16. September 2009 by Rev Young.

In my last post, I hinted at a subject that I wanted to expand on.  Actually I have written on this before.  Our vindictive, angry nature. 

Many of my partners in this campaign to end injustice in the juvenile INJUSTICE system will not touch the true problem behind the laws that condemn children to incredible sentences in adult prison systems.  The bottom line and underlying problem is spiritual and human.  We have lost our compassion, our ability to forgive, our ability to believe that something good can come out of any situation.  We have become angry, bitter, condemning people who want vengeance on anyone who gets in our way or causes any turbulence in our mediocre lives. 

It is not only evident in our juvenile justice laws but in every avenue of life in these United States.  A mother gets into a car accident, her child is seriously injured and the police officer finds that her daughter was not fastened by a safety belt.  She receives criminal charges for the injury of her child while she protests that she had fastened the safety belt on her child……really she did.  Children learn how to unhook those things.  Yet a mother, who is already distraught over her child is now marked as a criminal and receives further condemnation instead of support.  That is who we are.  That is what we have become.  It is a rare case when charges are not brought against someone for things that, a few years ago, we would have considered an accident. 

Then when a young human being cannot battle the situation around him and succumbs to his anger (which we have taught him) and does something unthinkable……we are ready to give up.  We are responsible for the actions of the kids around us.  Not just the parents, not just the teachers, not just the pastors but every single adult person.  We have created a society of violence, anger, hatred, immoral character, intolerance, judgement and abandonment.  We did this.  Children are formed by the environment they are exposed to.  Look at your television, listen to the radio, listen to music, watch the information on your homepage on the Internet.  This is what feeds young minds everyday.

It is time that we turned and began to embrace values.  It is time for us to care about the people around us.  It is time to turn and find a way to rebuild lives, families and communities.  We cannot, nor should we, depend on the government to be the answer.  We are the answer.

Our juvenile justice laws and the practice of incarcerating young people in adult prison facilities is only a symptom of the problems we have, yet if we do not have compassion for the broken lives of children, how can we care for anyone else?

I urge you to watch this video and ask yourself, honestly, who have I become and what can I do to effect change?

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16. September 2009 by Rev Young.

There is much controversy over the sentencing practices for juvenile offenders in this country.  We go from the extreme voices of the victims rights groups, who call for the most extreme punishments, to the human rights advocates that can find fault in most any judicial practice.  Where is the truth?  What is the right way to handle these situations?  In order to find that answer, I think we need to take a hard look at ourselves and what we have become.   

Prior to our current “Tough On Crime” policies and our national “War on Drugs”.  We believed in rehabilitation.  In the 1970’s and 1980’s there were strong laws protecting juveniles and their families.  Their situations were dealt with in private, their punishments handed down without media fanfare or hype, and they were given the opportunity to mature and develop is a safe, productive environment.  Most of you would argue that juvenile crimes have become more violent and that juvenile murder is much more prevalent now than it was then.  Most would say that it was still an age of innocence.  I think you need to study your history again. 

I grew up in a neighborhood that was racially divided.  One third of my junior high and high school population was black, one third, Hispanic and one third white.  This happened naturally and was not because of any government strategy.  There was racial tension in those schools, not between whites and blacks or whites and Hispanic but between Hispanic and blacks.  There were street fights, stabbings, people got jumped, it was where we lived.  Remember, we were coming out of the 60’s where racial tension was prevalent, riots were on television, college campuses were places of protest and we were forcing change.  We were also coming out of a long, violent and devastating war.  Yet all of the people that I knew who got into trouble during those years were treated as juveniles, sent for rehabilitation and went on.  Now a couple of them went on to prison….but that was only two.  One of them was killed.  The others are business owners, family men, ministers and a couple of them are police officers. 

So what is different?  Our attitude.  We are the difference, in our families, in our attitudes, in our ability to put forth effort to make a difference in a persons life, in our ability to care.  We want and like staying angry……forever.  Yet the choices we make, how we as the adults in this picture handle ourselves, can change the future for all of us.  More on that later……….Read On…….

When children kill, punishment varies

By JOE LAMBE

The Kansas City Star

A Kansas City, Kan., girl charged with murder at age 13 faces adult court and many years in prison.

A boy who was 13 when he killed a man last year will stay in the juvenile system and could be released when he is 22½, a Wyandotte County judge ruled early this month.

Both cases illustrate how children who commit heinous crimes are testing the boundaries of the justice system.

After murders committed by juveniles spiked in the early 1990s, states toughened laws, making the United States the harshest nation in world in the legal punishment of children, according to a recent study. However, the number of children who killed declined in the late ’90s and has largely held steady this decade, leading some to question the practice of tougher sentencing.

“Some states are starting to recognize that kids can be treated as kids,” said Michele Deitch, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of a study, “From Time Out to Hard Time.”

In 22 states, children as young as 7 still can be tried as adults. There is no age limit in Missouri, but it is 10 in Kansas. As of June, juveniles could not be sentenced to life without parole in seven states, including Kansas. That makes the United States the only nation in the world where juveniles can be sentenced to life without parole, the study reported.

All children who offend at age 12 or younger should be put into juvenile care, the Texas study contends. And it found that when they are put in adult prisons, juvenile offenders are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted and 36 times more likely to commit suicide.

Laurence Steinberg, author of “Rethinking Juvenile Justice” and a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, believes that a 13-year-old is too young to be charged as an adult.

“You’re exposing kids to adult sanctions for something they did as a kid,” he said, “but no prosecutor is going to be able to run on the platform of ‘I gave somebody a break.’ ”

Weighing the facts

In the Wyandotte County cases, the similar situations are seemingly headed toward different outcomes.

Early this month, defense attorney Kiann McBratney successfully argued that Antwuan Taylor, the Kansas City, Kan., boy who killed last year at age 13, should not be tried as an adult and instead should stay in the juvenile system.

But McBratney, other prosecutors and some defense attorneys do support adult sentences for some children, saying society needs protection from them.

“There are kids out there who function like adults and can kill people in cold blood,” she said.

Robbin Wasson, the prosecutor in the Taylor case, said, “We don’t want to be prosecuting 13-year-olds willy-nilly as adults,” noting that decisions on juvenile offenders are made on a case-by-case basis.

The other juvenile charged in Wyandotte County last year with killing at age 13 was Keaira Brown, who this year became the youngest person ever sent to adult court there.

She allegedly shot 16-year-old Scott Sappington to death after an apparent botched carjacking attempt.

The victim’s grandmother, Joyce Sappington, said she had mixed emotions about the ruling, but children killing children “has got to stop. If nobody sends a message, it will never stop.”

Nationwide from 1985 to 2004, the study reports, judges transferred 961 children age 13 or younger to adult courts. That does not count children from states that have automatic transfer laws for crimes such as murder or states that allow prosecutors to directly file cases in adult court.

“You can have a teen who kills and goes automatically into the adult system and life without parole,” Deitch said. “That’s incomprehensible to me.”

Science and sentencing

Researchers have discovered that the section of the brain related to impulse control does not fully develop until the mid-20s, but that finding doesn’t necessarily help in the legal debate.

Some say it means children grow and change — what they are is not what they will become. Others say it means they are out of control and deadly.

The Supreme Court mentioned those brain studies in a 2005 Missouri case when it ruled that those younger than 18 when they killed could not be executed. That ruling took 72 people off death rows.

The ruling said children change, are less mature than adults, are more influenced by peers and are less to blame.

“Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile,” the court said, “is not evidence of irretrievably depraved character.”

In the Taylor case in Wyandotte County, the boy was influenced by a 21-year-old woman who gave him a gun and suggested he kill someone. She drove him and picked out a victim, and Taylor shot Charles McElroy six times.

Barry Feld, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, said of the Taylor case and the woman’s influence: “It is the absolute paradigm of what the Supreme Court was talking about.”

Thirteen is too young for adult prosecution, he said, but for older children, he has raised questions about whether juvenile court is appropriate.

A “youth discount” is a sentencing method that Feld advocates. “A 14-year-old gets 25 percent of the going rate for the same crime by an adult, a 16-year-old gets about 50 percent,” he said.

Deitch praised another approach sometimes used by Kansas, Missouri and 25 other states. The laws generally allow a judge to combine a juvenile sentence with a further adult sentence if the offender fails in the juvenile system.

Wyandotte County District Judge Wes Griffin imposed the Kansas version of that approach in the Taylor case. Kansas officials say it has been rarely used — only in seven cases of 348 juveniles sent to the state juvenile system last year.

Missouri also rarely uses its version but has had good success, officials said. From 1999 to 2006, they said, 36 people were released after serving their juvenile time. Only six committed other crimes.

Atharene McElroy, mother of the victim in the Taylor case, is satisfied that her son’s killer is staying in juvenile court.

“He’s just a young, troubled boy,” she said, but he is dangerous and needs to be off the streets while he matures.

To reach Joe Lambe, call 816-234-7714 or send e-mail to jlambe@kcstar.com.

Posted on Sun, Sep. 13, 2009 11:09 PM

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16. September 2009 by Rev Young.

Sitting in our living rooms, we watch news reports daily concerning the crimes and scandals that are happening around the country.  By the time the news is concluded, we walk away shaking our heads and wondering what we are coming to as a nation.  By practicing this ritual on a daily basis, we feed our minds with images of violence, betrayal, bribery and robbery and we begin to develop a skewed version of what our world is like.  Add to that our current economic circumstance, bailout of major companies that haven’t fared well or managed well and we are angry. 

Then organizations and world news report the barbaric practices that are going on around the world.  We see war, we see famine, we see disenfranchised peoples living in refugee camps and our hearts pour out to them.  We wonder how in the world our governments and the people of the world can allow this to happen.  We applaud the missions organizations, human rights organizations and all the others that petition on behalf of these people for change. 

We need these organizations and voices to speak out against the atrocities that are committed against human beings every day.  MORE IMPORTANLY we need them in our own country.  While we are appalled at the inhumane treatment of people around the world, we turn a blind eye to the treatment we impose on people in this country…..specifically our children.  We, as a nation, have decided that children who make mistakes should be condemned and society should be rid of them.  We lock them away in adult prison facilities, take away their humanity, take away their hope, remove them from families and support and we throw away the key.  Who is the watch dog for this country that will hold us accountable for the violation of human rights that we commit every day.

Read On……….

Youths tried as adults: An ongoing barbarity

Posted by mhanley September 08, 2009 11:25AM

On November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments is violated when a juvenile is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a crime other than murder.

The issue before the nation’s highest court is framed by two cases originating in Florida.

In one, Joe Harris Sullivan received such a sentence when he was 13 years of age upon his conviction for rape.

In the second case, Terrence Jamar Graham received the same sentence at 17 years of age after he had violated his probation in connection with an armed robbery conviction.

In its 2005 landmark decision in Roper vs. Simmons, the court held that executing juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment in that it was inconsistent with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

To support that conclusion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, noted that 30 states had already abolished the death penalty for juveniles while an additional 20 states utilized it very sparingly.

Kennedy also underscored the fact that the death penalty has traditionally been reserved only for those whose extreme culpability makes them “the most deserving of execution.”

Juveniles can never fall within this category, Kennedy reasoned, because of three critical differences between them and adults.

Citing language from an earlier case that had invalidated the death penalty for younger juveniles, Kennedy declared that the immaturity of juveniles in general and their susceptibility to misbehavior means that “their irresponsible conduct is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult.”

Kennedy next stated that juveniles’ vulnerability and comparative lack of control over their immediate surroundings entitled them to a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for succumbing to negative influences in their environment.

Finally, he noted that juveniles’ ongoing struggle with identity issues militates against concluding that even the most heinous crime committed by them is evidence of an irretrievably depraved character.

Given these diminished capacities of juveniles, neither of the two reasons generally offered for justifying capital punishment - exacting justice and deterrence - are furthered by its imposition on them.
INVALID CRITICISM

While conservatives have criticized the holding in Roper as being driven by reliance on the laws of other countries, this is simply not true.

In fact, although Kennedy noted that the United States was the only country in the world that continued to authorize executing juveniles, he specifically reaffirmed the court’s fidelity to the United States Constitution.

International unanimity against the practice only confirmed, he said, the court’s conclusion that the death penalty is widely perceived as a disproportionate punishment for juveniles.

The resolution of the two Florida cases will depend on whether the court is ready to extend its reasoning in the Roper decision to those juveniles sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in non-capital cases.

Numerous influential organizations, including the American Bar Association and the American Psychiatric Association, have filed amicus briefs asking the court to do precisely that.

A 2005 study by Human Rights Watch found that 2,225 juveniles were serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole. Last month, the organization asserted that the actual number now exceeds that.

Though sequestered deep inside adult prisons, they constitute the most visible, nauseating proof of the barbaric manner in which the United States continues to treat accused children.

As has been so often the case with this ideologically divided Supreme Court, its ruling in the two Florida cases is going to depend on the vote of Justice Kennedy, the lone moderate on the bench.

On the plus side is Kennedy’s robust reliance on the psychological differences between juveniles and adults in voting to strike down the death penalty for juveniles in the Roper case.

These very differences, even more persuasively reaffirmed in the ensuing four years, suggest that he will be sympathetic to the two young petitioners in the Florida cases.

Kennedy might even be persuaded to opine that life imprisonment without parole is unconstitutional for all juveniles, even those convicted of murder.

On the other hand, Kennedy previously voted in favor of the death penalty for older juveniles in a 1989 decision before changing his mind six years later in the Roper case.

So he may not be ready to extend the Roper rationale to instances of juveniles serving sentences of life without parole.

Given Kennedy’s evolution on juvenile justice, it’s also conceivable that he might vote to outlaw these sentences for younger teen-agers, but uphold them for older ones.

In such a scenario, Sullivan would win while Graham would lose.

Sadly, this country is light years away from recognizing that no child should ever be tried or imprisoned as an adult under any circumstances.

Hence, juvenile rights advocates can only hope that the Supreme Court uses the Florida cases to introduce another sliver of sanity into a legal field ruthlessly plundered by callous legislators, politically ambitious, heartless prosecutors and a continuingly apathetic public.

____________________________________________________________

Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.

Categories: Dan Leddy

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