Victims of
Juvenile Killers and Violent Teens
Sentenced To
Juvenile Life Without Parole

CONTENTS of this Page of the www.jlwopvictims.org website:

We invite you to send us ideas on the JLWOP issue for this page.

TOWARDS DIALOGUE ON PUBLIC POLICY

To once again attempt to clearly demonstrate the reasonable position by NOVJL that we do recognize the need for reform widely across the criminal justice system, often including life without parole, and even for juvenile offenders (in some states more than others), we pose the following thoughts on possible areas of reform that would go a LONG way to alleviating many of the expressed concerns about Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) sentencing.

Would that the advocates against JLWOP took a position as reasonable as ours when it comes to understanding all sides of this issue. We continue to invite them to dialogue with us about possible common ground for reforms that do not hurt victims, public safety, or the rule of law.

Their consistent refusal to talk to us seriously about this for years now has become such a hardened and deafening silence in the wake of our requests, that the situation speaks for itself. They are bizarrely locked like glue on the notion that retroactively offering parole hearings for those serving life without parole is the only solution.

Very clearly their obsession with retroactively injecting parole into these sentences is highly problematic, and we believe, fatally so for their point of view. Everyone, especially victims, walked away from believing they were totally permanent, and often therefore not preserving vital records and testimony that would be needed for on-going parole hearings. Such retroactive changes are possibly illegal, and most certainly endangering and retraumatizing for victims families who have already been put through literal hell, through no fault of their own.

We invite JLWOP reform advocates to consider the many other options for addressing their concerns about JLWOP laws in some states:

COMMENTS FROM NOVJL PRESIDENT and noted defense attorney Daniel Horowitz:

LWOP for these most violent teen offenders is necessary because parole boards are highly political, unregulated and over time, the imprisoned ex juvenile is still here but I will not be ... the judge will not be ... etc.

I have tried to track down and verify the sad stories in the Human Rights Watch paper and none have verified (See my website www.sb399.com for my analysis).  Most of them are stories that cannot be true.  

For me, the task is to find truly wronged juveniles and to fix the situation. Solutions: Habeas corpus can be extended for juveniles.  Funding for their defense can be increased.  Additional judicial review of the sentence (perhaps a de novo hearing after LWOP is imposed or an automatic appeal to the Supreme Court as in capital cases) 

But, for some reason, the advocacy groups against JLWOP have sought to present fairy tale horror stories and to open the potential floodgates to all killers rather than focus on those truly deserving.  

There is a broader political agenda here.  Eliminating the Death Penalty is part of the program I suspect. [The offender advocates have openly admitted that their agenda is to eliminate ALL life without parole sentences nationally].  A sense of compassion for all and belief that all can change is part.  The "all can change" view is a myth.  Sexuality does not change and certain deep emotional impulses do not change.  We are what we are in some primal senses. .... All killers are not primal killers but those who are cannot change.

COMMENTS FROM NOVJL FOUNDER Jennifer Bishop Jenkins:

Since we know that there are problems in the juvenile justice system, surely as in the entire criminal justice system, we know there must be dialogue about where reforms might be needed. One of our main concerns with the approaches advocated by those who support ending the JLWOP sentence is their currently too-narrow focus. There is not one panacea  (offering the expensive and unending nightmare for victims of regular parole opportunities to offenders) - there is not one problem - and there is not even clear right and wrong answers.

We also know that there are times when human rights may be in actual conflict with each other.

So, hang on - this is a somewhat complicated example of the argument:

If a prisoner is argued to have a "right" (and this is by no means established, in fact, we are sure there is NO such "right") to a periodic review for early release or parole from a long term sentence, as some prisoner advocates argue; but there is a thorough and rigorous legal case made, given full due process of law and then some, and that offender is found to be fully guilty of a horrific mass or multiplied aggravated murder, and whose life circumstances are such that he or she will highly likely never qualify for early release under any parole system; and since we know it is true that periodic re-engagement with the offender continues to re-traumatize already horribly damaged and innocent victims families, and that such damage is clearly a violation of their rights . . . well then, what does one do? It cannot be advocated that the rights of victims should be constantly re-violated in order to advance the "right" of a prisoner found to merit a life sentence to possible periodic review for release. One cannot trade one human rights violation for another. Especially when the offender's violations of the victims lives and rights is what created this problem in the first place.

And no one who understands the nature of trauma and victimology would ever argue that victims can simply choose not to care about or participate in such periodic reviews for early release of the killers of their loved ones. While there may be that rare case of a victim survivor able to completely "move on" in their lives, and not give the fate of the killer a second thought, largely that is not even neurologically possible for most people, much less desirable, for a whole host of reasons. Many of us come to see our grief and our memories as a positive and vital link to those we love take violently from us.

We believe that ultimately the key argument in this national debate over the JLWOP sentence may come down to a recognition that, while the fact that some teenagers are actually capable of such horrors in our beloved nation, and we do not like what that means about us as a nation and a people that such a thing is possible (and how we address that we believe IS the KEY discussion we should be having!) we are in fact a nation that has younger people capable of such horrors. They are here and they are, sadly, among us. And tragic as it is (and no one knows the depth of the tragedy better than we do) that they are capable of committing such crimes, the worst tragedy might be to continue to hurt those same victims families over and over and over again, to no end other than allowing access of that offender to frequent reviews for release that will never predictably be granted.

And all this does not even begin to discuss the cost, and the risk to public safety entailed in such legal processes.

So it is wise at this point to take some advice from one of the most enduring principles of ethics in human history - the Hippocratic Oath: "First, Do No Harm".

Decide from the outset that whatever solutions to the perceived problems of JLWOP that advocates see, they will not propose anything that will cause MORE harm that has already been done.

Many states that have chosen a system of determinate sentencing have already made this decision not to engage in this highly problematic parole review process that so re-traumatizes victims. They have set sentences for certain crimes at certain lengths, and even built in mechanisms for automatic sentence reduction based on good behavior. In so doing they have eliminated an incredibly racist, discriminatory, uneven, costly and ineffective parole system.

One only has to look at the states like California that still use parole to see how wildly problematic the system is.

We also grant that it is obvious that the younger a person is, the less they are capable of consistently good decision-making, and that laws must be written rationally to build in such understandings. But the problem runs along a spectrum and cannot be judged along distinct lines. And knowing that it is wrong to kill, and being able to keep oneself from doing just that, comes pretty early in life for most young people.

Ultimately we believe that reforms must focus on the transfer mechanisms in states - HOW DOES A JUVENILE OFFENDER BECOME CERTIFIED AS AN ADULT?

We know that mandatory transfers can be problematic as it eliminates the ability of courts and experts on the individual facts of the cases to make decisions most responsive to the situation.

We know, better than anyone else in this entire conversation, that this is all a very complex problem, and does require a significant public policy discussion.

But this public policy discussion cannot be had without all the key stakeholders at the table and the victims of these crimes and their families are not just stakeholders, they are the issue.

There would not be the crime, the sentence, or the debate unless there was first innocent victims, targeted for death by killers. There cannot now be a discussion as to the fate of those killers, sentenced through Due Process to Life Without Parole without the most important people at the table - the Victims' Families.

Victims Families Meet Advocates for the Killers

The national effort is now well underway by advocates for juvenile offenders to eliminate, or certainly to moderate, the juvenile life without parole sentence for the convicted murderers under the age of 18 at the time of their offenses.

Legislation has been proposed in several states, such as Illinois, California, Michigan, Nevada, and others, that would change the Life Without Parole sentences earned by the over 2,500 killers sentenced to natural life in the United States who were under 18 at the time of their horrific crimes.

While we can understand the well-meaning motives of those concerned over such a permanent sentence for those so young when they killed, and with whom many might even sympathize; and we welcome the dialog that has occurred, all too rarely, in some states between sentencing reform advocates and victims’ rights advocates; we are deeply concerned that in some states murder victims family members are the innocents left behind in pain and are the ones truly serving a "life sentence".

Unbelievably, the victims families of these JLWOP cases have, for the most part, been left out of the advocacy and public policy discussion by those trying to change the JLWOP sentence.  They have been left out, more the most part, because they do not even know that the efforts to change the system are even taking place.

This is not acceptable - to leave the victims of these crimes out of the conversation about what to do with their loved ones' killers and those who harmed them - and will not lead to the broad social chance the advocates for the juvenile lifers would hope for, in any case. Unless principles of victims rights and human rights and restorative justice are applied to the victims families, the social discourse on this sentence for younger killers will degenerate, as it already has in several states, to polarized adversarial battling, resulting in no reforms accomplished and no victims being supported.

Even though there has been a well-funded and staffed, orchestrated multi-organizational movement calling for an end to the Juvenile LWOP sentence operating nationally for years, only one state has passed any legislation reforming Juvenile Life Without Parole sentences - Colorado (Texas is pending with similar prospective only legislation).

And Colorado had to pass its law in a painfully adversarial battle with the victims families (that knew about the legislative effort to lessen the sentences of their loved ones' killers). This opposition, we know, saddened and frustrated the conscientious advocates for the juvenile offenders. They have written to us and stated how much they wish that there could have been a respectful and responsible dialogue between them. Instead it was agonizing for all sides.

And in the end, they settled gladly for a piece of legislation that changed the JLWOP sentences only prospectively - from here on - not retroactively applied to the 45  JLWOPers in the Colorado prison system currently.

And the prospective legislative change still requires the juvenile killers to serve a minimum of 40 years before they even get their first parole review.

The legislation to end or moderate JLWOP in just a handful of other states is languishing or has been outright defeated, largely, we guess because there is just not the significant public support needed to make a change that would let some of the most heinous killers, no matter their age at the time of the offense, out of prison.

The fact is that this nation really does, for the most part, want guilty murderers who coldly calculate their violent choices to spend much, if not all, of their lives in prison, and that determination of a long to life sentence will extend down into younger ages depending on the severity of the crime, the planning and circumstances of it, and the individual facts of the case.

And while this is the cultural norm to imprison people who commit violent crimes, the only hope that advocates for offenders have is to launch long term educational campaigns, open dialogue modeled on Restorative Justice principles  where the focus is entirely on healing the victims, and most significantly, give at least a good part of their efforts over to PREVENTION.

We want VERY MUCH to have the discussion about how to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place. Nothing would make more of a difference - not only for victims and their families, but also for potential offenders facing life in prison and their families.

Prevention is the key that our whole nation must focus on.

If advocates for JLWOP-ers really want to pass legislation to end or moderate this sentence, they will have to take a completely different tact than they are taking now.

They must start by doing the careful work of investing in the victims first - building relationships with them, empowering their voices, supporting their needs. Offender-centered approaches do not work in American criminal justice reform, by and large. They are based on an appeal for sympathy for killers that most people do not feel.

Compassion is an incredibly important and positive human trait, and so are the values we place as people on responsibility and accountability. Ultimately, like all other evaluations in the nation's incredibly large and complicated criminal justice system, we all have to walk a fine line, a balanced and careful path, one that we evaluate thoughtfully and measure conscientiously. JLWOP is just one part of that conversation.

But one that requires all voices to be heard.

HOW ADVOCATES FOR THE JUVENILE KILLERS HAVE ERRED IN THEIR EARLY EFFORTS

We have yet to see one organization or group of individual advocates for juvenile offenders whose approach to reforming the JLWOP sentence has appropriately addressed or included the victims of these crimes or that has respected established standards for victims rights that include notification of all matters pertaining to their cases, and empowerment of their voices in the process.

Many of these same advocates claim to be strong supporters of Restorative Justice, for example. But without bringing victims to the table in their discussions, Restorative Justice is not possible. Restorative Justice is about healing victims wherever possible.

Nationally, and in each state where efforts to end JLWOP exist, why haven't the victims families of the JLWOP killers been found and brought to this table in this conversation? Why aren't there foundations and grants and staffs and budgets and support networks and conferences and offices and glossy reports for them, as there currently are for the killers?

This more than anything else has just hurt and floored us - that the concern for the killers has come first with those who have advocated for a change in their sentences.

There are literally millions of dollars being pumped into professional efforts to free these killers.

And not a dime for their victims.

And that is wrong.

We are left to speak for ourselves.

Murder victims families of the juvenile life killers have begun to take the first steps to find each other and to insist that our voices be heard in this national dialogue.

We understand and accept that those who would advocate for the Human Rights of the younger killers, heinous as their crimes are, do so from noble motivations. But we cannot understand why those leading the national call to end the JLWOP sentence for those they admitted are guilty murderers have begun this movement with the concern for the offenders first.

As is too often the case in the national victims rights community, it falls to the victims to have to point out the obvious and step up to make the call to do the right thing.

And this is a word of advice to the advocates for the JLWOP offenders - creating a victim-supportive strategy is the only thing politically, realistically, that will work to accomplish the reforms they say they want.

Victims Rights are also Human Rights too.

We have been troubled however by the apparent difficulty just a few of these advocates for the juvenile lifers have had practicing what they preach. While some of them advocate restorative justice principles be applied to some of the worst killers in the nation, they are not being consistently practiced by those in the movement for these killers, simply because they are being excluded from any notice of their efforts to free these killers.

The effort to end the JLWOP sentence is relatively young in the United States.  It achieved most of its cohesion after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Simmons v Roper against the Juvenile Death Penalty.

Only a few of us who are victims' family members of these killers know about this effort. We find most of those who want to end JLWOP to be good and caring people. We have found just a few to be arrogantly disinterested in the effect that their campaigns for these killers have had on their victims.

The advocates for the JLWOP killers nationally have FUNDING, staff, offices, publications, conferences, and infrastructural support. The victims of these killers have not been allotted any of these resources, not one ounce of services, outreach, etc, yet. Victims of these killers should be given just as much, in the way of resources, as should their killers, if not much more, if the ideals these advocates espouse hope to see realization.

Reading some of their reports about the juvenile lifers (and several states have done such reports - California, Illinois, Michigan, etc), it is clear that they have used a poorly thought out "ohh, those poor children" approach that uses pictures of the killers as youngsters, sometimes far before they committed the crimes that earned them the life sentences, sad stories about how hard their lives are in prison, and nothing short really of a sympathy for the offender propaganda approach. No pictures in these reports, that we have seen, of any of the victims, often really the only children in the crime's scenario. No discussion about the actual crimes themselves and their impact on families and communities. And no discussion that we can detect about how to prevent these horrible crimes in the first place.

Historically the advocates against JLWOP might want to look to some of their colleagues in the anti-death penalty movement to find out politically how effective it had been in decades past to focus on trying to create public sympathy for the killers as the reason to end the practice of executing killers. What has begun to work in that movement has been the definitive change in the last ten years to focus on the victims families and the flaws in the system.  But that is a different conversation.

What would have worked much better for this movement against JLWOP would have been from the start to do something focused on the horrors of the crimes - which is what the public sees too, and is most concerned about, and then the impact on victims and the need to understand at once the breadth of the tragedy that this all is, and a call for prevention in every way possible.

 What would have worked much better would be to do victim outreach to every single family affected, instead of just to the prisoners, and find out what went wrong - what the families needed, how they were doing, what their concerns were, asked them to talk about what could have kept this from happening in the first place. What will work better will be for the advocates against JLWOP to begin a new strategy that focuses on flaws in the system, creating dialogue with those most affected and the rest of the public that is interested in safety, accountability, and ending violence. It is not too late - we call on all advocates nationally who oppose JLWOP to start that process now and we stand here willing to participate - painful as it is to us (and that point cannot be understated).

Conversation can't begin until most people even agree there is a problem, and there is no consensus about this. In fact most people are really grateful and supportive of a system that incarcerates the most violent offenders, no matter their age. Education is the first step, and a factual and data-driven evaluation of the system to see exactly what problems might actually exist.

Important to note in this discussion about a complex social problem like the numbers of young people who have been killing at rates far beyond that of any other nation in the world. it cannot be a one-size fits all solution, as some advocates for the juvenile lifers would have us believe - to simply eliminate the sentence.

There is no one "right" remedy to those aspects of the criminal justice system that concern certain advocates, but it seems clear to us that the first step is to create a PROCESS that works.

At the heart of this public policy discussion is a horrible truth - there are brutally murdered people, leaving behind devastated families, friends, and communities, and there are some of the most brutal and least sympathetic murderers in our nation behind bars because of it. The cost emotionally, financially, and in every other way on ALL of us, most especially the loved ones left behind, is staggering, incredibly painful, and very complex.

And a much more important question has to be asked, if the reason that juveniles are killing so many, so brutally, in their supposedly not yet fully formed brains, why aren't young people of their same ages in other countries and cultures killing at the same rates?

And they are not.

Re-traumatizing victims families, re-opening continually over and over again in parole hearings age old cases long since adjudicated, and eliminating the prison sentence is not the first step in this much needed national dialogue. And no voice in this process will stand more for the idea that these crimes should never have been allowed to happen in the first place than the victims families.

And in fact no other nation can be compared to us because they do not have the horrific levels of violence and especially committed by younger killers. And what is more, overall, despite the picture the advocates for the killers are painting, in fact the USA has a much lower overall incarceration rates per capita for violent offenses, and for younger offenders, than do many nations even in Western Europe. 

We ask that the advocates against JLWOP take on this bigger picture question.

Then the next step has to be to address the harm that has been caused. That would require protecting the public by removing the offender and looking to the needs of the victims.

Only in that order of priority, we believe, can any other systemic reforms have significant meaning.

This issue can best be analyzed by top legal minds and professionals, not biased and even financially motivated advocates with little deep understanding of these actal case. Financial cost-benefit analyses must be done. Best practices in psychology and social services must be implemented across the board. Resources must be allocated differently than they have up to now.

IDEAS AND ALTERNATIVES

States vary widely in sentencing models. Many states have determinate sentencing and how legislation would impact victims rights in those states will differ significantly than in those states already with parole structures already in place and indeterminate sentencing.

Additionally, changes that are prospective in law, rather than retroactive, will be much less of an issue for victims.

We believe the answers to questions being raised by JLWOP reformers will generally fall along these lines:

Sadly, sometimes just following a sometime misrepresented Human Rights standards cannot be the only guide. Actually, those rights can sometimes, as described here, be in direct conflict with each other.

And when that is the case, innocent victims' rights over that of guilty offenders should take precedence.

In other words, only in states with indeterminate sentencing, if we can reasonably determine that an offender, even if younger, would never achieve the requirements for parole and early release, we believe it is morally wrong and a horrific violation of human rights of victims families to be forced through the agonizing process of regular parole hearings for the rest of their lives. Life without parole simply has to be an option in those kinds of cases.

These discussions will not be easy. But ALL affected victims that choose to engage in the discussion MUST be included.

Go to our FORUM page to join the discussion. And chime in at our BLOG. Join our Facebook Group. ALL are welcome in this discussion, no matter their position.

AN OPEN LETTER TO HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH and THE "CAMPAIGN FOR THE FAIR SENTENCING OF YOUTH"

Anyone wishing to see actual email correspondence between NOVJL and Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) should contact us and we will forward it in its entirety. We do this because we want everyone to see how hard we were trying to be nice to the people who want to free the people who killed our family members. But its really been hard on us, to be honest.

To be treated as adversaries. To be treated in a disingenuous manner by organizations supposedly made up of the "good guys". (We expect this of people like some lobbyists that profit from death, but we don't expect to be treated like adversaries by people who are human rights advocates?!)

We respect in general the people who work to reform the criminal justice system, including JLWOP. They are often good people trying to do a good thing, though some are naive, others are not well informed, and some have been just downright adversarial to us.

But we want to give them the respect they deserve, as we wish them to give us.

We genuinely seek any advice from anyone who can give us ideas about what to do about this situation, but in short here now is the problem that we are facing:

Even though it is has been very painful for us, incredibly time consuming, deeply worrisome, and life-disrupting in the extreme, we have been going out of our way to meet with, talk to, negotiate with, and even try to HELP the advocates for the offenders. Several of us at NOVJL are even strong human rights advocates ourselves (such as founding members of Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, advocates for Restorative Justice, etc).

And every single offender advocate we have met with has told us they believe that victims families have the right to be at the policy table in this national discussion about the JLWOP sentence. They have said it time and again - they agree with us - we are indeed key stakeholders in this conversation. And CFSY even suggested we enter into a mutual "trust building" process.

This of course made us happy because it is all we have ever asked for. And we had already been reaching out to them for two years, so we knew we had done our part.

 Sadly, though, sometimes people just do not tell the truth.

Or they mean well, but then do nothing to carry out their word.

This, sadly, for us is one of these times.

HRW and CFSY were organizations that we genuinely wanted to believe in, especially in the case of HRW - look what wonderful work they do elsewhere!

But you see, we actually asked them to put just a VERY little bit of their proverbial "money where their mouth is" - we asked them to take a very small amount of their staff time to do some actual bridge-building and information-sharing with us.

To actually bring us to this "table" that they have created.

To actually open the lines of communication between us.

They have "created this table" because they are the ones who want to retroactively change the status quo - our already too horrific, but we thought at least legally final, status quo. They want to change our status quo by offering parole to people convicted of murdering our family members, sentenced to life without parole.

And here is why we feel we have been treated disingenuously:

If they believe that we should be "at the table", then of course they would welcome - even invite us "to the table", right?

And, they would also have to tell us WHERE "the table" is, right? (Since they are the ones who know - they are working at it every day.)

And they would of course know and have to take into account that their constituents, the offenders, for the most part were the ones who caused us to be involved at this "table", in this issue, through no choice of our own.

And they would of course have to take into account that we have NO staff, no resources, no funding, no grants, no PR machines, no documentary filmmakers paid to tell our "side" - the stories of the actual crimes (which none of their documentary films show of course!), etc.

But they have not. Even when asked.

And in the face of that, we can only just be very sad. And maybe still try to call them to their better natures.

Since the size of the issue is complicated and national in scope, and there is legislation, organizational efforts, and court cases happening all over the nation, and we have no staff or funding - just this little website being hosted voluntarily by the generous father of a murder victim as a service to us - we have asked that as a gesture of bridge-building and good faith, based on their statements to us that they believe we belong at this proverbial "table" in the national conversation about JLWOP, we have asked only one small thing of them.

That they share some basic information with the victims' families of these crimes, the sentence for which they want retroactive change:

Where is legislation being filed about JLWOP? What court cases do they know about that we would want to know about, such as the Supreme Court? What organizations nationally are working for these offenders that we should be making ourselves known to so that we can talk to them, if we so choose? And since you have spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars researching these offenders' cases all over the nation, and know in many cases who the victims families are, how about sending them some support and information as well?

Just the basic information that they work on every day - not even the details - but the information easily available each day to the many paid full time staff people who work for HRW, CFSY, and many other staffers around the nation who are working in various organizations to end JLWOP, with salaries paid by grants from various foundations and law firms.

Readers may already be guessing what their answer was.

No.

They said no.

At this point, words fail.

What are we to feel? Anger at the raging hypocrisy? Hurt at being lied to?

How can Restorative Justice be possible without all the stakeholders at the table?

And who will provide even the most minimal and basic resources to help the murder victims' families to be "at this table" as the key stakeholders they are?

We will of course continue to work on this issue because we literally have no choice. Anyone who has ever had a family member brutally murdered understands this point without question. People who have not experienced this depth of traumatic loss cannot really understand it.

We do not all have to agree on everything to come together in public discourse and mutual respect. We at NOVJL do not all feel alike on every issue, nor should we. That is why our only "stand" at NOVJL is that victims have a right to be included. Each one may take whatever position on criminal justice reform issues they wish. Victims are different. People are different. No one even in a marriage or family agrees all the time.

If we all only associated with, and spoke collaboratively to, people with whom we were in full agreement, we would all be very much more lonely people. We are grateful for victim support from the political left and the political right, as well as the political center. This is not a partisan issue. There would not be adversarial SIDES in this discussion but for the adversarial approach offender advocates have been taking.

So here is what we want to say to you who advocate against JLWOP:

We call on you, the offender advocates to stop with the propaganda, and come to the discussion armed only with facts, your principles, and a commitment not to further injure innocent victims of violent offenders. We call on you to stop the disingenuous propagation of misinformation. We call on you to produce your offender names. Produce your case numbers. Produce the source of your numbers. Produce the records of the cases. Because you have been publishing estimates as the number source, and others believe them and repeat them. You have hired child actors that are under 10 years old sometimes and publish their pictures on their reports implying that these are the offenders you are talking about. You interview only offenders, who not surprisingly lie about the facts of their cases, and then publish these versions without interviewing other key experts in the facts of the cases such as the court record, the forensic evidence, the findings of the judges and juries, the victims, and the eye witnesses.

We call on you to be transparent, collaborative, honest, rigorously ethical in your methodology, and helpful to injured victims of those you advocate for.

How can we ever hope to move beyond our very adversarial criminal justice system, if good people won't help each other? Especially "good people" who want to free guilty murderers, because they were just "too young" (most were 17 - old enough to know better), not wanting to have any compassion for the families of those their constituents killed?

Words are simply not adequate.

Maybe you all will change your minds about your strategies and tactics up to this point. We hope so. Right now, just having gotten the latest email from the "Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth" saying no to our request for basic informational support,  further words fail us.