m a former cop.  I’m a true believer in law and order.  But my son was a
child when this happened.  He wasn’t thinking like an adult, and he wasn’t
an adult…how is it that the law can treat him as if he is one?

– Frank C., father of youth offender sentenced to live without parole,
October 22, 2004.

The terrible crimes committed by children can ruin lives, causing injury and
death to the victims and grief to their families and friends. Sentencing
must reflect the seriousness of the crime, but it also must acknowledge that
culpability can be substantially diminished by reason of the youth and
immaturity of the perpetrator. Child offenders should be given the
possibility of freedom one day when they have matured and demonstrated their
remorse and capacity for rehabilitation.

There is a movement across the country to eliminate life sentences for
youthful offenders. The bills would not automatically release the offenders
at a certain age, but rather offer the possibility that they could be
released if they had shown they were prepared to lead a law-abiding life in
the community.

Posted in Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

Life Without Parole….For Children?

4. March 2009 by Rev Young.

Sentenced to life, unintentionally

By Meg Laughlin, Times Staff Writer

Published Friday, February 27, 2009

---

The retired judge lives in the deep woods southeast of Tampa, a quarter-mile down a narrow dirt road. Late in the afternoon, J. Rogers Padgett is brooding on how much he misses the courtroom.

He has heard hundreds upon hundreds of cases over the years, so it’s a long shot when he’s asked if he recalls an armed robbery case from eight years ago. The defendant was a kid named Kenneth Young.

Yes, the judge says, he remembers it well. Young was all of 14 when he helped a 25-year-old crack dealer pull armed robberies of hotels around Tampa Bay. Young would take down the video surveillance cameras and grab the cash while the boss held a gun on the clerks and barked orders. No shots were ever fired.

Padgett remembers the address of one of the hotels, the pile of videocameras in the back seat of the crack dealer’s car when he and Young were arrested, Young’s annoying courtroom behavior as he tried to avoid trial. And he remembers sentencing Young to life in prison.

What he does not remember is that it was life in prison with no chance of ever getting out. Padgett ruminates on it a minute and volunteers something extraordinary:

He says he made a mistake. He never meant to send Young away forever.

“I didn’t think when I gave Kenneth Young life that it was life without parole,” said Padgett. “At this point, I’d sign a clemency petition for him to be considered for release.”

The judge’s words are like manna from heaven when they are relayed to Young’s attorney, Paolo Annino.

A law professor at Florida State University’s Public Interest Law Center, Annino and some of his students have crafted a legislative bill that could help Young and about 300 more Florida inmates who got life or hefty sentences when they were kids.

Called the Second Chance Act for Children in Prison of 2009, the bill says that those who were 15 or younger and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison without parole should be considered for release if they’ve committed no other crime, shown remorse, stayed out of trouble in prison and participated in educational programs.

Kenneth Young is their poster child.

“Remember,” Annino says, “this bill is for inmates like Kenneth to be considered for release, not necessarily released.”

The bill favors children who were “an accomplice to the offense or a relatively minor participant … or acting under extreme duress or domination of another person.”

The testimony in Young’s case made it clear that the crack dealer was running the show, with Young in a subservient role. For his part in the robberies, Young got $50 cash, a pair of Air Jordans and a six-pack of Heineken.

Former hotel night clerk Michael Traupmann told the St. Petersburg Times that it always bothered him that “the boy” got such a harsh sentence. “He was pretty harmless,” said Traupmann. “If I could help him, I would.”

Now, so would Padgett.

• • •

A few weeks ago, as the sun set behind oaks in the judge’s yard, he said that when he came to the bench in the 1970s, a life sentence didn’t necessarily mean life. Inmates routinely were granted early release. It was that way through the ’80s.

Padgett said he knew that a change in the ’90s meant that a life sentence for first-degree murder and sexual battery truly meant life. But he said he thought it was for capital crimes only; he didn’t realize it applied when he sentenced Young to life for armed robbery.

“I didn’t know he was stuck,” the judge said. “I thought corrections officials had the latitude to look at his record down the road and let him out if he did well in prison, which is how it should be.”

As it turns out, Young has done well in prison. In eight years, he has stayed out of trouble, cared for sick inmates and taken every class available to him.

Sgt. Kimberly Engleking at Lake Correctional Institution, where Young is incarcerated, described him as “well-behaved, polite, quiet and respectful — never a problem.”

The only negative mark in his prison file came on a Sunday morning two years ago, when he didn’t make his bed one time. He said he didn’t think he was required to on a weekend and was not disciplined.

Annino said he can understand how Padgett missed the change in sentencing guidelines that affected Young. “There wasn’t a lot of education going on about parole being abolished for crimes that weren’t capital crimes,” he said.

“But it takes someone with Padgett’s character to admit what he didn’t know.”

• • •

The Florida Legislature is conservative, not customarily generous with prison inmates of any age.

The bill Annino and his law students were pushing died in a legislative committee last year. But Annino says increased support of Republicans makes him think the bill will fare better this year.

The Senate sponsor is Jim King, a former Senate president and one-time House GOP leader who knows how to get things done in the Legislature.

Serving on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee the past few years, King says he has been bothered by several laws that inhibit the rehabilitation of inmates. He says the bill has a good chance to pass because many lawmakers feel the current system wastes lives.

“A kid under 15 who has been sent to prison could and probably would be a totally different person than they were when they first got sentenced,” King said. “This would give them a shot at living a normal life.”

The House sponsor is Mike Weinstein, a freshman Republican who has been a prosecutor in Jacksonville for 15 years.

Weinstein says he “thought deeply about it” before he decided to get behind the bill. What made him decide to commit to it was the age of the kids. “If we can’t rehabilitate a percentage of kids who were 15 or younger when they committed a crime, we have to ask ourselves if we can rehabilitate anyone,” he said.

The bill says that if adolescent offenders are granted parole, they have to complete a two-year re-entry program before being fully released.

Annino and his law students are also working on a clemency petition for Young.

“In a lot of ways, prison has been good for me,” Young wrote in a letter a few months ago. “As a kid locked up with a bunch of adult men, I quickly learned what it feels like to be a victim, which made me really understand how the hotel victims felt.”

• • •

When Young was to be sentenced for armed robbery in 2001, prosecutor Curtis Allen told Padgett that Young could be sentenced anywhere from 51 months to life. Allen asked for life.

Young’s attorney, Mark Reinhold, asked Padgett to sentence Young as a juvenile, to seven years, because of his age, because he had no prior criminal history and because of his secondary role.

Padgett sided with the prosecutor. “I feel you’re dangerous,” he told Young. “I’m going to take you out of circulation for the rest of your natural life.”

Reinhold says that as he and Young left the courtroom, his client asked him what that meant. “I had to tell him he was going to die in prison,” Reinhold says, “which made him scream and cry like the child he was.”

Now, Padgett says he was talking tough that day to scare Young, but he didn’t think he was sending him away to die in prison. He hopes either the legislative bill or a clemency hearing will give Young a second chance.

Said the judge: “Just tell me where to sign.”

Posted in Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

Abuse of Our Youth….A Crime

4. March 2009 by admin.

My name is Bettyanne. My son, Nathan, is serving an LWOP for a crime he was convicted of as a juvenile.

I most definitely agree with you that the only effective way to end this is through legislation at the federal level.

Nathan, who is a gifted and articulate writer, has also been involved in letter writing. His letters express his thoughts and perspective of this issue from a juvenile’s mindset. He is not seeking pity, or expecting to avoid any consequences. He shares how he thought at that time, and how incredibly naive and immature he was to comprehend his actions. He also was in a total fog during his trial, as his defense did not have the patience or skills to properly communicate to someone so young exactly what was happening. I was led to believe by his attorney that he was carefully explaining everything to Nathan. That was just not so. I was not permitted to discuss anything concerning his case to him, as all our conversations were being recorded. It was a horrible situation all the way around.

When Nathan received his sentence, he was put in a padded cell to cry and grieve by himself for days, of which I knew nothing of. Then before I knew it, they transferred him to several different prisons over the next 6 months and would not tell me of his location. During this time they also with held all his out going mail. It was a long, long time before I was able to know where he was. It would be a whole year before I actually got to see my boy again!

One time he was crying so hard, the guard kept telling him to shut up. He explained he just couldn’t stop crying. So the guard told him he would come in and talk with him. Instead, 4 guards rushed in at him, put him in a straight jacket without telling him and of course Nathan resisted, then they sprayed his eyes with mace. Yes, our country takes real good care of it’s troubled youth.

Posted in Juvenile Reform Advocates, From Families of Juvenile Offenders | Print | No Comments »

A Second Chance

3. March 2009 by Rev Young.

A second chance for young killers?
BY PAUL HAMMEL
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - At age 13, Darren McCracken grabbed a handgun from his mother’s
bedroom, loaded the weapon and shot his mom twice in the back of the head as
she slept on a sofa.

The slaying stunned those in tiny Smithfield, Neb., who knew the chubby
teenager. Darren was an unhappy and troubled kid. You could see it in his
eyes, people said.

His brother bullied him and pushed him around on the vacant lot where kids
gathered to play football. When a neighbor handed out ice cream, the brother
would take some and say Darren didn’t want any.

Away from his brother, Darren could be friendly and chatty. He’d follow
around the cook at Tuffy’s tavern and sit on porches with local widows who
fed him homemade cookies.

The town eventually learned from trial testimony that Darren not only had
been beaten but sexually abused by the older brother for years. His divorced
mother, a heavy drinker with a sharp tongue, had done little to intervene.

Fed up, Darren ran away from home.

Then, in what a psychologist described as the twisted logic of someone
suffering from post-traumatic stress, he returned home and shot his mother,
Vicki Bray.

Darren McCracken was the youngest Nebraskan ever sentenced to life in
prison, without parole. At age 29, he has spent more than half his life
behind bars for the 1993 killing.

Now some say McCracken and 23 other juveniles like him deserve a second
chance.

State Sen. Brenda Council of Omaha has introduced a bill to repeal the
sentence of life in prison without parole for anyone under age 18. The
Legislature will begin debate on the measure Tuesday.

Council would make the sentence 50 years to life for juveniles who are 16 or
17 when they commit a first-degree murder. Juveniles under 16 - as McCracken
was - would face a sentence of 40 years to life.

Under state sentencing guidelines, that means McCracken would be eligible
for parole after 20 years. Older juveniles, those 16 and 17, would have to
serve 25 years.

“To me, a sentence of life without parole is tantamount to the death
penalty,” said Council, who has made Legislative Bill 307 her priority bill
this year.

Others say heinous premeditated murder deserves harsh punishment, regardless
of the age of the perpetrator.

“This bill will give a criminal . . . a second chance at life that the
victims of their cruel, senseless acts did not receive,” Kirby Drake told
the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

Drake’s sister Sharmon Stock and brother-in-law Wayne Stock were shot and
killed by a pair of teenage runaways from Wisconsin. One was Jessica Reid,
then 17, who wrote in her diary that the murder was a thrill: “I loved it. I
wish I could do it all the time.”

“These are not children you want to release - these are killers,” said
Sharon Hanke, whose sister, Sasha, 12, was killed by Sydney Thieszen, 14, in
1987.

Council said her bill is not a “get out of jail free card.”

It would ensure only that juveniles convicted of these crimes have an
opportunity for a parole hearing. Those who don’t deserve to be freed would
not be let out, Council said.

Nebraska is one of 19 states that allow 13- and 14-year-olds to be sentenced
to life without parole. As of last year, only eight states bar such
sentences for all juveniles.

The American Civil Liberties Union testified in support of Council’s bill.
The group has said that nationally the number of juveniles being sentenced
to life without parole has increased three-fold in recent years. In
Nebraska, 15 juveniles have been sentenced to life since 1990.

Amy Miller of the ACLU said the judicial system considers juveniles
differently from adults because of their immaturity. They cannot be
sentenced to die, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled. They cannot enter
contracts, serve on juries, legally drink alcohol or be drafted.

Miller said there is a racial disparity in who gets a sentence of life
without parole. In Nebraska, just over half of the 24 juveniles who received
that sentence are members of minority groups.

The Nebraska Catholic bishops and the Rev. Val Peter, former executive
director of Boys Town, support the bill. They say compassion dictates that
people be given a second chance.

State prosecutors oppose the bill. They already take into account immaturity
and lack of a criminal record in deciding whether to charge juveniles in
adult court - where they can face life in prison - or as juveniles,
according to Kimberly Pankonin, deputy Douglas County attorney.

If juveniles cannot get life in prison for murders, she said, gangs will
begin to recruit younger members for killings. Pankonin said prosecutors
should continue to have leeway in juvenile cases because some 15- and
16-year-olds are as mature as adults.

Out in Smithfield, population 68, some feel bad that they didn’t see the
depth of Darren McCracken’s problems at home.

“I think he needed help,” said a former neighbor, Bonnie Remmenga, “but not
being imprisoned for the rest of his life.”

Even one of his mother’s younger sisters, Cheryl White, said McCracken
deserves a second chance. White said her sister had tried unsuccessfully to
get Darren some counseling.

“I think he was just trying to stop what he was going through,” White said.
“He didn’t want her to see it.”

Posted in Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »

Give Juvenile Lifers a Second Chance

3. March 2009 by Rev Young.

February 25, 2009

Give lifers sentenced as kids second chance

The Register’s editorial

Everyone knows that children do stupid and risky things. These acts are usually dismissed as youthful indiscretions, and the kids get a chance to move on with their lives. If the act violates the law, however, it can mean criminal or prison records. In extreme cases in Iowa and 42 other states, it can mean a sentence to an agonizingly slow death behind bars.

In Iowa, the state can prosecute boys or girls as young as age 14 as adults, and conviction could result in a life sentence. Advocates of juvenile-justice reform want to give another chance to at least some of those serving life sentences for crimes committed when the offenders were juveniles, and a bill has been introduced in the Iowa Legislature to make that possible. It should become law.
Life in prison may be a reasonable sentence for an adult in control of his or her faculties who commits a heinous crime, such as premeditated murder, kidnapping or brutally violent rape. Death-penalty opponents point to Iowa’s life-without-parole sentence in first-degree murder cases as a better alternative than capital punishment.

In some crimes, however, life in prison may be excessive - manufacturing illegal drugs, for example - particularly if the crime was committed by a juvenile, with a far from fully developed mind. There is scientific evidence that even older teenagers have not achieved the same level of mental development as adults. Yet, in certain felonies, including certain drug and sex crimes, a life sentence without possibility of parole is mandatory under Iowa law.
It must be a special hell for a youngster not yet old enough to shave to face a lifetime in prison, to grow up and to grow old and eventually to die, with no hope of release. This fits the definition of cruel, if not unusual, in almost every culture. Indeed, according to an August 2008 University of San Francisco Law Review article, “there is only one country in the world today that continues to sentence child offenders to life-without-parole terms: the United States.” As of last year, there were at least 2,484 inmates serving such sentences in this country.
Although there is an effort to abolish the practice in the United States, the legislation under consideration by the Iowa Legislature would not go that far. It would, instead, allow men or women serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles to apply for parole or work release after serving at least 15 years. Applications would be reviewed by the Iowa Board of Parole, which would consider applicants’ criminal history, behavior record while in prison, potential for rehabilitation and likelihood of committing new crimes if released.
The attorney general and any victims would have the opportunity to testify. And, decisions of the parole board could be challenged before an administrative law judge, or in state district court.

Even if this legislation is passed, it’s not likely to be used often. According to a legislative staff report, Iowa prisons hold 42 inmates serving life sentences for offenses committed when they were under age 18. All 42 were convicted of murder or kidnapping in the first degree. Of those, only 19 will have served for 15 years by the time this bill could become law.
Still, the state should give prison inmates this option, even if it leads to the salvaging of only a few lives from a long and slow death sentence issued when they were still children.

---

Posted in Prison Reform Advocates, Juvenile Reform Advocates | Print | No Comments »