Just Mercy – Part 2

Our Broken System & Children

This is a continuation of my thoughts about the book and movie, Just Mercy. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to read Part 1 first.

The movie, if I remember correctly, doesn’t hit on any of these cases or how horribly our system treats children. Reading this book has definitely opened my eyes to how unfair our system is and how it contributes to children never really getting a fair shot. It is truly heart breaking.

I am sure I have been guilty of hearing about a horrific crime by a minor and wondering how a child could do something so terrible and also thinking they should be tried as an adult. I will no longer think this way. The way our society views and treats criminal juveniles is heart breaking. They need our help. Instead we put them in a situation where coming out and having anything but a life of crime is an incredible uphill battle.

The book tells the story of Trina. Trina was the youngest of 12 kids and lived in a the poorest section of Chester, Pennsylvania.

“Chester had extraordinarily high rates of poverty, crime and unemployment – and the worst ranked public school system among Pennsylvania’s 501 districts. Nearly 46 percent of the city’s children were living below the federal poverty level.”

Trina’s father was a violent and abusive alcoholic. Trina’s mom was sickly after bearing so many children and enduring all of the abuse by her husband. I won’t go into the details from the book but just know it was an AWFUL living situation. Trina showed signed of intellectual disabilities at a young age. Her mother died when she was nine.

Eventually, due to the sexual abuse at the hands of their father, Trina and two of her older sisters ran away. At one point they tried to stay with one of their older sisters, but her husband began to sexually abuse them. Trina had a lot of emotional and mental abuse problems and would sometimes get so ill she would end up in the hospital, but she was never allowed stay long enough to recover because of her lack of money.

One night, at the age of 14, she and a friend climbed through a window of a home to visit the two boys that lived there. Since it was dark, she lit a match to try to use the light to make way through the house and the house caught fire. The two boys that were sleeping died from smoke asphyxiation. She was accused of starting the fire intentionally.

She was so traumatized by the boys’ death that she was nonfunctional. Her appointed lawyer never filed the proper paperwork to show she was incompetent to stand trial or challenge the State’s decision to try her as an adult. She was tried for second-degree murder as an adult.

“Pennsylvania sentencing law was inflexible: the only sentence for those convicted of second-degree murder was mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

“Judge Reed, who presided over the case, expressed serious misgivings about the sentence he was enforced to impose, given Trina’s devastating life circumstances and the fact that she hadn’t intended to harm anyone.”

“This is the saddest case I’ve ever seen.”

Judge Reed – quoted in the book Just Mercy

“For a tragic crime committed at fourteen, Trina was condemned to die in prison. At the age of sixteen, Trina walked through the gates of the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, an adult prison for women, terrified, still suffering from trauma, and mental illness and intensely vulnerable – with the knowledge that she would never leave…Not long after she arrived at Muncy, a male correctional officer pulled her into a secluded area and raped her.”

They discovered the crime once she became pregnant, but as is often the case, the correctional officer was fired but not criminally prosecuted. She remained in prison and gave birth to a son while handcuffed to a bed.

“It wasn’t until 2008 that most states abandoned the practice of shackling or handcuffing incarcerated women during delivery.”

By the time Trina was 30 she was in a wheel chair with multiple sclerosis, intellectual disabilities and mental illness related to trauma.

“In 2014, Trina turned fifty-two. She has been in prison for thirty-eight years. She is one of nearly five hundred people in Pennsylvania who have been condemned to mandatory life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of committing when they were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. It is the largest population of child offenders condemned to die in prison in any single jurisdiction in the world.“

In another story a thirteen year old named Ian, who lived on the streets with no parental supervision, and his two friends attempted to rob a couple in Tampa, Florida. The person resisted and Ian shot her in the cheek. It shattered several teeth and severely damaged her jaw. All of the boys were arrested and charged with armed robbery and attempted homicide. Ian’s lawyer encouraged him to plead guilty and told him he would be sentenced to no more than 15 years. Ian followed the advice of the lawyer, but the lawyer wasn’t aware that two of the crimes were punishable by life in prison without parole. He was sent to an adult prison – Apalachee Correctional Institution – one of the toughest prisons in Florida.

“Juveniles housed in adult prisons are five times more likely to be the victim of sexual assault, so the staff at Apalachee put Ian, who was small for his age, in solitary confinement…Ian spent eighteen years in uninterrupted solitary confinement.”

Did you catch that? Eighteen years of solitary confinement!

Once a month, Ian was allowed to make a phone call. Not too long after he arrived in prison he used his phone call to reach out to his victim, Debbie. He apologized to her and she was moved by his call. They kept in contact. After several years, Debbie tried to get Ian’s sentence reduced. She felt it was too harsh. She talked to prison officials and gave interviews to the press but courts ignored her call for a reduced sentence.

“By 2010, Florida had sentenced more than a hundred children to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses. All of the youngest condemned children – thirteen or fourteen years of age – were black or Latino. Florida had the largest population in the wold of children condemned to die in prison for non-homicides.“

Antonio lived in South Central Los Angeles where he was plagued by gang violence. He was abused by his father and witnessed violent exchanges between his parents who threatened to kill each other. He was neglected by his depressed mother.

In 1999, a month after he turned 13, he was shot by a stranger while riding his bicycle. His fourteen year old brother, Jose, ran to his aid but was shot and killed. Antonio was hospitalized for weeks. He was sent to live in Las Vegas to try to recover with family. He was relieved to be able to put gang violence behind him. But within a year, California probation authorities ordered his return.

“He was on probation for a prior minor offense. In poor urban neighborhoods across the United States, black and brown boys are routinely targeted by the police. Even though many of these kids have done nothing wrong, they are stopped, presumed guilty, and suspected of being dangerous or engaged in criminal activity. The random stops, questioning, and harassment dramatically increase the risk of arrest for petty crimes. Many of these children develop criminal records for behavior that wealthier children engage in without consequences.“

Antonio went back to South Central but struggled. He ended up getting a gun for self-defense but was quickly arrested and sent to juvenile camp where it was reported that he responded well to structure and guidance.

But at age 14, while at a party, he was invited into a strange plan by men twice his age to fake a kidnapping to get money from the ransom. They insisted Antonio join them. But the plan went wrong and they ended up being chased by a van and the adults instructed Antonio to shoot at the van. The men chasing them were under cover officers. When they saw marked police officers, Antonio dropped the gun and they crashed into a tree. Antonio (and the driver) were charged with aggravated and attempted murder of a police officer.

Antonio and his 27 year old co defendant were tried together. They were found guilty. Antionio was sentenced to prison until death claiming he was a dangerous gang member who could never change or be rehabilitated, despite his difficult childhood and absence of any significant criminal history. He was sentenced to one of California’s most dangerous and overcrowded adult prisons. Antonio became the youngest person in the US condemned to die in prison for a crime in which no one was physically injured.

“In an earlier era, if you were thirteen or fourteen when you committed a crime, you would find yourself in the adult system with a lengthy sentence only if the crime was unusually high profile – or committed by a black or brown child against a white person in the South...

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the politics of fear and anger sweeping the country and fueling mass incarceration was turning its attention to children. Influential criminologists predicted a new generation of “superpredators.” Sometimes expressly focusing on black and brown children, theorists suggested that America would soon be overcome by “elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches” and who “have absolutely no respect for human life.” Across the country, nearly every state created laws to allow children to be prosecuted as adults, thinking that the juvenile justice system wouldn’t be harsh enough. Many states lowered or eliminated the minimum age for trying children as adults, leaving children as young as eight vulnerable to adult prosecution and imprisonment.

Tens of thousands of kids who had previously been managed by the juvenile justice system, with is well-developed protections and requirements for children, were now thrown into an increasingly overcrowded, violent and desperate adult prison system.

The predictions of superpredators proved wildly inaccurate. The juvenile population in America increased from 1994 to 2000, but the juvenile crime rate declined, leading even the academics who had originally supported the superpredator theory to disclaim it. Of course, the admission came too late for kids like Trina, Ian and Antonio.”

In 1989, Joe Sullivan was a thirteen year old with mental disabilities who suffered from neglect and abuse by his father. Joe was convinced by two older boys to rob the home of an older women. The woman was also sexually assaulted which Joe adamantly denied being part of, but admitted to the burglary. There was a lack of evidence but he was still convicted as an adult and sentenced to life without parole.

The state destroyed the biological evidence that might have proved his innocence. By the time EJI was involved twenty years later, the victim and a co-defendant had died which made it hard to challenge the conviction. They decided to challenge the sentence instead as cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2005, the Supreme Court recognized that children and adults required different levels of punishment and the death penalty for juveniles was banned under the Eighth Amendment.

EJI wanted to challenge the idea that any child should receive a sentence of live without parole.

“In May, 2009, the Supreme Court agreed to review Joe Sullivan’s case and the case of Terrance Graham, a sixteen-year old from Jacksonville, Florida, who had also been convicted of a non-homicide and sentenced to life with no parole. It felt like a miracle. There was a possibility that the court might create constitutional relief for all children sentenced to die in prison. Here was a thrilling chance to change the rules across the country.“

The briefs they filed in the US Supreme Court were supported by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, The American Bar Association and the American Medical Association as well former judges, social workers and civil and human rights groups.

In November 2009, Bryan Stevenson presented oral arguments to the US Supreme Court.

“During the argument, I told the court that the United States is the only country in the world that imposes sentences of life imprisonment without parole on children – a practice that violates international law. We showed the court that these sentences are disproportionately imposed on children of color. We argued that these harsh punishments were created for adult criminals and were never intended for children. I also told the court that to say to any child of thirteen that he is fit only to die in prison is cruel.“

Evan was a fourteen year old in Alabama sentenced to prison for life without parole. He is from a poor white family in North Alabama. He started attempting suicide when he was in elementary school. His parents had drug addictions and were abusive, therefore he was in and out of foster care.

One night a man came to buy drugs from his mom. Evan and his sixteen year old friend went to the man’s house to play cards. The man gave the teens drugs and alcohol. He also sent the boys out to buy more drugs. The boys tried to steal the man’s wallet after he passed out. The man woke up and and jumped on Evan. The other teen hit the man with a baseball bat. Both boys fought back and also set the his trailer on fire. The man died. Evan and the other teen were charged with capital murder. The friend made a deal to get a parole-eligible sentence but Evan received life in prison without parole.

Evan was sent to a maximum security adult prison. Shortly after he arrived, he was attacked by another prison and stabbed nine times. He recovered but was traumatized. He was also disturbed by his own violent crime and couldn’t understand how he could have done something so destructive.

“Most of the juvenile life cases we handled involved clients who shared Evan’s confusion about their adolescent behavior. Many had matured into adults who were much more thoughtful and reflective; they were now capable of making responsible and appropriate decisions. They had all changed in some significant way and were no nothing like the confused children who had committed a violent crime.“

On May 27, 2010, the US Supreme Court announced its decision that sentences of life imprisonment without parole for children convicted of non-homicidal crimes is cruel and unusable punishment and constitutionally impermissible.

In June of 2012, The Supreme Court agree to review Evan’s case and one of another EJI client from Arkansas. After that was heard there was a constitutional ban on mandatory life-without-parole sentences imposed on children convicted of homicides.

No child accused of any crime could automatically sentenced to die in prison.

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, nearly 2000 people condemned to life to die in prison when they were children have been resentenced and have a chance to go home. Nearly 200 people previously sentenced to death in prison as juveniles have been released.

“We continued our work on issue involving children by pursing more cases. I believe that no child under the age of eighteen should be housed with adults in jails or prisons…I am also convinced that very young children should never be tried in adult court. No child of twelve, thirteen or fourteen can defend him or herself in the adult criminal justice system. Wrongful convictions and illegal trials involving young children are too common.“

Because of the changes in the laws by the supreme court and children being sentenced to life without parole, Joe and Ian were released after serving a few more years. Antonio’s judge in Orange County attempted to change his sentence to 175 years instead of life. Bryan had to go back appellate court to get that sentence reduced to something reasonable. Antonio has a chance to be released. Trina’s sentence was reduced and she is eligible to be released.

In other cases in Louisiana, Bryan was able to secure the release of Robert who spent 45 years in prison for a non-homicide crime when he was sixteen. He was the first person to be release because of the Supreme Court’s ban on death-in-prison sentences for juvenile lifers. Joshua, also from Louisiana, was granted release after serving fifty year in prison.

I know this his just one side of the equation. But it is so heart breaking what these children and so many others were put through. I am sure there are some flat out criminal children out there, but I would venture to guess that most juvenile criminals are coming from a not great place or are battling some mental health issues. They need our help not our condemnation.

Once again, I am so thankful to Bryan and EJI for battling for these kids and getting laws changed for future generations.

Part 3: Our broken system and women Part 4: Our broken system and racism