IL Juvenile LWOP
Home Up HBs 1695 & 4384 JLWOP Names Brain Overclaim Nat'l SEARCH JLWOP Victims

We know that the issue of Juveniles who kill is a profoundly complex and troubling one on all sides of the question. The discussion that is happening right here in Illinois may be very indicative of where the conversation will go nationally and is a very nuanced one.

For the most and best information about killers under age 18 sentenced to life go to the
National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers
www.jlwopvictims.org

Thanks to the work and commitment of Illinois Victims families of these juvenile murderers serving life sentences, we are setting the standard for how victims should be included in the sentencing reform questions nationally.

Contents of this page:

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The Supreme Court takes up JLWOP for non-murder

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A case update from offender advocates
 

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The national SocialistWorker.org takes up the case of a JLWOP case in Illinois who may be innocent - but the article also really misses the mark!
 

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A meeting was held March 25, 2008 between victims families and HB 4384's sponsor - good news for victims!
 

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Spring 2008 - HB 4384 could free horrific killers sentenced to life- Victims of these crimes have not been notified that the "juvenile lifers" that killed their family members could be freed and instead sentence victims families to a lifetime of parole hearings - take action and call or write NOW
 

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Chicago Tribune lead Sunday editorial supports every point we have been making about juvenile LWOP
 

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John Kass writes two columns about the ill-advised effort to potentially free JLWOP killers and their forgotten victims families
 

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Read coverage of the reaction to the Juvenile LWOP report in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times
 

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Download a pdf of our press release about the report (released Feb 2008) - "CATEGORICALLY LESS CULPABLE" calling for release opportunities for multiple murderers who were under 18 at the time of their horrific crimes
 

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Read the initial list of flaws we found in this report, find a link to the report, read media analysis of their release
 

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Click here to read about the victims and cases of the JLWOP killers
 

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A new bill HB 4384 (Worse than HB 1695!) is filed in January 2008 in Springfield by Representative Robert Molaro that would bring back parole for some of the worst killers in the state who were sentenced to life without parole
 

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The nationwide search for victims families of killers sentenced to life for crimes committed before the age of 18 (JLWOP)
 

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Bloggers around the nation address the issue of JLWOP
 

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Download this PDF "one pager" on the current legislative threats to Life and long term prison sentences
 

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Read our OpED submitted to the Chicago Tribune after they published two stories that only told one side - that of the killer serving life for the most heinous crimes committed before the age of 18
 

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The bill in Illinois that could potentially free extremely violent and mass murderers sentenced to life - without notification to the victims families that retroactive changes to "no parole" sentences was even possible
 

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A Statement on JLWOP by IllinoisVictims.org
 

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A History of HB 1695 - legislation to possible release "Juvenile Lifers" in Illinois
 

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Media coverage of the JLWOP issue
 

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Insights on working with JLWOP victims from other states
 

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Opposition to Life Without Parole for "Juvenile Offenders" from human rights organizations 
 

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Brain Overclaim Syndrome - a problem for some advocates against juvenile life
 

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The solution is prevention and early intervention when it comes to juveniles committing crimes

The United States Supreme Court has granted certiorari to rule on the constitutionality of life prison terms for teens who commit crimes other than murder. Note that all of Illinois' juvenile lifers are in prison for murder convictions. 

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/court-to-rule-on-long-juvenile-sentences/

See www.jlwopvictims.org for more information!

From the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of "Children":
Legal u
pdates of note
: In Illinois, although Marshan Allen (juvenile sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole for accountability in double-homicide when he was 15) won a new sentencing hearing in the trial court via a post-conviction petition. The state appealed the judge's ruling before the sentencing hearing. The appellate court affirmed the trial court's ruling that Marshan should have a new sentencing hearing. The state is no requesting the Illinois Supreme Court review the appellate court's ruling. The supreme court does not have to take the case. 

Also in Illinois, Addolfo Davis (14 yr old sentenced to life on accountability for triple homicide) was denied a new sentencing hearing in the trial court. He appealed and the case was affirmed on appeal. He is now seeking an appeal in the IL Supreme Court. As in Marshan's case, the supreme court does not have to take the case. 

A note of thanks to all of our friends from the bottom of our hearts! The calls and letters being sent to Springfield opposing HB 4384, standing up for the safety of our community, and the needs of victims have been just more touching than words can say! The public will on this matter is clear - victims families should not be put through parole hearings for the rest of their lives every year in order to try to free killers sentenced to natural life.

HB 4384 is no longer a threat to victims families!

The news March 25, 2008 is good. Victims families were heard- for the FIRST time since advocates for juvenile killers two years ago in Illinois started the effort to potentially free them. For that we thank Committee Chair Rep. Robert Molaro for making sure we were finally able to speak.

And not surprisingly, once the victims families present that came to tell their incredibly powerful stories of death and trauma, and were heard by those who supported the legislation to free these killers sentenced to natural life, the bill was sent back to the drawing board.

As we predicted.

What a waste all this has been. Waste of so much time, and money, and effort, and agony, and pain.

Representative Molaro is to be commended for his courage and his wisdom as the bill's sponsor for saying that he was wrong to not start with the victims last year and build a victim-sensitive approach from the start. He is a model of how to admit mistakes and begin anew. Staff from the John Howard Association would be well to follow his example.

At this meeting Rep. Molaro started over again - heard our voices, listened, and promised to follow up in the right way with whatever next steps they take.

Still no notice to the whole list of families, except for the families we recently found through the work of this website. But Rep Molaro agreed to respect principles of notification from this point forward. We hope to help see this happen in the near future.

We know that the defense lawyers and the prosecuting attorneys in the state can now focus on a serious conversation about some possible areas in legal technicalities about how certain young inmates move through the criminal justice system and look for ways to improve the process. We look forward to being able to be a part of that discussion, while safe in knowing that our loved ones' killers duly sentenced to natural life, are safely and permanently behind bars.

Representative Molaro told the John Howard Association's staff that wrote the bill that it was "off the table" as of now especially in these areas of concern:

1. No retroactivity!
2. No periodic review!
3. Victim notification promised!

Since John Howard's anti-victim position has for over the last year been the key problem, we were especially glad that they finally heard from the other experts what they have refused to hear from us.

We are gratified that everything we stood for in this conversation has been vindicated. We have in fact WON.

Thank you to the elected officials who stood with us - Mayor Daley, Representative Acevedo, Rep Beth Coulson, Rep. Chapin Rose, Rep. Dennis Reboletti, States Attorney Dick Devine, and many others.

Thank you to the media who supported victims, such as the Chicago treasure John Kass.

Thank you to the amazing law enforcement heroes, Kurt Kaner, Ron Holt, victims family members themselves, who spoke for us. And to the Illinois FOP for standing up against this bill - you are the ones who put your lives on the line every day to protect victims. Thank you for who you are and what you do.

Thanks most of all of our friends and family and supporters who were our "army" in Springfield with letters, phone calls; making possible the attention that was finally given to our voices.

The victims families of juvenile killers sentenced to natural life who dropped everything in their lives to come and speak and open their veins literally to share their pain - NOT an easy thing to do - are all heroes.

We are still angry that we had to do this, and that we had to take so much time to do something that the advocates for reform should have done from the start.

We call on the "Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children" to stop their recent anti-victim strategy and CHANGE THEIR WAYS with regards to the victims of these crimes. Resources, time and attention must be paid to the victims of these killers. We hope this process can now FINALLY begin.

It will not be easy for these advocates for the killers. They have already made huge mistakes. Their report was insultingly anti-victim and poorly written and published. They have refused up to now to do the work of notifying victims that we have asked for over the last year. They have not given a dime of their resources to the victims. Much of their approach has been insensitive and even openly at times arrogant. They must respect principles of Restorative Justice, admit and understand the harm they have caused, and now begin anew, or their project will be doomed to suffer the same fate as this ridiculously premature and ill-conceived legislation.

 

CONTACT the Bill's Sponsor and the Committee that would hear any future versions of this bill 

 

SUNDAY's CHICAGO TRIBUNE LEAD EDITORIAL SUPPORTS OUR POSITION ON JLWOP

www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0224edit1feb24,0,4718532.story 

ed note - Our position all along - JLWOP sentencing for younger killers should be (and IS) RARE, but occasionally, sadly, necessary. When the killer is one of those few "worst of the worst", the victims do not deserve to be sentenced themselves to a lifetime of parole hearings to keep the killer in prison. The sentencing law can be reformed to make it better, especially going forward. But not on the backs of victims, the entire leadership of our law enforcement and judicial system that worked so hard to apprehend and imprison these killers, and most of all, the public safety. The advocates of this bill have known this all along but have ignored everyone's advice and gone ahead with their reckless proposal, traumatizing victims families. HELP US DEFEAT HB 4384!
 
Chicago Tribune: Editorial 
Kids who kill 
February 24, 2008 
 
"The death penalty is not applied as often as it used to be, but one reason it retains more than 2-1 support among Americans is very simple: the fear that vicious murderers will someday be released from prison to kill again. The antidote to that fear is equally simple: sentencing such criminals to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Anyone who wants to abolish the death penalty, as this page does, has to be willing to assure the public that the worst murderers will never go free. 
 
That is obviously true for adult killers. But some people would prefer that the worst teenage killers face neither death nor life in prison. A new report by the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children proposes that Illinois abolish such sentences for juveniles, and a bill in the legislature would do exactly that. But it would be a mistake to eliminate the option in the rare cases where it may be justified. 
 
Currently, 103 Illinois inmates are serving life without parole for murders committed when they were younger than 18. Though the report refers to them as "children," they were not really children when they carried out their crimes. Illinois allows life without parole in some cases for teens as young as 13, but none of the current inmates was younger than 14, and 86 percent were 16 or 17. 
 
The slayings for which they were convicted are unusually serious ones. State law allows the sentencing of adolescents to life without parole only if the offender commits an exceptionally brutal murder, kills a police officer, prison employee, community policing volunteer or child younger than 12, or kills two or more people. 
 
The argument against life without parole is juveniles are not mature enough to be held fully accountable for their actions. The report says they are "more likely to engage in behavior without evaluating consequences, and more likely to be susceptible to peer pressure than adults because their brains are not fully formed." They are also said to be better candidates for rehabilitation. 
 
All those claims may be true. But other realities argue in favor of life without parole. Consider some of the crimes that elicited these sentences. One 17-year-old kidnapped and raped a 5-year-old girl before throwing her out of a 13th-floor window. Another 17-year-old participated in a gang rape of a teenage girl, whom he and his cohorts stabbed dozens of times before repeatedly running over her with a car. Someone capable of such monstrous conduct at such a young age may be beyond any hope of rehabilitation. 
 
Rehabilitation, in any case, is not the only point of prison. Even more important is preventing those who have preyed on their fellow citizens from doing so again. As punishment, life without parole may seem excessive. But as a protection for potential victims, it doesn't. If the priority is protecting innocent people, life sentences are sometimes the only prudent option. They also spare the families of victims repeated parole hearings where they must relive their horror. 
 
This is not to say there is no room for revision of the Illinois law -- perhaps, say, to exclude those who are accomplices rather than actual killers, or to get rid of mandatory life sentences in favor of letting judges make the decision in particular cases. But it would be reckless to outlaw this option. Some crimes cry out for it. "
 

JOHN KASS, renowned columnist for the Chicago Tribune writes TWO columns about JLWOP and Victims

Column Number One link to Tribune website where you can post and read comments from all over the nation
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-kass_20feb20,0,7018080.column

chicagotribune.com

Real victims of child killers will never get early release

John Kass

February 20, 2008

 

The same crowd that figured crooked George Ryan was owed a Nobel Prize for his opposition to the death penalty -- even though his corruption came with its own body count -- is at it again.

This time -- instead of trying to save the lives of murderers on Death Row while fitting puffy angel wings on Ryan's shoulders as the former governor prepared for his corruption trial -- some georgeryanistas have new victims to rescue.

Child killers.

Not just any child killers, but killers who've taken one or more lives while they were under 18, technically making them minors when they committed murder and now they're in prison for life and don't like it.

The Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children is pushing legislation to spring these convicted murderers, to give them parole hearings after 10 years behind bars, even though they've already been spared a death sentence by receiving life without parole.

The coalition wants to save 103 souls -- now get this -- because the killers are themselves the victims. The coalition argues that the murderers' brains weren't fully formed when they killed, that peer pressure forced them to end a life or lives, and that life without parole is unacceptable.

The coalition has even come out with a study to bolster their point of view -- that the prisoners were themselves victims of a cold and unfeeling America. They've got a legislative champion, State Rep. Robert Molaro, a Chicago Democrat, to carry water for these murderous victims of a callous (at least they didn't say capitalistic) society.

There's something not quite right about all of this. It smells.

Is this about helping an entire class of killers or just one? I don't know. If you do, please call the Chicago Tribune and let me know.

In their report -- "Categorically Less Culpable" -- the georgeryanistas put together a list of victims most affected by our indifferent imprisonment of youthful murderers.

You might think the victims were people who had their lives cut short on purpose.

These include kids who had their brains blown out, or their throats cut, or were shot in the back and died in their sister's arms or children who were raped and tossed out of windows.

Other, older victims were stalked, adults killed in their homes as they begged for their lives, the husband and the wife and their unborn child; or others, whose bodies were subjected to the invasion of the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun.

All of these were killed by teenagers. But according to the georgeryanistas, you'd be wrong if you thought the dead are the victims.

The main victims are the killers and their families who've been deprived of their love and comfort.

Under the heading, "Those most affected by juvenile lifers' crimes," are the families of those killers. They're listed first, above the families of the dead, which shows you where the real victims rank in the georgeryanista hierarchy.

"Those with whom we did speak told us how difficult it has been to cope with their family members' sentences," read the report. "Like the inmates, the family members said it was difficult to visit, because the prisons are far away."

That's terrible, not being able to visit as often as you wish. It's horrifying, to have loved ones so distant, kept against their will so they can't feel your loving embrace.

But there's another distance too. Death.

And whether you believe as many of us do, in heaven and hell, or if you're existential about it and think of the vast nothingness, the distance is still pretty damn far and there are no visits.

These are the real victims. And their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. They're victims too.

Should some sentences be reviewed? Yes. But by established practice, not through some blanket legislation forcing the families of the dead back into court every two years for parole hearings to relive the horror.

"Children are simply less culpable than adults," a coalition member was quoted as saying. "Because they are not yet fully formed, children are capable of change and rehabilitation and reform."

Perhaps. But their trigger fingers are fully formed. And their knife hand. And they know it's wrong to kill if you might get caught.

One of the killers eligible for parole under the Molaro plan is Johnny Freeman, who was three months shy of 18 when he grabbed 5-year-old Shavanna McCann at the Henry Horner Homes. He raped her and threw her from a 13-story window, as she screamed "Mama" before she fell in 1985.

In their arrogance, the georgeryanistas didn't include interviews with the families of the murdered in their report. We've spoken to two of those families, and I'll be writing a column about them soon.

"We'll be the ones on trial, again and again, every two years," said Ruben Pulido, whose 13-year-old son, an honor student, was murdered by a gangster on a bicycle. "Why do we have to be the ones on trial?"

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jskass@tribune.com

Kass Column Number Two link to Tribune where you can post and read comments also from all over the nation www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-kass_05mar05,0,4523136.column

chicagotribune.com
Bill to free young killers suffers fatal shot of its own
John Kass

March 5, 2008

To the georgeryanistas of Illinois, I have some sad news.

They were pushing a bill to grant parole hearings to 103 teen killers -- meaning minors who were convicted of the most heinous murders and sentenced to life without parole.

But now, those teenage killers, growing old and impatient for freedom, have to wait.

"It's not going to happen," State Rep. Robert Molaro (D-Chicago), the bill's sponsor, told me Tuesday. "The bill isn't ready. I don't know if it will be withdrawn or tabled. Before we do anything, we need a lengthy hearing in which victims and their families can come forward and prosecutors can have their say.

"And even then, I don't know," Molaro said.

The Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children put out a report on those 103 cases, and considered the main victims to be the killers and the killers' families, rather than the real victims, the ones who were murdered.

How do we know this?

In the coalition's report, under the heading "Those most affected by juvenile lifers' crimes" were the families of the killers. The families of the dead came second.

"It's good news for us," said Melinda Pulido, mother of Ruben Pulido, who was 13 when he and his friend Mark Lopez were shot to death while on a neighbor's front porch in June 2000.

The killer, Robert Haynie, was 16. He rode up on a bicycle with a gun. He took orders from a gang chief, Juan Casillas, who thought the 13-year-olds were rival gang members. They weren't. They were athletes and good students who were kept away from the streets by their parents.

I sat recently at the Pulido family's dining-room table, with the sisters of Lopez. They showed me photographs of the boys, and they talked about how hard it had been to keep them away from gangs, and how proud they were that they had succeeded, until the boy on the bike was told to light them up.

They showed me a child's drawing that Ruben Pulido had made. It was a mini-poster against violence, showing a street with bungalows and a chalk outline of a boy's body on the sidewalk. It was Pulido's block. He didn't know the outline would be his own.

The killers on the bikes "literally blew out a bright light in this world," said Lopez's mother, Damaris. "God knows what he could have become. His dream was to be a lawyer, and ironically, they are the ones that are slapping him in the face."

When I wrote the original column on this topic, the georgeryanistas were furious. They had supported the former governor's death-penalty moratorium as he faced federal corruption charges that would land him in prison.

They were livid, accusing me of all manner of sins, human and journalistic.

Their PR spin concerned a young man convicted of murder simply for being a lookout in a crime, not the triggerman, and being sentenced to life behind bars. But we have appellate courts for such purposes. And we have another governor, perhaps also hoping to be seen as compassionate as the federal hammers begin to fall about him.

Should the killers be forgiven? Yes. If they repent.

But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished to the full extent of the law. I oppose the death penalty, but this bill merely makes it easier for death-penalty advocates to call for it once again.

Another death-penalty opponent is lawyer Jeanne Bishop, a Cook County public defender who worked with her sister, Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, and others on the issue. But they believe that life without parole means what it says for those who kill. They have a Web site, Illinoisvictims.org.

Their sister, Nancy Langert, and her husband, Richard, were murdered in their home in 1990 by David Biro of Winnetka. He was 16 at the time. He stole a gun from his lawyer, broke into the Langert home and shot Richard in the head. The three shots Nancy took to the abdomen killed her unborn child. Nancy lived for about 15 minutes.

Nancy tried to drag herself toward her husband, pulled down a bookshelf, found a hatchet and banged it, hoping someone would hear, said attorney John Corbett in a 1996 civil proceeding to stop Biro from ever cashing in on the publicity by selling his story.

With her husband dead, and life leaving her own body, she scrawled a heart in her own blood on the floor, and the letter "U" and died, Corbett said.

Biro is in his 30s now. He must want freedom badly.

The group hoping to free the teen killers "sees the world as they want it to be," said Bishop-Jenkins, "and I see the world as it is, and the world is full of irreparably dangerous people."

And before we reach with a broad sweep that could release many of the 103, we should consider the dead and the families of the dead.

"We know the nightmare isn't over yet," said Priscilla Pulido, sister of a murdered brother. "There are a lot of these people supportive of the killers. But anyone willing to let a murderer free is wrong in my book, Ryanistas or any other istas."

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jskass@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

 

FLAWS WE FOUND IN THE REPORT:
Categorically Less Culpable: Children Serving the Life Without the Possibility Of Parole Sentence in Illinois
Issued by the "Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children"

The Report can be viewed at the Northwestern Law School website

By Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins

ED. NOTE (Critique of the report is below):  Finally we can respond to a report that represents 18 months of agony for our family. Advocates who have shown only concern for the "rights" of killers, and not for the very real rights or lives of their innocent victims have given no effort at all to outreach to the families of the victims affected by their study.
 
We have been talking to them out of the deepest concern for the other victims families who have yet to be told of the work of this coalition.  We only knew about it because of a professional association one of us had at Northwestern Law school. The report is not what we were told at its inception it would be - it does not document anything about the 103 cases other than race, age, county and a small handful of anecdotal experiences of difficulties. They ended up not telling those stories because they found that almost all of them were guilty mass murderers with not much to recommend them for sympathetic re-evaluation. So the report, which was supposed to profile these 103 cases, gave no information about their crimes, their cases, or the patterns that these larger stories could tell. This report is an advocacy piece, plain and simple, filled with propagandistic and incomplete arguments, for guilty violent offenders who represent the worst of the worst in our criminal populations - at the expense of their innocent victims. 
 
The Coalition's message received wide coverage in the media. Media interviews on the day of the release of the report were exhausting and did not explain the problems with the report's recommendations in any coverage we saw. I was misquoted in several outlets  -I never said that parole might sometimes be acceptable - it would not be ever the way to address concerns over this sentence - and I never said all these cases would be death penalty eligible - and I never said I was not informed about the report - only that the other families were not - I never said the punishment should fit the crime. The number of times I was misquoted got tiring!
 
Its another conversation for another day, but when victims are under this kind of stress to begin with, the media needs to learn not only how to interview them, but the importance of getting it right when they report . . .
 
We did however enjoy viewing the overwhelming public support evidenced on the NBC5 news poll - should Juvenile killers sometimes be able to receive a life sentence? 78% were with us - that yes, it was sometimes appropriate.  22% said no. And blogging on the topic stood, thankfully, strongly on the side of victims and public safety and appropriate life sentences for guilty mass murderers.

We offer here some critique of the report. And we repeat - we believe in Restorative Justice. We want all offenders to acknowledge their wrong, make restitution where possible to their victims. We want all human beings to get better, to grow and to be able to do good, to have hope, to help others, and to make the most of their lives. We want human rights for all - free or in prison. We continue to work hard for that. And we promise to continue to converse responsibly, as we have been, with all who want to reform an imperfect system, as we do, and to help to bring understanding to the victims as well as the offenders.
 
We believe that honors systems in prisons for long term and life sentences should reward reformed prisoners so that they can move to lower security prisons for the remainder of their terms and have the chance to go to school, mentor other troubled youth, and still have some quality of life where they can still have a positive impact on the world. We want all that for all the juvenile lifers as well. We want anyone who has been wrongly or overly sentenced to use clemency and appeals to right the wrongs in their cases and we would work to support that. We also know that most of them must just honorably serve their sentences and if they rehabilitate during that time, and we do earnestly hope for that, then they should be given program opportunities in prison for a life that allows them to help others, make restitution to their victims, and earn some privileges in prison for the remainder of their sentences.  But the fact that most of these "juvenile lifers" are guilty and dangerous murderers who should spend the rest of their lives in prison is a fact acknowledged in the very report itself. 

See the JLWOP Names page for the only list of offenders and victims that the authors of this study have given us.  It is not complete and was only given to us a few months before the release of the report. We have asked for ALL of their information and it has not been forthcoming.
 
A PAGE BY PAGE critique of the report is below, first some general overall observations about some of the flaws we find with this report:
 
1. The use of the term "Children" to refer to these killers.
 
The report repeatedly references these juvenile killers as "children" because they are under 18 at the time of their offenses.  And though that may be technically allowed with some readings of international law, the common usage in America is that "children" are younger, even single digits, and that those 13-19 are called teenagers or adolescents, or in legal matters, juveniles. Almost all the offenders were either 16 or 17, and have killed multiple people. And though the report says just once (if you blink - you will miss it!) that no 13 year old has gotten the sentence, it repeatedly implies that because Illinois law has the potential to give life to a 13 year old (it never has), there are 13 year olds in Illinois serving life sentences. Casual reading of the report would have most walking away saying - how awful! 13 year olds.
 
But there are none. And there are hardly any 14 year olds (4). And almost no 15 year olds (12). The largest group (50) of them were 17 when they killed and many were within weeks of being 18. And there were 37 sixteen year olds.
 
In Illinois 17 year olds are treated as adults in sentencing and in the Department of Corrections.  Legally adults.
 
In some states adult is legally defined as 16 for many purposes. And we all know that 18 and 21 are legal definitions in many places for different kinds of things like being drafted, smoking, drinking, etc.  The report's citing of the "general age of majority" throughout the nation does not apply in this case. The law defines ages differently for differing legal purposes - for driving, voting, drinking, signing contracts, getting married, etc. Criminal law is no exception. These younger killers are legally defined as adults. And with most of them 16 or 17, to continually call them children just to provoke emotional response in the reader not only insults both the victims and the offenders, but drives a HUGE wedge into any reasonable conversation that we all might like to genuinely have on this troubling issue.
 
The definition of "adult" varies widely depending on what you are talking about. But when the law defines cold and calculated massive criminal behavior as adult enough to be tried and sentenced as an adult, in those thankfully rare circumstances, they are not children.
 
Half of the 103 "children" killers covered by this report were 17 at the time of their crimes.
 
87 of the 103 cases - almost 86% - were 16 or 17. Only 16 of the cases were 14 or 15 at the time of the crimes. The report should have concluded if it were truly data driven that Illinois does not have a serious problem with LWOP for juveniles. Certainly not compared to other states.
 
The emotional impact of the title of the report is not substantiated by the actual data. (We note here that the Coalition told us in our early conversations with this Coalition about what the report would be about the actual facts of the cases - it was not.)
 
We do not understand the mixed messages - in the report and in the media the Coalition said they were not advocating release for these killers. In fact they thought most should stay in because of the seriousness of their crimes. But they wanted them all to be regularly reviewed in any case. No matter the consequence of that process to the victims families.
 
SO - under Illinois Law they are all legally adults because they have met the criteria in the window of sentencing transfer to adult courts based on the extreme seriousness of their offenses and other factors. The law clearly says in the teen years their culpability is determined case by case with the seriousness of the offense and the conditions of the individual crimes. Using the term both legally and normatively, they are not children.
 
Particularly painful is the section in the report where we hear quotations from the offenders themselves describing their troubled upbringings.  We know most young people do not even come close to reacting to the "parents who died" or "parents who were gone all the time with work" or "parents with substance abuse problems" or "parents who were abusive" by killing other innocent human beings. There is nothing in the way of a causal connection between bad parents and excused killing that has been demonstrated in this report. And to do so would be an ridiculous insult to the millions who have made far better choices in the wake of poor parenting. And what of those among the 103 Juvenile Lifers that had perfectly good upbringing and chose to kill for the sheer entertainment of it? Those kinds of cases (we know personally they are there) are of course not mentioned in this anecdotally selective report.
 
The real children in this report are the many child victims of these killers.
 
Nowhere in the report are the stories of the child victims, or any of the victims, even mentioned.  But the writers and researchers of the report do know those stories, from their exhaustive research. Why they chose not to tell those stories is clear. It would detract from their attempts to get sympathy for the killers.
 
Another example of provocative word choice in the report:  Calling the determinate sentencing system established in a massive reform effort in 1978 by the Illinois General Assembly a "scheme". We know that is a legal description of sentencing patterns in the United States, but for the lay reader it is pejorative.
 
2. Clemency is not even considered.
 
Clemency by a Governor as a solution to problematic sentencing, which is THE method prescribed in both our state and national Constitutions as the way to correct incorrect sentences, is completely dismissed by the report. In one small sentence, not well thought out, it simply cites a backlog of clemency petitions, and therefore concludes that clemency is an unworkable "solution" to a "systemic problem".
 
First, the report never proves a systemic problem.
 
The 103 cases are not profiled in any way. 2 years of a massive team of researchers and the final report reveals nothing about the 103 cases except age, race, and county.  Where is the data they gathered?
 
Left out . . .deliberately  - because it did not support their agenda.
 
Second, the report proposes bringing back a parole system wisely dispensed with in Illinois back in 1978 because it was racist, expensive, ineffective and a monstrous bureaucracy, and is a FAR more complicated "solution" than simply working to address the backlog of clemency petitions on the Governor's desk.
 
Third, according to what we have been told, not even one of the 103 reported "Juvenile Lifers" have even applied for clemency. They have not even tried.
 
Other approaches to possibly reforming the JLWOP system are not even discussed, underscoring the narrowness view of the report. This is inexcusable for scholars functioning at this level.
 
3. Statistics are distorted and misinterpreted in several places in the report.
 
For example, it says that only six states give out the JLWOP sentence more than Illnois (making us #7), implying that this makes us one of the worst states in the nation on the issue.  In fact, since we are the 5th largest state in population, we are actually giving the sentence LESS often than most states for our size.
 
Actual sentencing numbers bring this point home even more clearly. Illinois is not the "big problem" when it comes to Juvenile LWOP, especially when compared to other states that have it.
 
Another example of a KEY FAILURE of this report:
 
It cries racism when it says that Illinois' incarceration of African American Juvenile Lifers is "starkly higher" than the national average. 72% of Illinois' 103 juvenile lifers are African American compared to the national "average" they say of 60%.
 
But that presentation of the statistics fails to take into account that Cook County, which is half of Illinois' population, and the source of the vast majority of the Illinois JLWOP sentences, has the highest African American population BY FAR of any county in the United States. According to the 2000 US Census, Cook County has 1.4 million African Americans. No other county, including Los Angeles, New York and Houston, the other huge population centers, even come close. LA is a distant second with 990 thousand. We are half again as large as that largest population center in the USA when it comes to percentages of African Americans residing here. New York and Houston areas have almost only a third of our number. 
 
So actually, given the actual populations, Illinois' racial distribution in sentencing of these cases is probably far LESS racist proportionally than any other place in the nation. To get exact numbers would require knowing how many JLWOP cases come out of each county but a simple survey of the larger counties render the argument of this report regarding racism of Illinois' JLWOP sentencing to be an exaggerated one.
 
A map of the United States on page 24 of the report , which actually does the better job of showing where Illinois stands compared to the rest of the nation in numbers of JLWOP cases, does not explain another significant factor when comparing states - that large heavy-sentencing states like Texas, which the map says does not have Juvenile LWOP, actually until recently executed its juvenile murderers. That is until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The map should have included those 9 states which formerly executed juveniles convicted of capital crimes. The map makes Texas look "humane" next to Illinois, which is of course ridiculous. There are less JLWOPers in Texas because up until two years ago they were all executed. (I personally went to Austin, TX and stood with the family of Napoleon Beasley to oppose his execution.  The Supreme Court case came too late to save him.)
 
4. The treatment of victims in the report ranges from ignorance and insensitivity to outright cruelty.
 
Reading this report, one might almost conclude, if one did not know better, that there were no victims of these crimes at all, save perhaps the "children" killers themselves.
 
We got VERY tired during media interviews done with the release of this report to hear members of the Coalition say how much they had sympathy for the victims. Members of the Coalition that did media interviews out and out misrepresented their contacts with victims during the process of writing this report. Unless they have been keeping victim contacts a secret from us, the only victims of these 103 juvenile lifers that they talked to are the victims families of the killings done by David Biro, and possibly one other interfamilial murder where the victim and the offender were all in one family. The other victims families that they say they have been talking to are NOT the victims of these cases but of others.
 
Here is one of the most outrageous and hurtful points of all this:
 
They did NOT bring or welcome victims "to the table", despite our pleas for over a year that they do so, as they said in media interviews on the day of the release.
 
At this point more than any other, I winced in pain. To the advocates for the "juvenile lifers" I say this loud and clear: Hypocrisy and lip service on the victim issue must be stopped in this dialogue.
 
They did not inform people whose lives would be horrifically affected if what they were proposing would become law. They have demonstrated no compassion for victims or shown ethical responsibility because if they had, all the affected victims families of the killers in this report would have been delegated some of the vast resources available to the Coalition and be at the very least advised of this process - as we have begged them to do for 18 months.
 
While twice the report actually refers to their crimes, and says they are "serious", not a one of the actual crimes is even briefly discussed in this report that supposedly was to give a picture of all the cases - the result of almost two years of interviews and research by their coalition.
 
Reading the report its as if, because the murder victims are gone, and the killers remain, they are all that matter.
 
No thought is given at all to the life sentences being served by the survivors. And their proposed solutions at the end of the report do not address, not a single one, the needs of victims. In fact it is as if they actually calculated - what would be the way that could bring release opportunities to these juvenile lifers that would do the most to cause additional harm to victims families? And then proposed it as the only way out . . .regular parole reviews.
 
In a state that does not have parole or indeterminate sentencing.
 
That requires victims families to re-engage with the offender regularly for the rest of their lives.
 
Trading a life sentence for the guilty killers to the innocent victims families.
 
We know there are other "solutions" for any problem cases they find - we have proposed them and will continue to - for those few cases where there may have been genuine injustice. They only make the case for one in the report,, however - Marshan Allen.
 
We understand that is because there were no other "sympathetic" stories they could find among the cases. Most all were multiple murderers that if they were just a few months older would have likely received death penalty trials - truly the 'worst of the worst'.
 
More ways the report is callous to victims:
 
In the section of the report labeled those "Most Affected" by the crimes of the Juvenile Lifers, the shocking number one on their list was the families of the offenders.
 
The victims' families were number two.
 
The rest of the public is not mentioned.
 
Enough said.
 
And we want to just cry when we think of the hundreds of thousands of dollars, significant grant money, impressive staff support and time donated by a major law firm, and countless hours over several years put together this report and this coalition by some of the finest minds in the city of Chicago, all to document the prison sentences of these 100 killers. With over 48,000 prisoners serving in the Illinois Department of Corrections, and 2.2 million nationally in prison, most for non-violent offenses, many cases of genuine innocence still desperately needing attention, a vigorous death penalty still alive and well in the United States, and violent crime wreaking havoc on our lives and our economy, the choice to put these kinds of resources into a report like this just stuns us. Gun violence alone in the USA is killing 82 people a day on average, and those injured who survive are costing our economy $100 Billion dollars a year.
 
The absolute best way to PREVENT young people from facing life sentences for murders is to work HARD to limit their access to guns. No other step they could take would make as much of a difference. The choice to devote the staggering financial and personnel resources that went into this report to try to liberate and bring sympathy to these killers, in the wake of the much more profound needs of their innocent victims, just eludes us.
 
Other states such as the state of Tennessee have documented the terrible price paid by children of the VICTIMS of murder. Statistics show that many of them end up in foster care, on food stamps, in deprived financial situations where they cannot go to college, and even in the criminal justice system themselves. Where is the concern for these children?
 
Among the more painful moments of reading the report was the section "in their own words" where we hear quotations from the offenders serving life sentences for multiple or aggravated and coldly calculated murders about the sadness in their lives.
The sadness in their lives.
 
Sadness that they don't get to see their families because of how far away the prison is. Sadness that their friends don't want to write them now that they have committed multiple murders and have been put away for life. Sadness that they will never get married or have children of their own. Sadness that they don't get to go to college except via correspondence.
 
The point at which I lost it (this really has been a traumatic process personally) reading this list of complaints was the point where one killer said he just wished he could live a normal life. So did, I am sure, the hundreds of murder victims whose lives were ended by these same sad "children".
 
Words fail me as a murder victims family member of one of these Illinois JLWOP cases - how do I try to explain how that all sounds to me? How can we get the authors of this report to see how that reads to the rest of us? I suppose this is simply the dilemma faced by so many victims whose needs are so often ignored. What I can only take away from this section of the report is that the authors of this study either deliberately chose to be hurtful to victims, not caring because it interfered with their agenda, or that they never gave how this all would sound to the "outside world" a single coherent thought.
 
The glaring flaw in the whole report is the complete failure to address even a single detail of the nature of the crimes that landed them in prison serving life sentences in the first place. But to do so would make this a very different report - one that would most likely bolster, strongly, the case for imprisonment.
 
Remember, every single one of the inmates in this report have had full and exhaustive due process in courtroom after courtroom after courtroom. And while flaws do exist in the criminal justice system, as we have said many times very clearly, and we repeat, innocence is an extremely serious matter that must be addressed, the report itself admits that there are only a few cases where innocence is being investigated and where parole might actually be granted if they were to be reviewed in that way.
 
Finally and worst of all, the "fair notice" the report pays lip service to, that victims should have about these proposed sentence changes for the killers of their loved ones - sentences that they were told were permanent - should only happen AFTER the legislation to provide release opportunities to those sentenced to natural life is made LAW. Too late for them to have any input at all into the process.
 
5. Overclaims throughout the report
 
Elsewhere on this page are the refutations for the Brain Overclaim Syndrome this report expectedly relies upon - that culpability is not possible with less than fully formed neo-cortexes. Why then do we ever punish our children? To help them learn and grow - that's why.  Because actions have consequences. Because sometimes you need to be removed from the rest of us when you are out of control. Because you need to understand there are limits. Because you need to learn right from wrong. Most of all we know that every child - every person - develops differently. Some are more mature, some less at a given age. Some have better reasoning, some less. Some have better judgment, some have less. And culpability is not determined by chronological age, but by the developmental advances of that individual person.
 
The killer in our family's case was fully and completely culpable. Contact me for details if you want the evidence. He was not in any way "categorically less culpable".
 
Outrageous is the only way we can respond to the authors of this report who have repeated over and over in the media and the report this "problem" with juveniles sentenced to natural life for crimes committed as "accomplices" only - sentenced under accountability theory. Illinois law holds them equally culpable - no matter the age - of anyone tried as an adult. However, they hold this out as a point of sympathy for younger offenders.
 
Just one problem- they could not document (other than Marshan Allen, the poster boy for their report) any examples of or documentation of this actually happening. One researcher told us that they couldn't actually find any of those cases.
 
So why are they talking about it in the media and in the report in their attempts to discredit the sentence?
 
A final significant concern is the way the report mischaracterizes what is happening in other states about the JLWOP sentence: in fact the report says on careful reading that only one state, Colorado, has acted to abolish the sentence - and that state not retroactively - only prospectively. And the prospective changes provide for the first parole review to not happen for FORTY years. And what the report does not tell the reader is about the bitter and divisive debate that has ensued in Colorado for years, and where retroactive changes to the sentences served by the 45 JLWOP prisoners was not done because it was incredibly problematic for a long list of reasons. Retroactive changes in sentences are a significantly different matter than prospective changes. The activists there at the Pendulum Foundation have spoken very supportively to me, and the position we have taken on this website. Emails they sent us are found on this section of the website. In it, they advise the advocates of the Illinois "Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children" to work with victims such as us, to accept prospective changes in sentencing, and to not fall into the trap of creating opposition in the murder victims' families of these offenders, but instead to do the hard work of listening to and working with victims' families, something that the Illinois advocates have yet to even attempt, but should have before publishing the report. We have never opposed prospective changes in sentencing laws because they are not a victims rights issue. And a review after 40 years is not the problem for victims families that the "at 10 years in with parole reviews every two years" that has been proposed (HB 4384) - just a nutty proposition. A 17 sentenced to life getting out when he is 27? And he is not going to still be dangerous?
 
Finances - why doesn't this report take some responsibility for the massive costs they are proposing for Illinois taxpayers - to create a brand new parole bureaucracy (something the state wisely discarded in 1978) - all to help these cases of guilty multiple murderers get regular reviews that even the report's authors admit would not nor should not result in them being released for the most part. This is not sound public policy.
 
Also, simply because other states, less than 10, have proposed bills to reform JLWOP does not mean the "tide is turning" as the report champions. It does not take the support of more than one legislator to file a bill. It does not provide any evidence for a groundswell.

In fact, those states don't have, in most cases, even close to the number of votes needed in their legislatures to pass such legislation. California's proposals were just soundly defeated. Other states are not, as the report claims, "changing their laws" as if this is some trend. Bills in any state that propose to abolish JLWOP, or any other broad systemic criminal justice reform would need broad bi-partisan coalitions to pass - something that is very difficult to accomplish politically. Advocates in Illinois are off to a bad start in their one-sided approach if that is their ultimate goal.
 
And so members of the Coalition who rushed to legislation before the long hard work of education and outreach to victims and the public was even attempted, have done not only the victims, but the offenders they say they are advocating for, a real disservice. They have turned victims into adversaries. They have discredited a responsibly conceived effort by being unwilling to have the hard, open listening conversations needed to build bridges of understanding strong enough to cross the gaps formed by violent crime. They have tried and failed to win our sympathy for what really is just a tragic, tragic situation - young people willing and able to kill so many, so easily.
 
A PAGE BY PAGE COMMENTARY ON THE REPORT:
 
Ed note: If the author's had brought a final draft of this report to us before publication, we would have offered these same thoughts and helped them to write a better report.
 
Page 1
 
Regarding the note about the use of photographs throughout the report - they acknowledge that there are photos of both Illinois JLWOPers and also "other children" and there is no labeling in the report which is which. Very propagandistic. Especially when photos throughout show such young offenders - most of the JLWOPers now are well into 20's, 30,s 40s.
 
Page 3
 
They thank the "victims families" who they talked to in the writing of the report. Though we hope they talked to others, we know only that they talked to Jeanne and Jennifer Bishop, my family. If they talked to others, they deliberately did not tell us and we think that is horrible, if it is true. If they did not talk to others, they should not imply by their wording that they talked to many victims families.
 
The few victims families we have found through our own efforts with NO assistance from the writers of this report have never talked to any of these researchers. They were shocked to hear about it, as we were, and deeply grateful to us for finding them. The disruption and time that this has cost our lives is staggering in its breadth. But we find the new relationships we have gained in the process to be nothing but a gift and truly joyous for us.
 
But this "thank you" to us on page three is more painful than if they had just left it out. The "constructive dialogue" called for here is what we have TRIED to do all along and have been thwarted at every turn. Now that the report is released we have not been contacted for the follow-up we were promised. We have not begun a dialogue, and the "recommendations fashioned" do not at all account for our concerns.
 
If you want to thank us, members of the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children (ICFSC), find and inform all the victims families. It is never too late to choose to do the right thing.
 
But that has still not happened, two years into their work and months after the release of the report.
 
Page 6
 
Re: The quotation on the picture of the sad looking young inmate that says "How can you say someone can't change?"
 
We cannot dismiss strongly enough the assertion of the report that concluding that truly guilty and duly processed aggravated murderers should serve their entire sentences somehow means that we don't think they can change.
 
This website is filled with discussion about restorative justice and rehabilitation.
 
Of course people can change, and more than anyone who wrote and supported this report, WE wish that these killers would change.
 
If for one moment the ICFSC would walk a mile in our shoes, I am sure they could figure out the depth and truth of that.
 
Page 7
 
This is the first place the report names 13 year olds as being able to receive this LWOP sentence and it is done in several places in the report. Only once does it mention that NONE HAVE.
 
Also, from the start, the report assumes that the arguments used before the Supreme Court regarding the juvenile death penalty should and could also be applied to juvenile LWOP. That is of course an intellectually dishonest argument, as the penalties are strikingly different.  To be able to apply the same legal reasoning to LWOP cases as to the death penalty, huge bodies of research and public consensus would have to be achieved, and actually given the differences between the two penalties, we sincerely believe that this will never happen.
 
Also, this page uses the word "consensus" to refer to their growing views that juveniles should not be sentenced to life. They need to look up the word consensus again, and also broaden the circle of people they talk to.
 
The only consensus we see in our nation is that guilty and heinously aggravated murders should spend their lives in prison, if not out and our be executed.
 
Finally, this page obfuscates the issue of Colorado  "abolishing outright" the JLWOP sentence. In fact what Colorado did very minimal. They made only prospective changes, not retroactive, as the ICFSC advocates (which is by the way so legally problematic as to assure that it will never happen in Illinois); AND only after 40 years served of the sentence before a parole review, a virtual life sentence in any case; AND in a state that already has parole, which Illinois does not. To cite Colorado in support of their report actually only services the position that this website takes on the issue.
 
Page 8
 
Where the report cites things such as marriage and alcohol consumption as examples of how laws are different about children, we have two responses. First, of course, which is why the varying age limits for different things only supports our position that culpability and responsibility varies depending on what you are talking about. So second, we point out the obvious - MURDER is very different.
 
Murder is different than marrying, drinking, etc.  Duh.
 
My two daughters knew when they were 6 that it was wrong to kill, however. There is no reasonable argument that can be made that these juvenile killers did not know what they were doing was wrong, unless they were severely mentally ill, in which case they would not receive this sentence anyway.
 
And unless they can show that these killings were done on impulse (since they cite impulse control as a brain issue) then culpability does not change. The killer in my family's case plotted the murder for months, very carefully. He even practiced the skills he used that night. It was not an impulse and he knew it was wrong and he was not mentally ill, and he tortured and murdered an innocent pregnant woman and her husband. The three LWOP sentences he received were the right sentence for him.
 
Page 9
 
Re: Parole as an incentive to change - we repeat as above, no one is saying these younger killers can't and shouldn't change. They should and they must, though many will not. But to link their situations to a constant argument for parole, which really has little connection to their changing, or not changing, process does this whole issue a real disservice.
 
The authors of this report are wearing blinders that are not allowing them to see what else is out there.
 
MANY other conclusions are possible when looking at reform and societal responses to the lives in prison of younger killers.
 
Also on this page, another call to dialogue with victims.
 
How can they ethically call on legislators to do something they themselves have refused to do?
 
Page 10
 
Re: "the law simply dictates that if the child commits one of the crimes outlined in the statute, he or she is beyond redemption and is not entitled to a second chance - ever."
 
Two major things wrong with this sentence. First, most of the cases of JLWOP the killer had an earlier record, and had many second chances. Some of them have been repeat murderers. Some of them were out on bond for juvenile violent crimes and committed these heinous crimes after already being released for other offenses, or while waiting trial. If they had actually published the facts of all the 103 cases, second chances would not be on the table as a serious point of contention in this discussion. Second, to use the spiritually-laden term "redemption" to refer to what LWOP means is simply wrong and hurtful.
 
Redemption for these killers? I pray for it, daily.
 
Redemption for the victims' families? We all need to work for it.
 
But serving their sentences for these crimes has nothing to do with their redemption.
 
Page 12-13
 
The report implies that judges are asking for more and lesser options when sentencing these killers. We know of many JLWOP cases where the judges affirmed strongly that this was indeed the right sentence, and further, some expressed the desire to do worse in terms of punishment, given the facts of their crimes.
 
We know of only one - Judge Dwyer in the Marshan Allen case, that asked for that option. If there were more judges and more cases, we feel sure this report would have made a BIG deal out of that.
 
And the report on this very page PROVES that the courts and appeals can work to correct this sentence. The Supreme Court of Illinois overturned this sentence in People v Miller case. And Marshan Allen and Charles Green got new hearings because of it. The appeals system can work and should be made to continue to work even better.
 
Just because other JLWOP cases have not gotten new trials does not mean it isn't working. It could just mean that the cases were not deserving, as we generally suspect.
 
Also, there is a logical flaw in the wording of this particular argument - the Miller case specifies a JLWOPer who was only an accomplice, sentenced under accountability theory. Then the report implies that all 103 JLWOPers should be given new trials because of the Miller ruling.
 
This was a significant point in the course of our discussions with the ICFSC over the last year - how many JLWOPers were sentenced under accountability? They thought at first, they told us, there could be many. But they reported to us at the end of the study there were very few.
 
Of course, NO specifics have been forthcoming. The ICFSC only gives specifics when it supports their argument.
 
But since we now have had affirmed by their study that in most of these cases only the actual killer is the one serving the sentence, we are confident that we can have a more reasoned discussion about what the laws should be for accountability going forward.
 
And we also note, there is accountability, and then there is accountability. There is the Marshan Allen, just along for the ride who did not know what was happening inside the house.  And then there is the older gang banger who hands the gun to the younger gang member and orders him to kill the innocent victim. In that case, accountability is MORE serious than the "trigger man" in terms of culpability.
 
So the laws about accountability need to be VERY carefully reviewed, if that is what they wish to make their case about. But to blur the lines in their report is not helpful.
 
Page 13
 
The report says "clemency is not the answer" because it is rarely granted and there is a backlog of cases.
 
They said this, we suspect, because in our meetings with them we said often that this was in fact the solution prescribed in our nation's laws and Constitutions, state and federal, regarding the check and balance for a system not working as it should.
 
In fact, clemency SHOULD be rarely granted. It should be exceptional, extraordinary, and only when all other branches of government have failed thoroughly and utterly, which is sometimes the case.
 
And the backlog issue has two very much easier solutions than bringing back a parole system to Illinois that is very costly, hugely discriminatory, wildly ineffective, and horrifically traumatic on victims families. First, fewer inmates should apply. They should self regulate to only apply if they are truly deserving. Instead they apply whenever they can because they have little else to do. We need to give them better things to do. Second, the backlog should be addressed politically and through public education at the Governors' or President's desks, throughout the nation.
 
It would be far easier to mount a public education campaign about how and why clemency should be working more efficiently as a system in our nation than it would EVER be to build the political case necessary to free these younger killers duly sentenced to life.
 
We strongly urge the ICFSC to take up that campaign.
 
RE the quotation on p 13 from Kentrell S - "I am America's child. You made this and now don't sweep it under the rug" - I have two observations.
 
First, we can't tell from one quotation but the theme in this report is not to address responsibly the issue of accountability by these killers. It does not help to build their case to make excuses for what they have done, and to try to pass off blame. Quite the contrary, the more the advocates for the JLWOPers learn to address what the killers are responsible for, and the more they can begin the restorative justice dialogue about acknowledging harm and working for restitution, the better off they will all be.
 
Second, we agree - there is something VERY wrong with our nation on this issue. We see the level of violence committed regularly by the young people in this nation to be alarming beyond words. Especially because it is NOT seen in other nations. Lets take, just for example, Finland. Why aren't there juveniles committing aggravating murders? Could it be because they don't have the NRA, the gun industry, and the easy access to ridiculous levels of firearms? Could it be because they have good education, jobs training, health care, welfare, and a responsible view of how to build a community where all are valued and problems are addressed collectively by the government that the people are invested in? Could it be that they know prevention is the answer and that the USA has not figured that out yet?
 
I would assert that my personal work to keep guns away from kids in our nation does more to keep young people away from serving a JLWOP sentence than anything that the authors of this report are doing. I invite them to join my work in that area if they really want to stop young people from serving life sentences. And they could support Fight Crime Invest in Kids  as I do. And they could support the Victim Impact Panel programs for the Cook County Juvenile Probation program that does more to take young first offenders and help to turn them around than most any program in the nation. (This program has been severely curtailed under Todd Stroger's budget cuts - I suggest that the ICFSC go to work on that!)
 
RE the inset box on page 13 lower left - the age of "juveniles" in Illinois is 17, not 18, and yet they use this as their demarkation line in the report.
 
This is problematic for several reasons - first there is NO consensus nationally about the age line - it is widely different all over the nation. They should work for federal consistency if they think this is an issue.
 
However, clearly a reason they include 17 year olds in this report is because it bolsters their numbers and makes the problem look bigger. There would only be just over 50 JLWOPers without the 17 year olds.
 
But in Illinois the 17 year olds are ALREADY criminally adults anyway. And while the ICFSC supports bills to raise that law, it will not be happening in Springfield any time soon because 17 year olds make up the bulk of the crimes and they are a huge expense criminally. If the age is raised to 18, then all 17 year old criminals become the responsibility of the County Governments in the state. None of them can afford this and they are all fighting it for that reason.
 
This report takes liberal leaps with the law when including 17 year olds in this report when it briefly acknowledges "for the purposes of this report" they are defining juvenile criminals where they want to - under 18 - instead of addressing the laws in Illinois and many states as they are.
 
MORE TO COME

 

 

chicagotribune.com

Online at the Tribune site you can post comments and join the debate!

Group proposes abolishing life sentences for juveniles

Victims advocates oppose abolishment

By Michael Higgins, Tribune reporter, February 14, 2008

 

In a move that angered victims rights advocates, a coalition of lawyers and academics on Wednesday called on Illinois to abolish sentences for juveniles of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The report by the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children also recommends that a parole board consider releasing juveniles sentenced to the life terms who have already served substantial periods.

"These children should have the opportunity to prove to a parole board that they have rehabilitated themselves in prison," said Richard Klawiter, an attorney at the Chicago law firm of DLA Piper and a coalition member.

In its 40-page report, the coalition said it had interviewed nearly all of the 103 inmates in Illinois prisons sentenced to life for crimes committed when they were juveniles. Nationwide, at least 2,380 inmates are serving life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles.

The coalition argued that no possibility of parole is unfair for even the most serious juvenile offenders because children are less culpable than adults and are capable of change.

The report cited recent research that children lack the impulse control of adults and are more vulnerable to peer pressure because their brains are not fully developed.

The coalition supports a bill pending in Springfield that would enact similar changes. But the legislative proposal drew immediate fire from some victims rights advocates.

"It's going to be a nightmare for victims," said Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, founder of IllinoisVictims.org. "It's agonizing for all of us."

Bishop-Jenkins' sister and brother-in-law, Nancy and Richard Langert, were killed in 1990 by David Biro, one of the 103 inmates convicted as juveniles and serving life sentences in Illinois prisons.

Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine's office also opposes the bill, which calls for parole hearings every two years, said spokesman John Gorman.

"This would rip the emotional scabs from the victims' families and is grossly unfair," Gorman said.

The controversy concerns juvenile offenders who were accused of murder and tried as adults. If convicted in adult court of double homicide or the murder of a police officer, they face life without the possibility of parole.

Some of those convicted as juveniles may deserve parole, especially if they were accomplices to older offenders and did not carry out the actual killing, said Malcolm Young, executive director of the John Howard Association of Illinois, a prison-watchdog group.

In some cases, Young said, "[the juveniles] were marginally involved in something like a robbery or drug deal. They didn't necessarily know there was going to be a murder."

-----------

mjhiggins@tribune.com

 
"Real victims of child killers will never get early release"
John Kass, Column, Chicago Tribune
February 20, 2008
The same crowd that figured crooked George Ryan was owed a Nobel Prize for his opposition to the death penalty -- even though his corruption came with its own body count -- is at it again.

This time -- instead of trying to save the lives of murderers on Death Row while fitting puffy angel wings on Ryan's shoulders as the former governor prepared for his corruption trial -- some georgeryanistas have new victims to rescue.

Child killers.

Not just any child killers, but killers who've taken one or more lives while they were under 18, technically making them minors when they committed murder and now they're in prison for life and don't like it.

The Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children is pushing legislation to spring these convicted murderers, to give them parole hearings after 10 years behind bars, even though they've already been spared a death sentence by receiving life without parole.

The coalition wants to save 103 souls -- now get this -- because the killers are themselves the victims. The coalition argues that the murderers' brains weren't fully formed when they killed, that peer pressure forced them to end a life or lives, and that life without parole is unacceptable.

The coalition has even come out with a study to bolster their point of view -- that the prisoners were themselves victims of a cold and unfeeling America. They've got a legislative champion, State Rep. Robert Molaro, a Chicago Democrat, to carry water for these murderous victims of a callous (at least they didn't say capitalistic) society.

There's something not quite right about all of this. It smells.

Is this about helping an entire class of killers or just one? I don't know. If you do, please call the Chicago Tribune and let me know.

In their report -- "Categorically Less Culpable" -- the georgeryanistas put together a list of victims most affected by our indifferent imprisonment of youthful murderers.

You might think the victims were people who had their lives cut short on purpose.

These include kids who had their brains blown out, or their throats cut, or were shot in the back and died in their sister's arms or children who were raped and tossed out of windows.

Other, older victims were stalked, adults killed in their homes as they begged for their lives, the husband and the wife and their unborn child; or others, whose bodies were subjected to the invasion of the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun.

All of these were killed by teenagers. But according to the georgeryanistas, you'd be wrong if you thought the dead are the victims.

The main victims are the killers and their families who've been deprived of their love and comfort.

Under the heading, "Those most affected by juvenile lifers' crimes," are the families of those killers. They're listed first, above the families of the dead, which shows you where the real victims rank in the georgeryanista hierarchy.

"Those with whom we did speak told us how difficult it has been to cope with their family members' sentences," read the report. "Like the inmates, the family members said it was difficult to visit, because the prisons are far away."

That's terrible, not being able to visit as often as you wish. It's horrifying, to have loved ones so distant, kept against their will so they can't feel your loving embrace.

But there's another distance too. Death.

And whether you believe as many of us do, in heaven and hell, or if you're existential about it and think of the vast nothingness, the distance is still pretty damn far and there are no visits.

These are the real victims. And their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. They're victims too.

Should some sentences be reviewed? Yes. But by established practice, not through some blanket legislation forcing the families of the dead back into court every two years for parole hearings to relive the horror.

"Children are simply less culpable than adults," a coalition member was quoted as saying. "Because they are not yet fully formed, children are capable of change and rehabilitation and reform."

Perhaps. But their trigger fingers are fully formed. And their knife hand. And they know it's wrong to kill if you might get caught.

One of the killers eligible for parole under the Molaro plan is Johnny Freeman, who was three months shy of 18 when he grabbed 5-year-old Shavanna McCann at the Henry Horner Homes. He raped her and threw her from a 13-story window, as she screamed "Mama" before she fell in 1985.

In their arrogance, the georgeryanistas didn't include interviews with the families of the murdered in their report. We've spoken to two of those families, and I'll be writing a column about them soon.

"We'll be the ones on trial, again and again, every two years," said Ruben Pulido, whose 13-year-old son, an honor student, was murdered by a gangster on a bicycle. "Why do we have to be the ones on trial?"

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jskass@tribune.com
Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
****
 
THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES POSTS OUR LETTER TO THE EDITOR IN RESPONSE TO THEIR ARTICLE ABOUT THE JLWOP REPORT
 
Justice for victims' families?
Forcing families of murder victim through regular parole hearings for duly sentenced "juvenile lifers" only transfers the life sentence to us. These few cases were not "routine" killings; all of them were heinous and calculated multiple or aggravated murders.

Illinois eliminated parole in 1978 because it's a discriminatory, costly and ineffective bureaucracy. The advocacy report actually confirmed that they found almost no examples of error in these 103 cases.

The "racial bias" issue has also been misunderstood because the minorities under this sentence are mostly from Cook County, which has the highest minority population of any county in the United States -- 1.4 million in 2000 census. Minority representation is actually lower proportionally from Cook County than other regions in the nation where the sentence is more frequent.

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins,
illinoisvictims.org

 

Talking points on HB 4384 - filed January 2008 in the Illinois General Assembly

View the bill at www.ilga.gov

1. This bill could free convicted multiple murderers, some of the state's most heinous murderers sentenced to  life without parole and tried as an adults, after only ten years in prison.

In addition to the danger posed by such releases (some of them are already repeat murderers) as evidenced by parolees’ violent acts all over the nation, there are significant legal problems. Families were told that the killers in their cases could never get out of prison under any circumstances. Therefore some key components of the trials, such as the sentencing hearing transcripts, are no longer available to families and prosecutors. Due Process rights under Law, and the fair treatment required by the Illinois Constitution, 8.1 Victims Rights Amendment, would be denied to victims. We could not adequately defend our interests, and Prosecutors would be heavily burdened. We have also received a legal brief from the National Crime Victims Law Institute that details how any such bill would be a violation of our rights under the Illinois Constitution.

2. The majority of Illinois residents will oppose this bill.

To show how easy it will be to generate significant opposition to this notion of offering parole to killers sentenced to life without parole, last year when Rep Molaro introduced a similar bill (HB 1695), with only a few hours of effort sending emails and calls to friends, hundreds of calls and letters descended upon committee members offices in Springfield demanding the bill be withdrawn, which it was, without even a vote in committee. It was covered in the press. We are quite sure that if we had to launch into a full-scale public campaign against this bill that we would have overwhelming and vocal support from the entire state and even the nation. It is work we dearly do not want to do, but we will if we have to.

3. This Bill will be highly divisive, controversial, and will only generate animosity instead of solutions.

We doubt the bill will get much support but even if it is pushed, it will generate much controversy and divisiveness. It will traumatize worried victims’ families, while mobilizing every “law and order” voice, States Attorneys, Law Enforcement, and those “Tough on Crime”, against those who think this is reform.

And for this bill to pass, the state would have to decide to bring back "indeterminate" sentencing - a system wisely disposed of by Illinois in 1978. All the attendant problems would come with it: the larger bureaucracy and taxpayer expense associated with such an evaluation process. Hardest of all to understand, it would replicate the troubling "C Number problem" (the diminishing 270 or so inmates left still being reviewed by the PRB annually for parole from before 1978) that the same advocates for this bill are trying to end, complaining that it is a “broken system”. Now a whole new young group of inmates would start the indeterminate sentencing problem all over again, just when Illinois was almost finally rid of this last vestige of a most discriminatory sentencing system.

And the mechanism for review proposed in the bill is problematic - the Prisoner Review Board. To give this decision to a controversial agency, viewed by some as an over-paid patronage dumping ground, accountable to no one, instead of to Courts of Law is wrong-headed.

Freeing some of the worst killers sentenced to life is not going to be a popular idea politically. All the police, prosecutors, courts, family and community members affected by these cases, all the money and lawyers and appeals and investigation and media coverage that went into each of these killers being apprehended, tried, and sentenced – all gone. The life without parole sentence would be meaningless.

Actually, ending LWOP and determinate sentencing in Illinois is the agenda of the advocates for this bill. Also see HB 4154. Their attempts to bring back parole likely will not only lose, but can backfire and lead us into an even “tougher” system, with a renewed desire for more death penalties and executions, a troubling and expensive problem itself.

4. This bill is the equivalent of trying to pull a few weeds in the lawn by bulldozing the entire property.

There are other solutions for their concerns. This bill attempts to solve the problems of a few inmates possibly inappropriately sentenced, who could very easily seek redress in other ways such as clemency, re-sentencing hearings, or legislation that addresses the facts of their cases -such as not making mandatory LWOP for felony murder convictions, that of an "accomplice", by instead making every single murder victims family member of the 103 or so cases of JLWOP now go through parole reviews every two years for the rest of their lives -- after being promised they would never have to see or hear from the killers again.

The victims’ families are now the ones sentenced to life – a life of frequent hearings and parole battles involving the killer.

We work with the victims’ families of some of the C number prisoners, those left over from before 1978, and their annual fight before the Prisoner Review Board is more agonizing than you can possibly imagine. For legislators to have to hear their angry voices to the table in any discussion of this bill, if it is allowed to go forward, would be difficult indeed. And many of them are families of murdered police officers.

TAKE ACTION TO STOP HB 4384

This bill is set to be discussed on Tuesday, March 25, at the State of Illinois Building. We urge everyone that believes that the worst killers should serve their life sentences to contact us to make your voice heard before the legislative committee.

The madness they are proposing:

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Retroactively offering early release opportunities for some of the worst killers sentenced to life without parole

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Put public safety at risk by freeing killers that police, prosecutors, judges, juries, and the entire system worked hard to apprehend and imprison, and that were duly sentenced to natural life for the most heinous crimes (not "routine" cases)

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Bring back a parole system to Illinois - something we did away with in 1978 because it is a racist, discriminatory, hugely expensive bureaucracy

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Require victims' families to spend the rest of their lives to have to fight the parole of the killers by devoting significant time having to constantly think about the crimes, go to the prisons where the killers are kept for parole hearings, take off work, travel to Springfield to meet with the Prisoner Review Board, worry about their being released, talk to the media, for the rest of their lives - and into their children's lives - all to try to keep this killer serving the natural life sentence he is serving NOW.

STOP THIS BILL - it makes no sense. 

PLEASE contact Representative Molaro and tell him that he should revise the bill to exclude regular periodic reviews or any kind of parole process that would regularly impact victims families for the rest of their lives.

AND PLEASE WRITE OR CALL ALL members of the Committee that will be voting on the bill and express your opposition to this bill.  The Bill has been posted for possible committee action at any time -CALL OR WRITE NOW. Click on each member of the committee's name at their website and that will give you their complete contact information.

A RESPONSE TO THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE's TWO ARTICLES ON JLWOP KILLERS

Ed Note: We were concerned when the Chicago Tribune published two stories within a week of each other that showed favor to bringing back to Illinois the huge bureaucracy of parole, something we rightly rejected as a state in 1978, in order to let some of the worst killers in the state, sentenced to natural life, out of prison early. The published story is below. The coverage in our state's largest paper was not balanced in this case. And they did not publish our response, as of Dec 31, 2007. Yes, these killers were young when they committed their horrible crimes. But they showed very real and mature culpability. And very, very few violent criminals who were young at the times of their crimes are ever judged to be able to be tried as adults and sentenced to life. Very few. With rare exceptions, only the "worst of the worst". And while we support the use of executive clemency to correct some cases of over-sentencing, most of these killers got the right sentence: Life.  Parole is a nightmare for those who are charged with protecting our public safety, for the taxpayer, and most of all, for the victims families. The more we learn about the details of these killers' crimes, the more comfortable we feel in their life sentences.

RE: Gary Marx’s “Parole Proposed for Youths Who Kill” November 27, 2007

Curtis Croft, along with two others, gang-raped a teenage girl, blindfolded her, laid her in an alley, ran over her body five times with a car, and finished her off with 40 stab wounds.

Johnny Freeman raped a five-year-old girl and shoved her out a 14-story window; when she clung to the windowsill and screamed for her mother, Freeman pushed the girl a second time till she fell to her death.

Wayne Antusas ordered the shooting that killed two eighth-grade girls sitting across from their school.

Daniel Henney and Dino Dicorpo set an arson fire which killed all five children in a single family. As the details emerged in the courtroom of how their five bodies were found huddled up against a door trying to escape, jurors and those present in the courtroom were visibly traumatized.

When courts sentenced these and other juvenile offenders to life without parole, those sentences carried with them two implicit promises. The public was promised that the killers would never be free to endanger innocent people again. Victims’ families were promised they would never have to endure parole hearings which would force them to relive their agony.

Now some Illinois legislators and activists want to break those promises. They want the legislature to undo the work of the courts; revert to a system of parole, which Illinois abolished in 1978; and give to the Prisoner Review Board, whose decisions are appealable to no one, the power to free murderers who were sentenced to life as juveniles after a mere 20 years’ imprisonment.

Are there some killers who, because of the heinous, merciless and deliberate nature of their crimes, have forfeited the right to walk among us? We believe the answer is yes.

We believe people like Evan Griffith, who as a 16-year-old used a hammer, scissors and two knives to kill his victim, and then killed again in prison as an adult, should never get out.

We believe that David Biro, who was one month shy of his 17th birthday when he murdered our sister, brother-in-law and their unborn child, and who previously tried to poison his own family, should never get out.

The argument that these murderers deserve a second chance begs the question, a second chance to do what? To kill? That’s exactly what one man serving a natural life sentence in Illinois, Scott Darnell, did when, while on a juvenile parole, he raped and murdered 12-year-old Victoria Larson.

Illinois law already provides a mechanism for criminals who believe their sentences should be reduced: Executive Clemency. Activists have told us that none of the 103 people in Illinois serving natural life for crimes committed as juveniles have even tried to seek clemency. Their reason: clemency takes too long and probably would be denied. Going to the legislature, they said, would be an easier way to get the killers out of custody.

We cannot fathom why the life sentences justly given to people who chose to kill should be imposed instead on victims’ families, who would be condemned to a lifetime of fear that their loved ones’ killers will be set free.


Jeanne Bishop
Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins
Illinoisvictims.org

 

The Chicago Tribune gives victims notification -
THE HARD WAY

To read the Tribune story, see the accompanying video, and post comments on their story, click here

Chicago Tribune reporter Gary Marx's front page story in late November on the life sentences given to killers under that age of 18 has now appeared letting the public know about HB 1695 - something we have been watching and concerned about for months.

The legislative proposal (discussed extensively below) from sponsor Representative Robert Molaro could potentially free convicted murderers sentenced to natural life because they were under 18 at the time of their horrific crimes.  That story was finally published on Tuesday, November 27, 2007.

It is important to remember that it takes severe aggravation in a murder case to make it eligible for this sentence. A "simple" murder is not even eligible for Life. The killer must have killed multiple people or been directly responsible for contributing to the deaths of multiple people, killed over an extended period of time, or have killed law enforcement officers, or killed a youngster while committing a sex offense. We have discussed elsewhere on this website the importance of dealing with legitimate innocence claims, and some clear cases of over-sentencing.  But there are only about 100 times in state history that this sentence has ever been given. And after it was used more liberally in the 1990's against the toughest gang leaders, crime rates dropped precipitously. And it should be noted that these qualifiers in an adult offender would lead to a probable death sentence.

But none of these facts about the whole picture of "juvenile lifers" appeared in the Tribune story. Nor did the "balanced" story that Mr. Marx promised: giving equal treatment to both "sympathetic" and non-sympathetic stories of juvenile lifers. Nor did the quotations he got from us and said would be included in the story in order to provide some broader perspective. None of the concerns that we raised in our interview with him were included. We do not know whose editorial decisions these were - to leave victims entirely out of this story - but it is not one we agree with.

There would not be crimes and there would not be offenders facing prison sentences if there first had not been victims - created by the actions of the offenders.

The concerns Mr. Marx cited in the story about "critics of the proposal" to end juvenile life (referencing us) were also mis-represented:

"[Rep. Molaro] tabled the bill because of sharp criticism from victims rights groups who said they were not consulted about the proposal." That is an incorrect description of the process and concerns described below on this website where we worked for months earlier this year on this bill. "Sharp criticism" first is what English teachers call a "charged word" and one that contributes to the biased slant of this article.

And it does not describe what happened. The "Victims Rights" group he references is us - IllinoisVictims.org. And we were not "sharply criticizing" Molaro because he did not "include us" in his bill. We were pleading for the families of all the victims that did not know about this bill. We were the only one of the families of the victims of these offenders that we knew of that were aware of this bill. And we were appalled at the proposed solution to this "problem" of juveniles being sentenced to life - bringing back a nightmare bureaucracy parole system - something our state wisely abolished in 1978. The very thought that victims families who were told that their cases were closed for good and forever  now having to go every year to fight the possible parole of the offender was just agonizing. We knew there had to be a better solution.

I had one tearful conversation with Rep. Molaro last spring about how awful it was that all the victims families who have not even been told that this bill exists were being asked in this proposal to face annual parole reviews the rest of their lives. This after being told - promised - that they would never have to give the killer one more thought - that he was locked away forever. I asked him to inform and work with the victims families if he wanted to reform this sentence. He promised me that he would. And he tabled the bill and emptied it of its language with a promise of future discussion. To his credit.

Read below what concerns we share with the critics of the "juvenile life" sentence" and what tactics and strategies we do not agree with. And we do note here that those promised discussions with the sponsors of the bill have not yet materialized. 

But the real bad news with this story in the Tribune is the one we were so very much hoping to avoid.

Of the 103 cases of JLWOP, most who were multiple murderers, we estimate that there are hundreds of victims family members - maybe even a thousand - who had no idea that there was any chance that their loved ones' murderer might someday be released. 

And here it sits on the front page of one of the largest newspapers in the world.

Without a single mention of, or apparently even thought of, the victims families that would be affected by this.

How many grieving mothers might pick up their morning coffee and their paper and be thrown into shock and horror at seeing this story?

We repeat - we begged and pleaded with the "Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children" (includes Northwestern University staff, Mandell Legal Clinic, DLA Piper Law firm, Human Rights Watch, juvenile justice advocates and others) members referenced in the story to find and notify the victims families of their efforts. After indicating to us that they had the best of intentions to do so, and even asking us to wait to publish the names of the victims that needed to be found - a list of names that they have had for over a year -this story comes out.

And with no sensitive notification in advance to victims families. After being asked by us for many months to please do so.

We are left to try to make this effort ourselves - to find these families and tell them about HB 1695. They have a right to decide if they want to be part of the debate and discussion about the bill. We will have to tell them, if we can find them, that we asked the advocates to do this sensitive and respectful notification of their efforts, and they chose not to.

Why would these advocates who say that they want to help these life-sentenced offenders create political opponents so wantonly? Why would they not work from the absolute outset of their efforts to create the broadest representation possible at their table? Why would they set up their bill to fail this way? Can it be that they truly don't care about really being able to actually pass any meaningful reforms? That they just want to feel good about their own efforts? That they want funding for their organizations more than they want to do the long hard work of dealing with the larger systemic problems?

We would not have wanted to believe it until the Executive Director of the John Howard Association, lead supporters of the bill, told us that positioning themselves for funding was a major motivation in this effort.

We do not have any funding, staff, or resources. The "Coalition for Fair Sentencing of Children" (we object to this pejorative term as most of the cases were 17 years old - hardly "children") has hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. They have significant legal and research staff at the DLA Piper Law Firm. They have the list of victims families names and have had it for over a year.

We are just victims families with full time jobs, mortgages, kids to raise, and no support to find these families.

And yet it falls to us.

Click Here or on the Names link to see the names of the victims families that we are trying to locate to notify them of this bill.

A statement on the issue of Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) from the founder of IllinoisVictims.org 
(see below for specific information on the sentencing issues)

All my grown life I have been a passionate advocate for and educator about Human Rights for all human beings. Because of that I respect and understand the questions being raised by some advocates regarding the LWOP sentence for juvenile offenders. We believe a thorough public discussion on this topic could be a positive thing, but only so long as the victims of those horrible crimes are fully notified of such debate, and empowered to participate if they so choose.

I am one of those victims - three members of my family were killed by a 16 year old diagnosed sociopath. He meticulously plotted and carried out their murders over a period of months. He shot my brother in law, a very good man he did not know and picked at random, and then he turned the gun on my beautiful 25 year old pregnant sister who was begging for the life of her unborn child. He shot her directly in her abdomen where she was trying to protect the baby. He did it for the "thrill" of it, and he planned to kill again months after he did it. He was mature, intelligent, from a good and wealthy family, was a top student, and to this day is unrepentant and still enjoying his mind games with those foolish enough to fall for him. He fits no stereotype of the cases that advocates against JLWOP are concerned about. He is the poster child for those rare few cases where LWOP is the appropriate sentence for an offender under 18, and he is currently serving three LWOP sentences in the Illinois Department of Corrections. My concerns about the discussion about this sentence are not, however, changed by the facts of my case. They are the concerns I have for all of my fellow murder victims' family members.

The primary purpose of the LWOP sentence, no matter the age of the offender, is to protect public safety. It also is the best sentence for victims in terms of the least amount of on-going traumatization caused by constant parole hearings. Other states that still have indeterminate sentencing hold regular hearings for parole that re-open the victims' scars constantly, causing a lifetime of never-ending engagement with the offender.

And the LWOP sentence supports a much more important human rights agenda, that we provide a viable alternative to becoming killers ourselves through the use of the death penalty. It is a reality-based observation that some are so dangerous and have done such awful things that they must be kept forever away from the rest of us, even from a young age, but I stress again, only in the rarest and most extreme cases.

As I have learned more about the approximately 103 cases of JLWOP in the Illinois Department of Corrections, it has become clear to me that there are definitely several offenders who should not have received this sentence, but because of some mandatory sentencing laws, judges had no choice.

As I work hard to advocate for victims in this discussion, I am reminded that those in Illinois who proposed HB 1695, a bill that would eliminate JLWOP, deliberately chose to leave victims out of the most important discussion that they could ever have - what should be the fate of the offender who brought untold agony into their lives? And oh, by the way, you know how the state of Illinois promised you that the killer would never walk free, and all your legal matters that were "permanently resolved" and in many cases discarded from your lives? They didn't really mean it. Now you will have to start dealing with it again every day for the rest of your lives. A life sentence for you, the victim. 

We have discussed this elsewhere on this website - the entire field of victimology affirms it -- that victims have a tragic and absolutely indissoluble relationship with the fate of the offender. This is a relationship created by the offender, about which the victims have no choice. This, perhaps better than any other definition, defines what it means to be a victim.

The original supporters of HB 1695 in Illinois only began to speak of the importance of representing victims voices in this discussion after my sister and I found out about it on our own and insisted that they do the right thing. As of now, they have only paid lip service to their concerns for victims - with no action steps or follow though. Many of these advocates have yet to earn their real human rights credentials. When they begin to care for the victims of these crimes as much as they do the "poor criminals", they will have earned the right to be at the table in this discussion.

I took action at the national level on this and began a conversation with staff at Human Rights Watch, one of the leading organizations nationally trying to end JLWOP. To their credit, they immediately agreed with my challenge regarding their neglect of victims in their campaign. At my personal suggestion, they authorized, researched, and soon will be publishing a report that I suggested the title to - "Victims Rights Are Human Rights" - at least a step in the right direction. (And a proud accomplishment for us in both victims and human rights advocacy - this publication will be a first for our movement.)

We encourage all advocates opposing JLWOP in Illinois to practice what they preach with regards to Human Rights.

We know that even discussions about the sentences of brutal offenders who caused untold trauma to a victims' family will, in and of itself, be re-traumatizing. Those advocates who propose changing the status quo and retroactively changing sentences already given due process of law are responsible to find and notify the victims of such crimes to be informed about any proposed changes before they happen. Victims families who have gone on in their lives with the understanding that the sentence is permanent and the offender can never be released cannot be given a "bait and switch" without their full informed consent.

Those who wish to propose changes to a sentence retroactively are also ethically obligated to generate appropriate emotional support and counseling for the very foreseeable emotional consequences such discussions could have on victims' families.

We do not believe that advocates who claim to be concerned only about human rights are being ethically consistent if they are willing to make changes to sentencing law that deeply hurts victims families in the process. You cannot protect the human rights of one group selectively while at the same time hurting another innocent group of people. This is the challenge that we put to that part of the human rights movement, that we have long been a part of, that seem to be so focused on seeing prisoners, not victims, as underdogs and in most need of help. The measure of their success and credibility will not be in how much they help prisoners' human rights, but how they protect prisoners' human rights while at the same time preserving the rights, dignity and well-being of the innocent victims of those criminals.

Until the public determines after full discussion that JLWOP should no longer be a sentencing option, advocates should only work to abolish it "prospectively" - for all cases from here on. Such a change would not be a violation of victims' rights, because they would know what to expect from the outset in all cases from here on.

But any retroactive changes to sentencing have to be treated completely differently because of the essential legal foundation of due process rights as well as the emotional and psychological process of the victims families and all the people involved in the prosecution of the cases.

We have been trying to point out, loud and clear, that a remedy already exists in law to address miscarriages of justice. Rather than battle a whole new bill through the state legislature, why not use the system already in place? That system is Clemency. The Constitution prescribes that the checks and balances between the branches of government can correct themselves for error. If there has been an over-sentencing, then clemency can be used to correct those cases retroactively that need correcting.

We find the proposals to change the sentencing for ALL of the JLWOP offenders somewhat disingenuous, not only because of their deliberate refusal after many requests to find and include the victims families in their years of work, but because not a single one - not even one - of the 103 or so Juvenile Lifers have applied for clemency.

They have not even tried to apply.

And worst of all, one organization, the John Howard Association, the primary group pushing for this legislation (in defiance of a larger coalition they were partners in that were moving responsibly in a "go slow" process, willing to collaborate with victims families), has admitted openly to us that their primary motivation in pushing this legislation was to position themselves for funding opportunities. Some foundations, such as the Soros Foundation, an organization I highly respect, have been giving out money to organizations who will work against JLWOP.

If these 103 or so cases need to be reviewed, a process that would be horrific for victims families, then it should be limited to a one-time only review -- in courts of law that are subject to the full accountability and due process of our legal system. But this only if all victims families are found, notified, and empowered to participate in the decision to do so. To propose anything more is asking victims to bear the full pain of the worst trauma of their lives over and over again. And would be a fundamental violation of their human, constitutional, legal, and victims rights.

What we object to vehemently is proposals that do not inform victims families of proposed changes before they push them, and take no account to the effect that such changes would have on them. I personally spent months of tears, sleeplessness, and genuine horror for the first time since my sister was killed. I was scared - for the first time in years - of the very thought that this very dangerous man could possibly walk free.  I experienced genuine re-traumatization. Other victims families will go through the same or worse.

And even more serious are concerns that some proposals would require victims families to go through regular parole-review type processes every few years for the rest of their lives, making impossible any life that allows them to heal and move on from the horrific crimes that forever changed their lives. These kinds of proposals are absolutely unacceptable. They would truly cause more harm than good. There are lots of different ways to address concerns with sentences such as these without recreating the nightmare bureaucracy of parole that was quite rightly done away with in Illinois in 1978.

The Hippocratic Oath for doctors is a good standard to follow: First, do no harm.

We have begged on several occasions, in person, in writing, and in organizational meetings, that all advocates against JLWOP take just a small percentage of the significant resources that they have and have invested into documenting the cases of the 103 juveniles lifers and send a simple letter to the victims families informing them of their study, their legislative goals, and invite them into this process. They have refused this request.

Their refusal to deal honestly, fairly, and compassionately with victim families is beyond our understanding and is costly to them in terms of credibility.

Victims families may definitely not want to participate, and can refuse absolutely to participate in any such conversations. But it is their right to make that choice themselves. That right is absolutely ensconced in the Constitution of our state.

And it is unconscionable that people who have the ability to care for those in prison, as I do, would not have enough concern for the victims of these same crimes to even tell them what they are planning. I would like to ask those advocates for Juvenile Lifers to give as much time to victims as I have to prisoners over the years. That would be a good standard for them to work for.

We do believe that JLWOP is appropriate in some few extreme cases. We believe that it is currently over-used, and should be applied only in the most serious of cases. But we know that there are some offenders so dangerous, so unrepentant and unchanging, such as truly violent sociopaths, that the LWOP sentence is the only appropriate sentence for them, especially when considering the most important factor of public safety, and the need to absolutely not submit brutalized victims families to one more moment of trauma.

We believe in the ability of human beings to make sound judgments about which of those cases do need to receive the LWOP sentence.  We do not believe that something as arbitrary as an 18th birthday should be the determination point for such decisions. We know that human development varies widely, and some people are fully developed and mature enough to be held accountable at different ages, depending on the person and the individual circumstances of each case. And from what we know of the 103 or so cases of JLWOP in Illinois, there are many for whom the brutality, and often repeated and multiple instances of horrific violence, is so dramatic, and their personal maturity adequate to provide for adult levels of culpability, that we have no doubt that almost everyone would concur that their sentences were quite appropriate.

There is an almost impossible to solve legal concern here for those who would contemplate retroactively changing some sentences. If a case is decades old, records are gone, witnesses and court officials long gone, and no viable hope of the Constitutional Right of Due Process being made available to all those involved in a given case, that it will not be possible to fairly re-try or re-sentence a case.  Clemency is an option that the system provides that would allow un-doing of grievous miscarriages of justice.

In the end we are sure that when the Illinois public has a hard look, as we have, at the facts of some of the JLWOP cases in Illinois, they will be assured that they are serving the appropriate sentence in many cases, and that other cases may be appropriate for clemency. Some of the facts of these cases are so brutal that it defies description, but a few of them are clear candidates for executive clemency. I have been working positively and pro-actively with these advocates to work towards these changes. And I will stand with them before the Governor and support the appeals for clemency in some of these cases.

A single crime cannot be adequately diagnostic for determination of LWOP. And the law should not allow it to be so. But if we are not willing to give the LWOP sentence to those who clearly need and deserve it, then they will go on in prison or after release to re-victimize even more innocent people. Such tragic stories abound in the news. We are responsible to use our best judgment to prevent this.

So, I will work to defeat all changes to current JLWOP law until and unless all affected victims families are found and informed and invited to be part of any discussion about possible changes to the law. This is not an extraordinary request - there are only a few hundred people involved here. This task is a finite one -- definitely "do-able". Once they have all been found and informed, a meaningful discussion can begin.

We call on Representative Molaro, the sponsor of HB 1695, and all the co-sponsors, Reps Turner and Collins, as well as the advocates responsible for the filing of this bill, the John Howard Association, to work with the team at Northwestern and the DLA Piper Law Firm, and others such as the Juvenile Justice Initiative, Human Rights Watch, Mandell Legal Clinic that has been funding and staffing the study of the 103 or so cases to take the list of names of the victims families that they already have and contact them all. Provide them with appropriate support. Empower their voices in this discussion. We promise to work to help them do this.

For all the advocates opposing juvenile life sentences that I have listed above to refuse this request renders your motivations and your efforts not credible, even unthinkably cruel and heartless towards innocent and deeply wounded victims of crime. That anyone could care for protecting the interests of guilty violent offenders and not those of their innocent victims . . .well, words just fail me on this point.

When these advocates have found these families, informed them, supported their inevitable re-traumatization, and empowered their voices in this process they have created, then they will have earned their credentials as human rights advocates in this situation and can stand with pride before the Illinois Legislature and Public and can propose the changes they think should happen. And we all will discuss it and decide - together.

Read on to learn about the effort to end JLWOP in Illinois.

A History of  HB 1695

January 2008  - A new bill HB 4384 is filed to take the place of HB 1695 - and its worse.

April 26, 2007 - Latest update on HB1695, a proposal that could end life without parole for juveniles in Illinois:

Representative Sara Feigenholtz removed her name from sponsorship of the bill. A big thank you to Rep. Feigenholtz for hearing our concerns when we spoke with her and withdrawing her sponsorship from this poorly conceived legislation. It was especially meaningful to us in our conversation with her that she reported having the picture of Chicago area murder victim Renee Rondeau in her office. She spoke at Renee's funeral. Renee is the daughter of our good friends Gordon and Elaine Rondeau in Georgia who are the founders of the National Coalition of Victims in Action (NCVIA) of which we are board members.

March 22, 2007

HB1695, the bill that could have made some of the worst convicted murderers in the state, serving life without parole, eligible for parole simply because they were under the age of 18 at the time of their offense, has reached a resolution that we are very pleased with. The bill has been withdrawn by its sponsor for this session with the promise that he would hold hearings and meetings on the issue that included us, and other victims voices.

Our concerns over the bill primarily centered on the question of victim notification. There are 103 families, at least, who should have been notified that the legislature was contemplating retroactively changing sentences for those whom these families were assured would spend the rest of their lives in prison. Our advocacy with the legislative sponsors was grounded in the fact that the time that an offender serves in prison is often very important to many victims' well-being. To change the rules after a sentence has been handed down by a judge in a court of law can be extremely traumatizing to the victims' families and calls into question the authority and independence of the criminal justice system.

We especially want to thank the hundreds of families and friends of the victims across Illinois and across the country, even from both coasts, who wrote, called, and e-mailed the committee to send the message that victims must be represented and consulted prior to making any changes in the sentencing of their cases.

It is a widely held misconception that it is the "offender's case" that is being addressed, but that is not the whole picture. Victims become emotionally and inextricably linked with the fate of the perpetrator and, even though the offense is officially seen as being against "the state", it is in a very real way the victim's case as well. Victims could either suffer massive re-traumatization or some sense of peace and being able to move on, depending on what happens to the offender. This is one reason why the victims' rights statutes are so important and why they must be enforced, during the original trial and afterward. One of these rights is the right to be notified and to be heard. This was our main complaint regarding the way that HB1695 was handled at first.

We would like to thank all those who heard our voices, understood the victims' issues involved, and recognized how important it is to take an issue such as this slowly and deliberately. These good people include Representative Robert Molaro, the original bill's sponsor who listened to us and engaged in responsible dialog about the implications of the bill with us. Representative Elizabeth Coulson gave generously of her time and resources to help us navigate the legislative process and her concern and support for us was deeply impressive. Other legislators who took time to meet with us, help us, and truly advocated for victims' voices in this process include Representative Dennis Reboletti, Representative Chapin Rose, Representative Patricia Lindner, and Representative Julie Hamos.

We were generally impressed by the way we were received in Springfield, with the exception of only one legislator, a co-sponsor of the bill, who was so offender-focused that she literally said to us that she "didn't care about the victims" and that we "needed to get over ourselves" in a very harsh voice. It is truly unfortunate that certain legislators are so insensitive to the victims who are innocent and yet seem to care so much for the offenders who are guilty.

We have committed to being involved in healthy ongoing dialog with the organizers and activists behind HB1695 and plan to work with them in the coming months to represent victims' interests and to bring light to the issue of juvenile life without parole. We respect, admire, and support their motives and concerns to protect the human rights of all people, especially young people, even if they commit horrible crimes.

We intend to do our best to find and notify all the victims' family members involved in the 103 cases of juveniles sentenced to life without parole in Illinois and give them the choice of whether they want to be involved in the discussions about HB 1695. If you are able to help or provide information, please help us.

We have archived all the material generated during the past few months here.
 

MEDIA COVERAGE of the JLWOP issue

To read a Chicago Tribune story on JLWOP, see the accompanying video, and post comments on their story, click here

Our Letter to the Editor on "juvenile lifers" is in Chicago Sun-Times

Read an article about "Juveniles Serving Life Sentences Could Get Parole" in the Daily Herald.

Read our OpEd submitted to the Chicago Tribune after they published stories on
"Juveniles" sentenced to Life

To Read an AP reporter's stories on JLWOP nationally Click Here  and Here

The Chicago Tribune front page story on "Juveniles Sentenced to Life" 
notifies victims families the hard way of legislation that could potentially free their loved ones' killers

Hear Illinois Victims' voices in a feature story run on Chicago Public Radio on 9-7-07
Listen to the story here on the WBEZ website - use their search function for "Life Without Parole"

On Friday, September 7, 2007, Chicago Public Radio aired a story about the sentence of Life Without Parole being given to offenders who were under 18 at the time of their crimes in Illinois.

Click here to go to the WBEZ website to listen to the story. The story was featured on Morning Edition and Eight Forty-Eight. WBEZ is linking to this web page to give listeners more information.

Ed. note: WBEZ's story said that JLWOP is available in Illinois to 13 year olds. There are no 13 year olds who have ever been convicted in Illinois and sentenced to LWOP, only between the ages of 14 and 17. The vast majority of them are 17 year olds, with only a few 14 and 15 year olds.

 

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has written a powerful statement bringing light to our efforts to preserve the life without parole sentence in the May 31, 2007 edition of his column. As usual, he is continuing the discussion on his blog. We encourage you to post your comments and provide feedback on this important issue of abolishing Life Without Parole in Illinois. The appropriate role of victims' voices in public discussion of sentencing issues is being debated there.


To read more about the threat to Life Without Parole in Illinois, click here to go to the Long Term Prisoner Study section of our websit
e.
 

May 8, 2007

PBS premiered a Frontline episode entitled "When Kids Get Life", a documentary about five cases of "juvenile life without parole" or JLWOP in Colorado. This will continue to be re-broadcast at other times this month. Information on the documentary can be obtained at www.pbs.org, where the documentary can also be viewed. Advocacy information for those opposing JLWOP can be obtained at www.pendulumfoundation.org.

First an editorial note: The webmaster of this IllinoisVictims.org website is a victims' family member of a JLWOP triple murder case in Illinois.

We invite dialogue with all interested in the issue of JLWOP.  Please send your comments and thoughts and we will publish them here. You can also participate in national on-line discussion of the issue at www.pbs.org.

We understand the nature of polemics and advocacy - that being "one sided" is part of making a case and generating discussion.  We do not object to a documentary film being "one-sided" as this film clearly was. 

However, mis-information, shallow stereotypes, and unrepresentatively narrow cases and participants do not enhance discussion, only further misunderstanding.

If we accept the facts presented in the documentary at face value, several, though not all of the cases, seem to be cases of overly harsh sentencing or outright miscarriages of justice. We strongly urge the entirety of the Colorado Criminal Justice system to address these and any other miscarriages of justice, while working diligently to inform the victims and their families in the said cases, and to empower their voices and to provide significant support to them in whatever ways will help them to achieve the best possible outcome.

We have serious questions and concerns about several aspects of this Frontline episode.

bulletThere is only one victims' family portrayed in the documentary - they are portrayed as vengeful, harsh, unforgiving, polarizing, and completely unsympathetic. They are never shown as crying, only the offenders and their families are shown as having any feelings. The victims' family member, a mother of a murdered son, is shown as being sarcastic at times, even laughing.  It was a most negatively biased portrayal and we offer our strongest objections to the filmmaker, and to PBS for this aspect of the film.
 
bulletOne story implicitly denounces Restorative Justice principles, without ever naming them,  by labeling the expressions of remorse from an accused offender that were offered to the victims' family, who then shared it with the Prosecution in the case, as the worst legal development that could ever happen to an offender.
 
bulletThere are painstaking descriptions of the "horrors" of the prison life for the offenders, but there are no descriptions of the suffering of victims in the documentary.  Not a single one.
 
bulletVictims family members are portrayed as being politically powerful only for the purpose of harshness and vengefulness against the offenders. There are no even slight references to victims who work in Restorative Justice, victim offender mediation, prison reform and human rights advocacy. They are painted with one brush - one of an obstructionist, angry, and unsympathetic group that always wants the worst punishment possible for the offenders.  This stereotype of victims' family members is not even close to being accurate.  Victims, like all other groups, are not monolithic.  And victims are, remember, innocent by definition and the first and worst recipients of wrongdoing and criminal behavior.
 
bulletOffenders are consistently referred to as children instead of teenagers, youths, juveniles, or adolescents. We believe this is a manipulative and inaccurate propaganda term.  While we accept the fact that they are not fully adults, a seventeen year old cannot properly be referred to as children.
 
bulletMost of the stories portrayed in the film persuasively make the case that unduly harsh sentencing was likely handed down for those offenders. But the selection of cases was obviously made for those most designed to communicate the message of the filmmakers. We have questions about the forty other JLWOP cases in the state that were not selected for this film. Could the filmmaker have chosen even one example of an offender who remains so dangerous that the general public would easily agree that a life behind bars is the proper disposition for that offender? We suspect that they could have, but clearly did not. 
 
bulletAdolescent brain development is briefly referred to as if it were an indisputable mitigating factor.  But there is no treatment of the broadly complex national discussion on the comprehensive psychological and developmental picture with regards to the issue of culpability.  It was treated as fact rather than the inexact science and highly individualized manifestation that it is.
 
bulletThere was no reference to the fact that of the over 2000 cases of JLWOP in the nation, while there are clear miscarriages of justice in this and many other sentences across our national criminal justice system,  significant numbers of criminal cases are clear and absolutely unmitigated wrong-doing on the part of the offender. The documentary did not make the slightest reference to the fact that there was even the possibility that one of these sentences were "just" or appropriate, or that there are incarcerated offenders who are completely and defiantly irredeemable, such as chronic sociopaths and predatory mentalities.  That these offenders were caught early in their criminal careers is laudable.  They are off the streets and cannot hurt other innocent people as they would be sure to do.  It is wrong to lump these inmates in with others who we agree are more hopeful cases.
 
bulletIt is not logical to use a small sample of cases to generalize about the entire sentence of life without parole.  This is logically and statistically moving in the wrong direction.  To prove that LWOP were an unjust sentence as a whole, the widest possible range of sentences would need to be covered, and all situations would need to be examined, whether they fit the filmmakers' thesis, or not.  The filmmaker has not demonstrated a fundamental flaw in the sentence itself, only in the individual sentences in these rather limited cases.  We did not understand the leap that the film took from the specific to the general and we object to the sweeping language made especially early in the film that most juvenile murderers are somehow understandably lashing out to brutal oppression in their young lives and that this is typical for these cases.
 

We invite PBS, Frontline, the Pendulum Foundation, and the filmmaker to enter into a more balanced dialogue, and one that treats victims with all the depth and sympathy and complexity that they so richly deserve. The presentation of victims and offenders in this program was so biased that we are considering demanding equal time of PBS, a station whose programming we usually find to be above reproach.

We were pleased to see that the New York Times review that came out after this posting agreed with our critiques of this documentary.

TV Review | 'When Kids Get Life'

Watching Kids Behind Bars as They Ripen Into Adults

bullet
Published: May 8, 2007

Correction Appended

A cheap and easy critical approach to a crime documentary is to look at the opening scene. Try this at home: If a program opens on a rough, hot city block with torn chain link and kids hanging out, the film is probably going to have a bleeding heart. In its long and loving look, misty as a bobby-soxer’s gaze at James Dean, we get the picture. These are the neglected toughs who might be rehabilitated by the gentle hand of a social worker or a Brown-educated filmmaker.

Ofra Bikel Productions

Jacob Ind at age 15, when he killed his mother and stepfather.

Rarely the curtain opens on something else. A documentary, like tonight’s “Frontline” on PBS, “When Kids Get Life,” begins with a crime scene. The first sound in the mix is a siren; the first voices belong to police officers. Shots of stains, spills and rigor mortis follow. You can almost hear the officious D.A.: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this was a heinous crime. Show no mercy.”

O.K., so there’s a reason that drawing conclusions from the first scene is cheap: It can be misleading. In spite of its opening, “When Kids Get Life” turns out to be no more prosecutorial than the usual PBS fare. Soon after the tour of the gruesome crime scene — a Colorado house in which a couple, the mother and stepfather of the 15-year-old murderer, have been butchered — the program swings by the prison in which Jacob Ind, now 29, is serving a life sentence without parole.

Mr. Ind, who was a kind-faced teenager, is now puffy-looking — hardly a lean jerk shouting “Oz”-style jive about his innocence and prison politics. He’s confused. In a long interview his brother, a therapist, says he and Jacob were sexually tortured by the stepfather and that Jacob was singled out for contempt by their mother.

Four equally sorry young lifers appear, men whose crimes seem to be profoundly mitigated. Each one, it should be said, is a small masterpiece of pity and outrage, and you can hardly believe any of them is behind bars. Two have no more appeals. Two had lawyers evidently so inept as to embarrass the whole profession. One, with highly connected and rich parents, says he didn’t do anything but help clean up after a murder; it seems another kid implicated him to save his own hide. The point clearly is that teenagers don’t ever deserve life without parole.

In the individual cases, however, who knows who’s telling the truth? The filmmaker, Ofra Bikel, clearly believes the guys. And so does the viewer. It’s not that the filmmaker is so persuasive, it’s that there is almost no one else to rely on.

On the other hand that opening scene should make you wary. And there’s a little something in the soundtrack that’s worth close attention. It’s Ms. Bikel’s own voice.

In general, my dear Watson, leaving traces of the interviewer’s actual speaking voice in a documentary is a gamble. A filmmaker might sound cool when she flaunts her rapport with her subjects — “Wow, dude, that must have been really hard growing up in South Central” — but she risks giving away her biases.

Ms. Bikel’s off-camera voice sounds like a blend of Dr. Ruth and Jane Goodall. Though she has focused her career as a filmmaker on the trial of O. J. Simpson and the justice system in the United States, she still sounds incredulous when talking about American life.

She opts in this film to have her voice come through when she’s talking with Nathan Ybanez, who is admitting to some of the most eerie and sensationalistic stuff in the program.

Specifically Mr. Ybanez is painfully admitting to his mother’s chronic, kittenish and romantically inflected sexual abuse of him. It ended when he murdered her. And Ms. Bikel’s pushy-psychoanalytic murmur seems to insist that Mr. Ybanez reveal that his mother’s advances turned him on. Ick.

Perhaps it’s time for female filmmakers to ask what draws them, time and time again, to men in prison who must, on some existential level, be innocent. Innocent people are convicted of crimes, and their stories are sometimes worth telling. But there are other stories: of guilty people, say, or of prison wardens, or of people who run numbers or newsstands and have nothing to do with violent crime. Sometimes those stories are fascinating.

Correction: May 15, 2007

A television review last Tuesday about “When Kids Get Life,” a “Frontline” documentary on PBS, misstated the number of times the voice of the filmmaker, Ofra Bikel, can be heard in the documentary. It is several times, not just in one scene.

Comments from the PBS Frontline Website

 

Lessons Learned from Other States

Read a letter below from a Colorado-based juvenile justice reform advocacy group supporting IllinoisVictims.org's position on the role of victims and their right to be involved in discussions about the sentencing of offenders in their cases, despite some of our differences regarding the JLWOP sentence.

ED NOTE: We have received complaints from victims in Colorado that this may be, at best, shallow if not outright hypocritical rhetoric from Pendulum. See fuller discussion at the Forum page at www.jlwopvictims.org.

CLICK HERE to read about specific JLWOP cases in Illinois.

An Open Letter from Mary Ellen Johnson of the Pendulum Foundation in Colorado:

To: Staff and Members of the John Howard Association in Chicago (and other advocates for juvenile lifers in Illinois)        

Following the PBS Frontline documentary, WHEN KIDS GET LIFE,  I have been communicating with Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins (of IllinoisVictims.org) and she told me about your efforts (to reform Juvenile Life Without Parole Sentencing)  which I applaud. Jennifer has also reminded me that, as we seek changes, we must be mindful of the victims.

Because The Pendulum Foundation has been dealing with trying to change CO legislation from mandatory juvenile LWOP to a lesser sentence for 5 years, I hope you don’t mind that I share some of my observations with you. We’ve learned the very hard way what does and does not work in Colorado.   Not saying that that won’t work in Illinois.

1)       You must sincerely work with victims. They will ALWAYS be your most powerful opposition. DAs are tough and they wield a lot of power but the emotional impact of victims’ families makes it VERY difficult for even sympathetic legislators to vote your way. We’ve found that bringing out our most egregious cases – kid serving life for a hit and run, kids getting life for killing their molesters, are excellent to frame the issue for the press and public. That will help garner you sympathetic – or at least neutral – “ink” and will start shaping public opinion away from “they’re all super predators.”  However, during hearings if you bring out your strongest cases, the opposition will ALWAYS drag out the true worst of the worst. How can that be combated? We try to move beyond individual cases – it will always be tit for tat – and go to the larger issue. Should a child EVER be sentenced to LWOP? Some victims’ groups, and I think Jennifer agrees with me, don’t have a problem with changing the law “prospectively.” Opponents of retroactivity will always say they were promised that life meant life and now you’re going back and changing the deal? There are many new research studies on brain development, effects of incarceration that are useful, but this is really an emotional issue and I’m not sure our side can ever win that one. We have brought forward family members of those serving life – some who are also victims of other murders – and their stories are compelling. I’m not sure that is the best avenue to go though. In CO, we’ve decided to do the process in increments and try to lay our groundwork better. Had we taken an offer 5 years ago of 40 years retroactively, which we scoffed at, we would be much further along today. Now we can’t even get “retroactivity” written into any legislation.

You are very lucky that you have victims’ groups that are willing to work with you, at least in theory. We didn’t have that here in CO. You MUST listen to them and their concerns. Restorative justice cannot just be a bone you throw to victims hoping they’ll keep quiet. You have to integrate it fully into the process. And remember, restorative justice must not have the ultimate goal of physically freeing the offender. It must be of emotionally and spiritually freeing all involved. Bottom line, restorative justice is about repairing relationships. If that is not your goal, victims’ families sense that immediately. They don’t think you’re sincere and they will blow off any half-hearted efforts.

2)       Have you ever thought about doing legislation prospectively, and looking at the current laws on the books to find a way around for the current LWOPS on a case by case basis? We didn’t want to have to do that but when something isn’t getting us the results we want, we have to be more innovative.(We’re very aware that every year these now young men serve means that they are more institutionalized and less rehabilitatable.)  We came up with the idea of a juvenile clemency board. The board would consist of child psychologists, experts on brain development, those who specifically deal with juveniles and the juvenile system. That further separates children from adults, helping you with your argument that juveniles ARE different. It allows the governor to make decisions on a case-by case basis, rather than wholesale, which victims will always oppose. I know what you’re saying. The governor doesn’t grant commutations or clemency. So what we are doing is presenting the governor with a pilot program that would start pushing some of these young LWOPS through the system over the course of several years. After they have successfully completed the pilot program they will be granted a commutation of sentence. We’re not saying that the governor will accept this. We are just saying it’s a compromise that we’re offering to break a years-long impasse. The idea of a juvenile clemency board had NO opposition. Don’t think the DAs wanted another bruising battle like the 2006 session when opposition brought out many victims and the testimony was extremely emotional for all involved – and so draining that everyone was looking for some sort of alternative. The pendulum IS swinging. Most people are now acknowledging “something” needs to be done. We think this is a compromise that could start moving some juveniles through the system, protect the rights of the victims, and provide political cover for the governor.  You won’t get 100% of what you want. But when we looked at this realistically, we wouldn’t want all  young LWOPS coming out wholesale. Some of them are too damaged. What we believe can be done is to make their lives meaningful inside. That’s another prong of the strategy.  

I have a lot of other thoughts but this email is getting too long. . . Bottom-line, I urge you to truly listen to and work with people like Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins and you will be waaaaaaay ahead of us here in Colorado.

Best of luck to you on your very important quest,

Mary Ellen Johnson, Executive Director, The Pendulum Foundation

http://www.pendulumfoundation.com/

And here is a story that shows support for the kind of positive reform for the vast majority of young offenders that we would love to see. If more young offenders were given intervention that actually HELPED and emphasized the need and their abilities to turn their lives around, there would be far fewer younger killers that have already turned into hardened and professional killers.

We here at IllinoisVictims.org work hard on crime prevention for troubled youth and know that it would virtually eliminate the need for juvenile life sentences if these kinds of programs were implemented across the board. We encourage more funding for programs such as the Victim Impact Panels run by the Cook County Juvenile Probation as great examples of the benefits of early intervention.

If we as a society want to save money and lives, we will invest in crime prevention and rehabilitative programs for young offenders.

Poll sees hope for young offenders
Respondents would rather counsel than lock up juveniles

By Ofelia Casillas
    December 11, 2007

Illinois residents would rather pay to counsel young offenders than incarcerate them, and keep them close to home instead of in large, distant prisons, according to a new poll.

The poll commissioned by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, set for publication Tuesday, focused on four states, including Illinois.

More than nine out of every 10 respondents in Illinois said they believe young offenders have the potential to change. More than eight out of 10 favored putting more money into counseling and education and less into youth prisons.

More than six in 10 said they believe providing help after young offenders get out of prison is an effective strategy.

Many polled also believe that the juvenile justice system unfairly treats youths who are low-income and African-American or Hispanic, according to an advance summary.

The poll was conducted in September. It included surveys of 500 adults nationwide, plus separate samplings of 300 adults each in Illinois, Washington, Pennsylvania and Louisiana.

The margin of error for Illinois responses was plus or minus 5.7 percent.

Illinois juvenile justice experts said the poll shows the public's feelings are in line with recent research on the most effective approach to juvenile offenders.

Diane Geraghty, director of the Civitas ChildLaw Center at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, said the responses show the public understands that youths should be held accountable, while understanding they are different from adults and require different treatment.

"These are not incompatible ideas. It's not an either-or proposition that you are tough on juvenile crime or you're soft on juvenile crime," Geraghty said.

Paul Wolff, senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020, said the poll suggests Illinois residents are in tune with public officials who recently created a new state department for juvenile corrections.

"It's an incremental recognition that these are kids that can be saved and made productive citizens. It's a lot less expensive in terms of the human toll, as well as the taxpayer toll, to get these kids back into society," Wolff said. "We're on a trajectory here where the more that people hear about this and learn about it and think about it, the more the policies are going to change for the better."

A separate survey commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation, also set for release Tuesday, found that national respondents, given the choice between paying for rehabilitation or paying for incarceration, would rather spend for rehabilitation.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-juvy_11dec11,1,5900490.story
 

 

 

Opposition to Life Without Parole in Juveniles - Click here for more on the topic

Amnesty International has published a report on LWOP for Juvenile Offenders.  It contains several concerns that we share, including LWOP for felony murder, or being sentenced to Life Without Parole for serving as an accomplice.  We do feel, however, that LWOP can be justified for certain individuals, although those individuals should be the worst of the worst and a proven danger to society.

The AI article can be found here.

Living in hell for life

Marlene Martin, national director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty [1], examines a punishment that many people consider a "slow form of death"--life without the possibility of parole sentences. Mark Clements, an Illinois prisoner serving life without parole, gathered interviews for this article.

"I've been locked up in Illinois prisons since I was 16. I was tortured into confessing to a crime I didn't commit. I've been here for over 25 years. To look out and think this is where I will stay for the rest of my life--now that is a living, unbearable hell."
-- Mark Clements, Chicago police torture victim, serving a juvenile life without parole sentence in Illinois

MARK CLEMENTS was arrested when he was 16 years old and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Like most juveniles sentenced to life without parole, he was tried as an adult and sent to an adult prison to serve his sentence.

Today, Mark is 43 years old. He has spent almost twice as much of his life locked up in prison as he lived free.

Ed note: To use the case of someone who is making an innocence claim as the example of what is wrong with the sentence they receive does not really logically follow. The problem with the Mark Clements case is that he has made an innocence claim and was allegedly tortured into his confession. That is not relevant to the JLWOP sentence as a public policy question.

America outstrips every other nation in the world in the number of people it puts in its prisons. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population, but accounts for 25 percent of prisoners.

According to a study by the Pew Center on the States, one out of every 100 adults in the U.S. is in prison or jail. And because of the racism of the American "justice" system, the numbers are much higher for people of color--if you are an African American man between the ages of 20 and 34, your likelihood of being behind bars today is one in nine.

But the U.S. stands even further apart from the rest of the world in one nightmarish aspect of its prison system--the men and women sentenced to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

There are over 132,000 people serving life sentences in the U.S. One in 10 are forbidden from ever receiving parolee, but overall, only one in four of the larger group will ever come before a parole board. Despite FBI crime statistics showing a drop in violent crime over the past decade, the number of people sentenced to life in prison has nearly doubled.

Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News and author of two books on the prison system--who himself served 17 years of a life sentence--said life without parole sentences are "a death sentence by incarceration. You're trading a slow form of death for a faster one."

This kind of sentencing is virtually unheard of elsewhere in the world. "Western Europeans regard 10 to 12 years as extremely long term, even for offenders sentenced to life," says James Whitman, author of the book Harsh Justice.

And among the prisoners with life sentences in the U.S. are 2,380 people who were sentenced to life without parole as "juvenile offenders"--in other words, they were under the age of 18 when the crimes they were accused of were committed--according to Human Rights Watch.

Of these juvenile offenders, 73 were sentenced to life in prison without parole at the age of 13 or 14 years old, according to research done by the Equal Justice Initiative.

To put this in perspective, no other country in the world sentences 13 year olds to life without parole. In fact, outside of the U.S., only 12 juvenile offenders anywhere in the world are serving this sentence, according to Human Rights Watch. Seven are in Israel, four are in South Africa, and one is in Tanzania.

There are over 2,000 in the United States.

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"I'm the first to say that I made my share of mistakes in life--I'm not perfect. But life without the possibility of parole is a life-draining sentence. No matter how hard I try to better myself, I'm treated as if I am the worst of the worst. I can't sleep nights. I can't rest in my body because this one bad choice to hang with friends could cost me my freedom forever."
-- Daniel Henney, serving a juvenile life without parole sentence in Illinois

ONE THING that stands out about prisoners sentenced to life without the possibility of parole is that they don't stand out as the inhuman monsters they are often depicted to be.

ED NOTE: Oh, come on Marlene, who has EVER painted these young offenders as "inhuman monsters"? That kind of manipulative hyperbole is the kind of thing you would expect to hear only on a Fox" news" Tabloid - and is simply is not worthy of a discussion this important.

Among all prisoners with life sentences, from 1988 to 2001, 40 percent were convicted of a crime other than murder. Of juvenile offenders given life without parole sentences, 59 percent--well over half--had never been convicted of a previous crime, according to Human Rights Watch.

Antonio Nunez was raised in Los Angles, his life shaped by gang violence. As the Equal Justice Initiative described in its report "Cruel and Unusual," at the age of 14, he got into a car with two older men, one of whom had been kidnapped. A police chase ensued, and gunfire was exchanged. No one was killed; no one was even hurt. But Antonio was sentenced to life in California's San Quentin prison, where he remains today.

"He has lost all hope," his sister Cindy Nunez told Reuters. "We try to keep his spirits up by saying something will change in the law."

Rather than their alleged crimes, other factors stand out about those serving life without parole sentences. Invariably, they are poor. Many came from violent homes or suffered abuse. And an overwhelming proportion are minorities. According to Human Rights Watch, among juvenile offenders serving life without parole for crimes other than murder, every single one is a person of color.

In Illinois, Mark Clements is one of 103 juvenile offenders serving a life without parole sentence. Of these 103, 74 are, like Mark, African American; 10 are Latino and 19 are white.

Ian Manuel is one. Raised in a climate of violence and poverty, he was drawn to gang activity at a young age. At 13, he committed a robbery and shot a woman, who survived. Feeling remorseful, Ian turned himself into the police and pled guilty. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Ian has spent years in solitary confinement and attempted suicide several times. He remains in prison in Florida despite the fact that the victim has forgiven him and petitioned the court for his release.

One reason these injustices can take place is that judges are barred, under mandatory sentencing laws, to take any account of age or background information.

In Illinois, for example, where judges are required to impose life without parole sentences on defendants convicted of certain crimes, without consideration of any mitigating circumstances, several have gone on record with their misgivings.

In passing sentence in one case, Judge James Linn stated that he believed the defendant "should suffer harsh criminal consequences for acting as a lookout in this case, but to suggest that he ought to receive a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, I find to be very, very hard to swallow, to the point where I can describe it as unconscionable."

Probably the most notorious mandatory sentencing policy in the country is California's "three strikes and you're out" law, passed in a referendum of California voters in 1994. A third felony conviction automatically lands defendants in prison for 25 years to life. Since it was implemented, over 1,000 people have gone to prison under three strikes in California for non-serious crimes.

Take Santos Reyes. His "crime" was to help his cousin, a Mexican immigrant who was unable to take a drivers' test because he couldn't write English, but needed a license so he could begin working as a roofer with Reyes. For this, Santos was convicted of felony perjury.

Reyes had been convicted of two previous felonies more than a decade before--stealing a radio when he was 17 and a robbery when he was 22. In neither case was anyone harmed. In the years between, he had gotten married, had two children and worked steadily as a roofer. But because the perjury charge was a third felony, he was sentenced to prison under three strikes--where he has spent the last nine years, all for taking a drivers' test for his cousin.

"He was convicted for the crimes of being poor and Mexican," said Rachael Odes, who helps coordinate the Free Santos Reyes committee. "He's just one of many. There are so many people serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes. He's a regular guy who was trying to make a living."

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"I have little hope at all. This sentence is like a death sentence. It is torture on my sanity. There's no second chances for any of us. No matter how good or bad I am, these cruel prison conditions are all I have to look forward to."
-- Paul Lee, serving a juvenile life without parole sentence in Illinois

THE STANDARD argument in favor of harsh sentencing is that it keeps the public safe. But does it?

"Studies have shown that offenders who have served over 20 years in prison rarely ever reoffend and never for a violent crime," says Linda Goodman from Citizens for Earned Release. "The recidivism rate for older inmates is less than 2 percent."

And the rest of the industrialized world, where such harsh sentences are unheard of, has a far lower violent crime rate.

The U.S. hasn't always had lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key sentencing policies. Before the 1970s, life without the possibility of parole sentences were unknown. During the 1960s, in fact, the emphasis in prison policy was on rehabilitation and helping prisoners get training and education so they could successfully rejoin society upon their release. Congress amended federal parole statues to make it possible for prisoners serving life sentence to be eligible for parole after 15 years.

But in the 1970s, this began to change. Politicians saw that "tough on crime" rhetoric could both win them votes and drive back the gains made by the civil rights and other social movements of the 1960s and early '70s.

The emphasis of new laws turned to punishing prisoners, rather than rehabilitation. In 1984, the Sentencing Reform Act eliminated parole for all federal crimes. By 2000, 33 states had abolished parole, up from 17 over previous decades--and 24 states had introduced three-strikes sentencing laws.

And more and more states established life without the possibility of parole sentences. Currently, only New Mexico and Alaska don't have a life without parole sentence on the books.

U.S. policymakers seem determined to march out of step with the rest of the world on the use of harsh prison sentences. In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on all nations to abolish life without the possibility of parole sentences for youth offenders. The margin was 185 to 1--with the U.S. casting the one and only vote against.

Efforts to win change in sentencing laws have had mixed results. In 2004, California activists organized a campaign for a referendum to amend the three-strikes law to trigger the sentence only if the third felony was a "serious" one. Leading up to the vote, opinion polls showed two-thirds support for the referendum. But a last-minute advertising blitz and campaign by conservatives like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned the tide, and the referendum lost by a narrow margin.

This year, supporters were unable to gather enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot again in California. But a bill to abolish life without parole sentences for youth offenders passed the Senate Public Safety Committee in April and is being considered by the full state Senate. If this legislation passes, California would join nine other states that prohibit life without parole sentences for juveniles.

In Illinois, efforts by some grassroots groups to allow juveniles with life without parole sentences to come before a parole board after serving 10 years is underway, but the attempt is being stymied by opposition from victims' rights groups.

It's long past time that life without paroles sentences were eliminated--for juveniles or adults.

"Everyday that I wake up, it's a pain knowing that I have this sentence, and if these devils get their way, I will have to be here the rest of my days. Knowing this, and being in this situation, just the thought alone will kill you from the inside out. A natural life sentence tells the public that you are a vile and insidious person, and that you possess no rehabilitative potential to reenter society and be a productive citizen. This is a bald-faced lie, and this lie can be brought to an end today."
-- Jamie Jackson, serving a life without parole sentence in Illinois

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What else to read
The Human Rights Watch study "The Rest of Their Lives" [3] documents the extent of life without parole sentences for juveniles and the impact on its victims.

The Equal Justice Initiative report "Cruel and Unusual" [4] focuses specifically on 13- and 14-year-olds sentenced to what its authors call "death in prison."

Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe [5] by James Whitman documents the much harsher sentencing policies of the U.S.

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty [6] Web site is filled packed with information about capital punishment in the U.S., and activist campaigns against the criminal injustice system.

  1. [1] http://www.nodeathpenalty.org
  2. [2] http://socialistworker.org/issue/677
  3. [3] http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/
  4. [4] http://eji.org/eji/childrenprison/deathinprison
  5. [5] http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHarsh-Justice-Criminal-Punishment-Widening%2Fdp%2F019518260X%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1217266993%26sr%3D8-1&tag=socialistwork-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325
  6. [6] http://www.nodeathpenalty.org
  7. [7] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0

 

 

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