Sara in Prison in Alaska for Killing Her Baby
Locked Away Forever The Instance Against Juvenile Life Without Parole
Past Pat Arthur and Brittany Star Armstrong
There are more than 2,000 child offenders serving life without parole (LWOP) sentences in United states prisons for crimes committed before the age of 18.
one The United States is one of only a few countries in the globe that permits children who commit crimes to be sentenced to prison forever, without any possibility of release.2 Just viii states in this country – Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New United mexican states, New York, and West Virginia – and the District of Columbia prohibit life without parole for youthful offenders.
Unfortunately, adolescents,like adults, commit horrible crimes and make terrible mistakes. And, like adults, they should be held accountable – but in accordance with their historic period, stage of development, and greater capacity for rehabilitation. A sentence of life in prison is excessively harsh for such young people, many of whom were themselves victims of abuse or fail.
An estimated 26 percent of juveniles sentenced to prison for life were convicted of a felony murder, that is, for participating in a robbery or burglary during which a co-participant committed murder, in some cases without the cognition of the teen.3 Fifty-nine percent of youth sentenced to LWOP are serving time for a first-time law-breaking.4 In 26 states, the judgement of life without parole is mandatory for anyone, fifty-fifty a juvenile, who is found guilty of committing first degree murder.
The disproportionate use of this sentence on youth of color is extreme. Nationwide, black youth are sentenced to LWOP at a rate 10 times greater than white youth.5 In California, 158 of the 180 people serving LWOP for crimes committed before the age of 18 are youth of color.half-dozen Blackness youth in California are 22.5 times more likely to receive a life without parole sentence than white youth.seven
Juveniles sentenced to LWOP often receive ineffective assistance of counsel during pre-trial and plea proceedings, and at trial and sentencing.8 For example, a federal district courtroom judge in Washington state found that Donald Lambert, who at the age of 16 plead guilty to aggravated first degree murder and received a mandatory life sentence, was not provided constitutionally adequate representation.nine Yet, Lambert is serving life without parole at the Walla Wall State Penitentiary in Washington state. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected on technical grounds the grant of habeas corpus relief by the district court.10
A juvenile sentenced to LWOP in Michigan in 1989 for felony murder describes his representation this manner:
I did non meet my attorney at all. I called his function and no one accepted the calls. He never visitedme. I never had any kind of interview nearly the criminal offense, I never even talked to him near the crimes. I seen him 1 fourth dimension at a hearing that lasted about five minutes, so I seen him twice IN THE Courtroom ROOM at trial that was a two twenty-four hours trial and then I seen him moments before I was to exist sentenced. When I seen him before the sentence information technology was in the bullpen backside the courtroom and he told me there that Id be getting natural life. I kept asking him when I'd be going dwelling, but some other inmate explained it all to me. He never asked me if I fifty-fifty did the law-breaking. I didn't know anything nearly the police or that he was supposed to comand see me during the trial. I went through a murder trial at the age of 15 with out ever talking to my chaser.11
In other legal contexts, youth are not treated as having the same capacity equally adults. For case, they are not considered responsible enough to enter into contracts, to vote, to marry, or to leave school. Yet, in virtually states, they are presumed every bit fully responsible as an adult for purposes of the criminal process – they can plead guilty, go through complicated legal proceedings, and be sent to prison house to dice – without regard to their age and macerated capacity.
A Growing Campaign to Stop Sentencing Juveniles to Life Without Parole
In light of the contempo recognition by the U.S. Supreme Courtroom that juveniles should not be held to the same standard of criminal culpability as adults,12 the emptying of juvenile life without parole sentences is becoming an increasingly important subject of juvenile justice reform.13 Children's advocates, religion-based groups, human rights advocates, juvenile justice experts, families of juveniles serving LWOP sentences, and fifty-fifty the victims of serious crimes have joined together in voicing their disagreement with the use of LWOP to punish youth who "are not yet the persons they will become."14 The advocacy is supported by growing public opposition to the utilize of LWOP on juveniles. A poll conducted of Americans on the Westward Declension found that 86 percent disagree with the idea that children who commit crimes are then beyond redemption that they should be locked upwards for the rest of their lives without any opportunity to e'er earn their release.15
Litigation and legislative efforts to eliminate juvenile LWOP sentences are underway and in various stages of planning in several states, including Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, California and Washington state. The Colorado Legislature just recently enacted a law that eliminates the future use of LWOP sentences on juveniles.16 In Mississippi and Washington, the NAACP Legal Defense force & Educational Fund, Inc. is focusing advocacy and research efforts on the racial disparities in LWOP sentencing. The Juvenile Justice Committee of the Criminal Justice Department of the American Bar Clan is working on a proposed Bar Resolution regarding juvenile LWOP.
The media are paying greater attending to this unfair sentencing practise. Media coverage is providing more consummate portraits of the juveniles who have been sent to prison for life.17
Internationally, many are working to call attending to the use of LWOP sentences to punish juveniles in the United States, a do that violates the Convention on the Rights of the Kid, the International Nib of Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The sentencing of youth to life without parole was included in a juvenile justice resolution adopted past the Human being Rights Commission in Geneva in 2005. Human Rights Watch has made submissions calling for the emptying life without parole sentences for juveniles to the Committee confronting Torture, the Human Rights Commission, and to the UN Secretary-General's Written report on Violence confronting Children. A petition has been submitted on behalf of kid offenders sentenced to life without parole to the United states Inter-American Court on Human Rights showing how this cruel sentencing exercise of violates principles of international law.xviii
All involved in the campaign to stop the sentencing of children to die in prison are deeply motivated by the life stories of these truly discarded children and believe deeply in their chapters for rehabilitation.
Pat Arthur is a senior attorney at NCYL, specializing in juvenile justice reform. Brittany Starr Armstrong interned at NCYL in summer 2006 as an Arthur Liman Public Involvement Fellow. She is in her kickoff year of police school at Academy of San Francisco Law Schoolhouse.
Footnotes:
1 The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Kid Offenders in the The states, Human Rights Sentinel and Immunity International, Oct, 2005, p.i, available at: hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/
2 Id. at v.
3 Id. at 27.
4 Id. at 28.
five Id. at two.
6 National Center for Youth Law interview with Alison Parker (Human Rights Watch author of The Remainder of Their Lives), March 2, 2006.
7 The Rest of Their Lives, at 40.
8 Encounter e.g. Miles Moffeit and Kevin Simpson, Judges in Both Cases Troubled by End Results, Denver Post, February. 21, 2006; Ken Armstrong, Florangela Davila, Justin Mayo, "For Some, Free Counsel Comes at High Cost, Seattle Times, April four, 2004, available at: seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/unequaldefense/
stories/one/
9 Lambert 5. Blodgett, 248 F.Supp. 2d 988 (E.D. Wash. 2003), aff'd in function, rev'd in office, 393 F. 3d 943 (9th Cir. 2004), cert.denied, 126 S. Ct. 484 (2005).
10 Lambert v. Blodgett, 393 F.3rd 943 (9th C ir.2004)
eleven Second Chances: Juveniles Serving Life without Parole in Michigan Prisons (ACLU of Michigan, 2004), p. 16, available at: www.aclumich.org/pubs/juvenilelifers.pdf.
12 Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) (juvenile expiry penalty violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment).
13 Relying on neuroscience and psychological research, the Court in Roper found that youth tend to make "impetuous and sick-considered decisions," they accept "susceptibility to negative influences and exterior pressures," and the nature of their grapheme traits is "transitory," making their capacity for rehabilitation greater than that of adults. Id. at 569-570.
xiv Naovarath v. State, 779 P.2d 944, 944 (Nev. 1989), cited in Nina Chernoff and Marsha Levick, "Beyond the Death sentence: Implications of Adolescent Evolution Research for the Prosecution, Defense, and Sanctioning of Youthful Offenders, Clearinghouse REVIEW Periodical of Poverty Law and Policy, July-Baronial 2005, at.212.
15 National Center for Youth Police interview with Alison Parker (Human Rights Watch author of The Remainder of Their Lives), March 2, 2006.
16 206 Colo. Legis. Ch. 228 (West).
17 For example, the Denver Post ran an in-depth series highlighting the farthermost concrete, emotional, and sexual abuse suffered during babyhood of many juveniles serving LWOP sentences. Miles Moffeit and Kevin Simpson, "Teen Crime, Developed Fourth dimension," Denver Mail service, Feb. 17, 2006, available at: www.denverpost.com/teencrime. See also: www/denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/
print_article.jsp?article=3636564.
18 Petition is bachelor from National Center for Youth Law.
National Centre for Youth Police (NCYL) Senior Chaser Pat Arthur is working with Human being Rights Watch, private law firms, and a number of other organizations to end the do of sentencing kid offenders to life without parole.
Every bit part of this initiative, NCYL and other advancement organizations are working to eliminate life without the possibility of parole as a sentencing choice in California and Washington state for youth who commit a crime while under the age of 18.
NCYL is likewise part of an effort to create a national coalition for coordinating advancement to ban this sentencing around the country. The advocates in this coalition take heart in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roper 5. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) because it acknowledges fundamental differences between adults and children that brand egregiously harsh sentencing disproportionate and unnecessary.
Roy Ayala was sentenced in California to serve life without the possibility of parole for a murder committed during the course of a robbery. He is Latino and was 17 at the time of the crime. He was then homeless and addicted to morphine. His dad shell him—sometimes to the point of unconsciousness. He had left dwelling house at 13 and "lived mostly on the streets." As he puts it, "I was "searching for direction in the wrong crowd." Now, at 26, he is "praying for a 2d chance to alive my life back in society someday."1 He has attempted suicide in the by. In prison, he writes verse and reads a lot, but is otherwise idle all 24-hour interval. He receives no education or programming. He recently wrote the poem, featured on the facing page, about his life.
Sara Kruzan grew up in Riverside, California. She is bi-racial. She was raised by her mother, a Caucasian, who was fond to drugs and abusive to Sara. Sara was placed in foster care as a teen. Sara has met her African-American begetter only three times in her life because he has been in prison serving time for serious felony convictions.
Since the age of nine, Sara has suffered from severe depression for which she has been hospitalized several times. She has attempted suicide on multiple occasions.
At historic period xi, Sara met a 31-year-old man named "Yard.Thousand." Soon after they met, G.K. molested Sara, and soon began training her to become a prostitute. At historic period 13, Sara began working as a prostitute for G.Thou. Sara had merely turned 16 when she was bedevilled of killing G.M. Sara had never before been arrested. Sara says a friend of her then-boyfriend who was much older and a rival of G.Yard. was involved in the murder but never prosecuted. Sara was tried as an adult, and sentenced to the rest of her life in prison, even though the California Youth Authorization (CYA) determined that she was "amenable to the training and handling" they offered.2 In its evaluation of Sara,the CYA concluded:
[Sara] appears to be motivated to make positive changes in her life and has expressed a desire to participate in Youth Authority programming rather than be sent to country prison. With respect to the referring offense [the killing of 1000.G.], information technology is recognized that the offense was peculiarly callous and premeditated. However, it is noted that her male person co-offender was considerably older than Sara and she was strongly vulnerable to exploitation by him. The psychiatric evaluation submitted past Dr. Sneed concludes that she is treatable.
Sara is now 28. Equally she says, "The way I retrieve now is very dissimilar than the way I idea so."three In prison, Sara does whatever she tin to keep upward her hope. "I survive in here spiritually. I tin can't give up.I read. I do whatever I can to be a better person."four
ane National Center for Youth Police force interview of Roy Ayala, at Folsom Prison, Repressa, California, Jan 25, 2006.
2 Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, filed on September 12, 2005, in the California Supreme Court Case No. S137142 (Exhibit 2).
iii National Eye for Youth interview of Sara Kruzan, Primal California Women's Facility, Chowchilla California, Jan 25, 2006.
4 Id.
Source: https://youthlaw.org/publication/locked-away-forever-the-case-against-juvenile-life-without-parole/
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