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January/Feb 2008 A new bill HB 4384 is filed and it is worse that HB 1695, which shows that all the conversations we attempted to have responsibly with the advocates for the juvenile killers feel on absolutely deaf ears. Instead of review for possible release for a killer sentenced to Life Without Parole after 20 years as HB 1695 did, this bill would allow release after only 10. Calls to the bill's sponsor on behalf of the victims of these killers have not been returned. Last year the bill's sponsor, Rep. Robert Molaro promised to meet with us before moving forward with the legislation, so we continue to hope for the conversations between the bill's sponsors and the advocates for these killers, and their brutalized victims. Worst of all, the hundreds of victims families of these killers have STILL not been notified that the life without parole sentences they were promised for the killers of their family members are being proposed to be retroactively undone, despite a Constitutional amendment here in Illinois that says all victims have a right to be notified of all matters related to their cases. Trying to change a life without parole sentence retroactively without allowing the crime victims voices to be heard in the discussion of that proposed legislation. The Bill's sponsor has promised a transparent process where victims voices are included. Yet the hearing date has been set for Wed, Feb 27 in Springfield. No effort has been made that we know of to find and invite the victims families of the 103 juvenile lifers. The bill's sponsor has several options - ask the Department of Corrections to send a notice to all the families, or ask all the States Attorneys' offices to do the same. We offer this caveat however: victims will be most likely very upset to hear this news and should be told very carefully - very sensitively, and emotional support and counseling should be offered in accompaniment to this notice.
March 7, 2007 Summary: There's a bill before the Illinois House Juvenile Justice Reform Committee, HB1695 (in 2008 this bill is HB 4384), to give juvenile offenders who received Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentences the opportunity for early release. The original version of the bill proposed that an "Application for Review and Assessment" would be submitted to and reviewed by a three member panel of the Prisoner Review Board (PRB) along with other documentation provided by the Department of Corrections and the panel would decide whether the inmate would be eligible for parole. The application may be made annually and if found eligible for parole, it is likely that the parole hearings could be held annually, as well. Our concerns about the horrific impact annual parole hearings would have on victims' families seems to have had an effect. Currently, the bill's sponsor has agreed to re-write it and to take into account some of our concerns. We are working with the Cook County State's Attorney's office, who also opposes this bill. We have had many conversations with legislators, representatives of the John Howard Association who started this legislative action, members of another coalition of organizations that is looking at this issue from a more measured and thoughtful perspective, and the bill's sponsor. At the thought of opening a Pandora's Box of incensed victims, some supporters of the bill have been attempting to negotiate its contents. The bill was heard in committee with victim testimony on March 15. The final testimony and committee vote will be on March 22, 2007. The bill will affect over 100 inmates and all the families of their crimes, including the murderer of our family members Nancy Bishop-Langert, who was pregnant at the time, and her husband, Richard, in 1990. Update after the committee hearing of March 15, 2007:
This is the profile of the juvenile LWOP inmates that has been created by the researchers behind the advocates for the bill:
We have begun to learn more about the larger picture of those serving LWOP when they committed their very serious crimes between the ages of 14-18. All of them are convicted murderers, many of them are multiple murderers or aggravated murders combined with other felony offenses such as drug dealing and gang-related activity, though some were sentenced under the accountability theory. We will advocate for the following in any discussion of a bill of this nature: 1. All of the 103/104 victims families in these cases should be found and notified immediately (in a victim sensitive manner) of discussions in the state legislature to possibly consider retroactively changing a sentence that the victims families were told would never be changed - a life without parole sentence. There are not that many cases involved here - not compared to the 48,000 some incarcerated inmates in the total IDOC population. Resources necessary to find and notify these families would be relatively minimal. To date, the advocates for HB 1695 are the only ones in the state that know for sure who all 103/104 cases are and who the victims were in each case. And though we are sure that it would take more time and effort to find those victims families, we have asked them to get to work on that as a most immediate priority, and we have offered to be of assistance in any way that we can in that regard. 2. Victims families that have to travel or take off work should be able to receive support in order to be enabled to participate in these discussions, if they so desire. Victims should also receive counseling and therapeutic support if needed for the consequential emotional traumas that may result from this process. 3. Annual parole reviews and the involvement of the Prisoner Review Board in this process are not an option. The impact of such a process on victims' families in unthinkable. Only appellate courts of law or the Executive Clemency process are appropriate places for such decisions to change sentences. Only there are Due Process rights served. Only there can the protection of the rights of all sides to be heard take place. And only there are the decision-makers accountable to the general public. Whatever process the advocates for HB1695 propose, we will insist that victims' rights are respected and enforced. Remember, every one of these cases has already had full review in the judicial branch in thorough trials and appeals. 4. Resources must be made available to victims to help them obtain records from their cases and any other legal documents they may need to make a case against the release of the offender in their case. And this may likely require legal counsel for the families. Remember, because there was often no foreseen need to obtain transcripts or records, and because many victims were not even given the option to present Victim Impact Statements, these records do not even exist. 5. Some of us believe that juvenile LWOP should only be used in the rarest and most extreme of cases. There is a very large and significant difference between a 17 year old that plots and personally and maliciously carries out a multiple homicide, and a 14 year old sentenced to LWOP under "accountability theory" in which they were only an accomplice on the periphery of the crime. Though we never claim to speak for all victims, many of us believe that LWOP for juveniles under the accountability theory is not an appropriate sentence. And many of us believe that LWOP for a 14 year old seems far less defensible than for a 17 year old. But LWOP is appropriate as a sentence for the "worst of the worst" in those rarest of circumstances. We await the release of more details about these 103/104 cases before making judgments about their individual merits. But the number of cases seems very small compared to prison populations as a whole and, from what we are hearing, most of the crimes are extremely serious. 6. We would not oppose any efforts to eliminate juvenile LWOP as a sentence going forward, or prospectively, if that is what the citizens of Illinois as represented by their legislators decide, and if legal, as that would not have any effect on victims families currently. While prosecutors may be able to make a strong case for the need to keep this sentence as an option in the most serious of cases, that is not an issue on which we will make a stand. But we have heard legal opinions telling us that retroactivity may be mandatory in any bill that reduces sentences for offenders. 7. Much of what the advocates for HB1695 are basing their argument on is the fact that the United States Supreme Court ruled a few years ago that juveniles are not eligible for the death penalty, largely based on international human rights standards, evolving social norms here at home, and brain research that shows that the frontal lobe is not fully formed until the age of above 20, thereby hampering long term judgment and impulse control. However, already major articles are being written in the neuroscience field that argue that this brain research is being way over-applied to matters like criminal culpability. There has been significant debate denouncing this in sources as respected as the New York Times Magazine. Scientists cite this as an example of over-reaching: if a lack of full frontal lobe development is to "blame" then how does one explain the fact that most teens are relatively well-behaved, and in Europe do not commit violent murders at rates even close to the United States. If the brain development were to "blame" then murder rates amongst teens should be generally the same world wide, and they dramatically of course, are not. We will ask that the advocates for retroactive sentencing reduction for JLWOP cases in Illinois make their case on strong enough evidence to justify the damage they may do to the lives of the victims families and the community. We have not seen that evidence yet. 8. We fully understand those who believe that JLWOP is a human rights violation. Many of us are strong advocates for human rights, and in fact, understand it more personally and profoundly than most because of the nature of the crimes against us. We ask not to be treated as opponents of human rights as we advocate for victims rights. We plead with all those who care about Human Rights, as we deeply do, both advocates and legislators, to understand that victims' rights are human rights as well. To try to address matters of Human Rights questions in sentencing juveniles who are guilty of extremely serious murders, advocates and legislators cannot allow themselves to be willing to ignore or behave irresponsibly with the impact that any process of retroactive sentence reduction would have on victims. To do so would be nothing short of Machiavellian of them - willing to justify any means necessary to accomplish their goal. We often hear our fellow victims say things like this: It just simply hardly makes sense at all that some would care more deeply about the rights of a guilty murderer who, even though they were very young, chose to do what they did; than the well-being of the innocent victims who never chose what devastated their lives forever and can never be returned. One caveat we would like to throw out to the families and loved ones of these 103/104 cases: We know that many of you have been through absolute hell with the crime and incarceration, and through the consequences of the choices that these young offenders made. And we hope that we can always find common ground because we do, actually, have a lot in common. One thing, however, that is particularly hard for victims to hear is, "We are victims, too." The word "victim," as we use it here, is a legal term referring to a crime victim. To have it appropriated by those who are trying to equate their experience, painful as it is, as the family member of a perpetrator of a crime can be re-traumatizing and insensitive to crime victims and their families. We hope, however, that we can work to be of support to one another when possible. Here is a "smell test" - compare the resources given to prisoners and victims. Compare the advocates for victims versus prisoners. Compare the support systems of victims versus prisoners. In nearly all cases, you will find that, even though offender resources may need improvement to keep pace with the crime rate, offenders receive far more attention and absorb many more resources than victims in our legal system. FINALLY, the bill has been held for a vote in committee until March 22, 2007, with the promise of the sponsor that he would gut and seriously amend what he quite reasonably acknowledged to be serious problems in the scope and methodology of the bill. We are grateful for all the legislators who took time to listen to us this week and genuinely tried to understand our position. We urge everyone to stay in active contact with the members of this legislative committee, listed below, as to their feelings about what the bill proposes. While we are willing to work with supporters of HB1695 to help minimize the trauma their work will have on victims and their families, we would more prefer that the bill not be passed out of committee for this session because it is premature and problematic.
What supporters of HB1695 are saying: Our response to these documents
Link to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International denouncing all Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences. We call upon HRW and AI to meet and dialogue with victims rights advocates about how better to integrate victims rights and understanding the issues involved with victims into this report, which we feel fails to adequately understand the victims issues in the larger question, and in fact treats victims in this report in only the most token and shallow of ways. Why We Oppose It: Another organization that has made a commitment to victim rights and notification is studying the juvenile LWOP issue and taking a more measured approach. We support their efforts and are cooperating with them as they brought us to the table early in the process in an honorable and proactive show of concern and sensitivity. HB1695 will jeopardize the work of this other organization and make a better solution impossible. Nowhere in the bill is there any acknowledgement of the victims' right to be notified as there is throughout the statutes that it would amend. This is an egregious oversight that must be remedied before any such legislation should be considered. The bill will effectively create another 100+ prisoners eligible for parole that will need to receive reviews from the Prisoner Review Board (PRB) and will place these inmates in a class with the C# inmates that prison reform activists have been complaining about for decades. Illinois is a no parole state and has been since the 1970's. The small percentage of inmates who are still eligible for parole (approximately 300 C# prisoners) are remnants of a previous sentencing structure. To reintroduce parole for these offenders is to take a step backward and move away from the determinate sentencing model that is currently used. By introducing parole for an additional 100+ inmates, the State will be sentencing the families of those against whom the crimes were committed to a lifetime of parole hearings, perhaps annually, and the State will essentially be breaking the contract with those families that was begun at the time of sentencing. We already know how devastating and traumatizing attending parole appeal hearings can be on families. The legislature must be mindful of the consequences of their actions as they affect victims and families. Passing HB1695 would open the law up to a constitutional challenge. In order to essentially re-sentence and reclassify these inmates, due process must be followed. It is our opinion that this cannot be done without a complete re-hearing of the case in order to properly involve all parties. As we have already found out twenty years after the fact, witnesses, evidence, testimony, and transcripts are no longer available for a fair trial or sentencing hearing to be held. In an effort to address an issue that legislators feel is important, it is entirely likely that the law they pass will be illegal. Have the sponsors of this bill been advised on the constitutionality of this proposal? We, as victims of crime, do recognize that imposing LWOP sentences of juvenile offenders can be problematic from a human rights perspective. Especially if those sentences are imposed for certain lesser offenses than capital murder or particularly heinous crimes by particularly dangerous individuals. Nevertheless, there will always be those who, whether apprehended as juveniles or as adults, must always be incarcerated for the rest of their lives for reasons of public safety and the interest of justice. To that end, we would propose the following solution to this issue:
What We Need You To Do: ATTEND the committee hearings in Springfield, if you are able. We will post the date, time, and meeting room here as soon as we know it. WRITE letters to the bill's sponsor and the members of the Juvenile Justice Reform Committee. Here is suggested language in for you to copy and paste into your own computer and modify as you see fit. See contact information below. CALL the offices of the bill's sponsor and the members of the Juvenile Justice Reform Committee to politely but firmly express your opposition to this bill using the talking points provided in the draft letter and our letter to the PRB. See contact information below. CONTACT others who are interested in helping with this issue and get them to write and call, as well. If you know anyone who would be directly affected by this legislation, have them contact us immediately. Who to Contact: Call, write, FAX the legislators below to express your opposition to HB1695. Members of the House Juvenile Justice Reform Committee:
http://www.pjstar.com/stories/031507/TRI_BCLC5GQP.045.php Family: Youth's life sentence should stand By MOLLY PARKER of the Journal Star PEORIA - In October 1990, a judge promised the family of slain Richard and Nancy Langert that the 16-year-old boy who killed them would go to prison for life without the possibility of parole. That promise now faces a significant hurdle as prisoner rights groups push a measure in Springfield that would allow any inmate sentenced before he or she turned 18 the right to petition the Illinois Prisoner Review Board for a parole hearing. The force behind the bill is the increasingly powerful Chicago based John Howard Association of Illinois, which has stepped up lobbying efforts in recent months for prison reforms and was most recently credited with defeating the reappointment of former Peoria Police Chief John Stenson because critics claimed he was too "harsh" in parole cases. Nancy Langert's cousin, Kathy Becker of rural Peoria County, is fighting back. She sent a letter to all Illinois House members who belong to the Juvenile Justice Reform committee, which is expected to vote today on HB1695. If the measure passes the committee, it would move for a full vote on the House floor. "Maybe there are some cases that are mismanaged," Becker said. "But the judge assured them, this will never come up for parole, this kid is not going to be on the streets. He bragged he would try to kill somebody else." That kid is David Biro - inmate B19453 at Stateville Correctional Center. He turns 35 in May. Seventeen years ago, Biro broke into the Winnetka home of Lee Bishop, formerly of Pekin, and his wife, Joyce. The parents weren't home, but their 25-year-old daughter Nancy and her husband Richard, 30, were house sitting. Biro was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole for killing the couple and their unborn child. "Why should you ever have to go to a parole hearing to say, 'Why are you even considering this?' Look what this did to our family," Becker said. But advocates of the measure argue that a patchwork of laws regarding minors and murder convictions have created the unintended consequence of locking away young offenders for life, even if they were acting as an accomplice. Any minor at least 15 years of age involved in a double murder is automatically transferred to adult court, and if found guilty, sentenced to life without parole. "It was the convergence of laws that ended up with this result, but none of them were necessarily thought through to end up with this result," said Malcolm Young, executive director of the John Howard Association of Illinois. There are currently about 100 Illinois inmates who fall under this category, Young said, and their crimes vary in severity. Jennifer Bishop of Winnetka, the sister of the murdered woman, said she believes some of these cases should be looked at - particularly when the youth sentenced was not the actual perpetrator - but worries the association is trying to push through sloppy legislation in a hurry without regard to victims' families. "There's a serious debate about whether minors should ever be sentenced to life without parole. It's a very serious question. I get the question. I get the debate," she said. "I'm a 25-year high school teacher. I have two teenagers." Murderers like Biro should not have the right to a parole hearing, she said. Young, though, says it's impossible to separate cases and grant parole review rights to some but not others. He conceded that perhaps the legislation - sponsored by Rep. Robert Molaro, D-Chicago - should be adjusted to limit how often a prisoner could petition for review. The legislation currently would allow it yearly, he said. Young said he understands that it will not be easy on victims promised that they would not have to deal with parole requests. "But some people feel that sentencing someone for something they did as a child to life without the possibility of parole is a human rights violation and was not a wise promise." Young also noted that the right to petition for parole does not mean parole will be granted. Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons said he will fight the measure. Over the last several months, Lyons has become increasingly critical of the Prisoner Review Board, saying they have taken an "anti victim approach to doing things." Lyons pointed to several local cases that have fueled his frustration, from the denied reappointment of Stenson to the release of Johnny Lee Savory, convicted in 1975 of the double murder of two Peoria County teens, to a recent controversy about why the board did not notify Peoria resident Bessie Volturno that one of the men convicted of murdering her husband had been freed. "They pat themselves on the back and anoint themselves as holy representatives of the vast American public and my response would be to say nothing could be further from the truth," Lyons said. Molly Parker can be reached at 686-3285 or mparker@pjstar.com.
March 16, 2007 BY ADRIANA
COLINDRES
From the Winnetka Talk, Winnetka, IL New bill might parole
criminals And the family's response to this article: To the Editor:
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