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

As we hear of efforts to modify the juvenile life sentence in various states and nationally we will post them here. Contact us with any information about advocacy efforts or legislation in any state regarding the life sentencing of killers who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes.

CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE

RECENT HEADLINES

See FEDERAL JLWOP LEG page above for most recent important information on HR 2289

CALIFORNIA bill defeated but is back again already!

June 30, 2009 SB 399 Fails in Committee

After passing in the Senate, the Bill from State Senator Yee to retroactively offer parole to convicted murderers sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before they turned 18, has failed in an Assembly (House) Committee by a vote of 4-3.

Opposition from victims families, law enforcement, prosecutors, and others concerned with public safety was pivotal in its defeat.

Here is a notice from Crime Victims Action Alliance of California:

TEXAS legislature passes prospective changes to JLWOP

http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=81R&Bill=SB839

June 2009 - The State of Texas follows Colorado as the only other state to pass a JLWOP reform bill in the legislature, and Governor Perry has signed it into law.
 
Several years ago, Colorado abolished JLWOP only prospectively, protecting at least the current victims families. The legislation still sets a serious penalty for teen murderers and set the first parole review at 45 years out, with reviews only every 5 years. While victims rights have NOT been respected in these cases, and victim notification has not taken place in advance of legislation, which we feel is absolutely essential, NOVJL feels that this legislative model is the least offensive of possible models for any state that makes the difficult decision to make changes to their JLWOP statutes:

How Texas and Colorado's bills differ from other proposals in other states:

1. The Bill is PROSPECTIVE only - not retroactive. This takes victims rights off the table as an issue. And while we hate to think of any future victims' families having to face frequent parole hearings, at least this law will be something they will KNOW from the start and be able to prepare for. There will be no bait and switch.

However we urge states to consider creating the most option possible for prosecutors and judges in these cases. The key will be to give added legal protections for juveniles who are close to adult age, who are found to be culpable in extremely heinous offenses, and still allow their transfer and sentencing to the appropriate sentence, which in some rare cases we know will be natural life for those worst of the worst.

JLWOP will be best reformed by eliminating the mandatory transfer and sentencing that takes away judicial discretion, but still allows the life sentence where appropriate. Victims families in the future should not have to suffer. A balanced decision should be made in states that already have parole and decide to offer it to juvenile offenders tried and sentenced as adults. Will the offender likely ever qualify for release? If not, the family should NOT be TORTURED by a lifetime of parole hearings - which are incredibly re-traumatizing.

2. 16 and 17 year olds - by far the overwhelming majority nationally of JLWOP cases - remain eligible for Life Sentences

We have long been saying that we should look at the FACTS when discussing life sentences for extremely violent offenders under age 18. The facts are that the vast majority of these cases, and they are all very rare in any case, are given to 16 and 17 year olds, who in many states are fully adult by law in already. The numbers of 15 and under who receive this sentence is so incredibly small, that reasonable "bright lines", which the law often has to draw, seem to work well at this point.

3. The offender is not eligible for parole hearings early - for possible release until 30, or 40 years (depending on the crime) after their conviction. This protects victims for a long time and gives the offender plenty of time to age and mature to a place of less danger.

4. Texas is a state where parole is a regular and routine part of the criminal justice system, with established procedures in place. One of our major objections to JLWOP reformers elsewhere is their insistence that parole is the only answer when so many states have no parole structures, and it would make no sense in states to establish one to deal with only a handful of cases as JLWOP represents. But in those states already with parole, to create a prospective reform to offer parole after a long period of time of initial incarceration, and with the victims knowing from the moment of sentencing that this will be the procedure, will make all the difference.

States with determinate sentencing and no parole structures, like for example Illinois, cannot and should not ever adopt such a model as Texas has, however.

5. There are only four cases of JLWOP in Texas. Any concerns with those cases can and should easily be addressed through the regular routes of appeals and clemency. 

And this demonstrates our point nationally - that there are so few numbers of these cases that they can all easily be addressed in states through those normal routes. And there is no need therefore to take expansive and expensive and re-traumatizing across the board measures that would require ALL victims families to go through regular parole hearings in cases sentenced to life without parole.

And that is a long OTHER discussion - why determinate sentencing is better, by the way. Even the offenders prefer it because it is earned time out of the sentence based only on their own good behavior, and not the all too often wrong and discriminatory decisions of a politically appointed parole board. Only in life sentences, in those rare very serious capital murder situations, would there be no earned release.

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November 2008 - Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, NOVJL Secretary and co-founder, visited the offices of the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington DC. During her day on Capitol Hill attending the advisory board to the Congressional Victims Rights Caucus, she sat and talked with staff that had been working on HR 4300, a bill proposed in 2007 that would end JLWOP by depriving states of 10% of their Federal Crime Funds unless they instituted parole reviews for killers under age 18 sentenced to life without parole. The staff was attentive and very interested in our perspective. Several key points were made in this discussion:
    1. That HR 4300 was very ill-thought out in that a "one-size fits all" requirement that states adopt a periodic review parole model when HALF the states in the USA do not have parole at all and have determinate sentencing structures. To require a very expensive bureaucracy like parole in a state that has none just to deal with a few cases of JLWOP is ridiculous in the extreme, and most especially so in light of the fact that periodic review is the worst possible model for victims families.
    2. That the hearings held in September in Congress on HR 4300 deliberately did not include any victims families. The staff was duly chastised, and rightly so,  for this poor decision. Jennifer reported she is hopeful that they will not let this happen again, should future hearings be held. Their excuse? That they assumed the "Republican Opposition" would arrange for victims families to attend. Jennifer reminded them that EVERYONE in this matter has obligations to the murder victims that are at the very heart of the question of these juvenile killers sentenced to life as adults. We do not belong to the Democrats or Republicans and everyone - advocates for the offenders, Congressmen who sponsor these bills, the staff that administers these hearings, have an obligation to find and include the loved ones of those murdered in any discussion about what to do with their offenders, especially when retroactively changing a life without parole sentence for a murderer is being proposed. Our estimate is that over ten thousand victims families all over the nation have walked away from those sentences assuming they were permanent..
    3. Jennifer laid out a number of much better ideas for possible avenues of reform for the JLWOP sentence that would NOT be harmful to the victims families left behind and encouraged the staff to look into these. This includes examining the mandatory transfer mechanisms by which a juvenile offender is moved to adult court systems. The staffers seemed willing to consider other options. Jennifer's impression was that while they were caring listeners, they seemed actually somewhat surprised that the victims family members might know so much detail and have so much of value to contribute to this discussion. Hopefully we have set that issue to rest!

While at the Congressional Victims Rights Caucus Advisory Board meeting, Jennifer presented this issue as a Victims Rights issue to the Congressional Caucus and asked them to help oppose HR 4300 in its current form. One of the sponsors of HR 4300 serves also on this Caucus - Congressman John Conyers of Michigan.

In September 2008, Dawn Romig, mother of Danni Reese, who was brutally raped and murdered by a 17 year old, tried as an adult and sentenced to life in Pennsylvania, goes with her family and victim advocates to give testimony on JLWOP.

September 22, 2008 in Harrisburg, PA -
Contact Senator Greenleaf who is holding hearings on JLWOP sentences in PA. He is troubled by Pennsylvania's largest JLWOP population in the nation (444) but did not postpone hearings to give more time to find and inform victims families.
The PA Victim Advocates' office, headed by Carol Lavery made the rushed effort to reach out to these families and was able to find some of them to come in to testify. Download our written testimony to this committee.

TESTIMONY IN STATES regarding JLWOP

Prosecutor speaking in Lansing, Michigan on proposed JLWOP reform legislation

Victim testimonial from Alabama

Victim Testimony in Illinois

Testimony submitted in PA:

    1. NOVJL written testimony
    2. Victim testimony submitted by mother whose daughter was murdered by a JLWOP killer

Relevant Sentencing Information by STATES

SUMMARY

We note with great interest that the legislative efforts to end JLWOP are not going well for the advocates. Granted their movement is a very young one, and it may only be a passing effort - only time will tell. Despite their general mishandling of the "victim issue", most of them are well-meaning human rights advocates.

But they have all made a significant fundamental mistake. They have started their efforts to reform the JLWOP sentence with only one argument: "Oh, these poor killers, they were just children."

Of course, they don't like to talk about the fact that most JLWOP killers nationally were 17 at the time of the crime, many just days or weeks from their 18th birthday. And all of them are guilty of not just "routine" murders, but aggravated capital level or near capital level offenses that could have resulted in death sentences in many cases, had they been weeks older.

That is our question to these advocates: Why is it that none of your websites and glossy reports about these "poor kids" ever talk about the crimes they committed? The victims they killed? The families and loved ones they left behind with lives irretrievably damaged?

The mistake that we believe is at the heart of their consistent legislative failures is their thoughtlessness towards the crime and the victims.

Ask the anti-death penalty community - after 25 years of this failed approach most abolitionists are giving up the "poor offender" approach to their campaigns and focusing on why the death penalty is bad for victims.

Is this JLWOP reform movement a significant and successful movement? Not at this point.

Only a very few states have anyone seriously attempting to advocate for these younger killers, and none have succeeded in abolishing it. Only one state in the entire nation has even modified the sentence: Colorado. And they have only changed it prospectively or going forward for future sentences, not for those already sentenced.

We would not take a stand against prospective changes in sentencing law organizationally because it is not a victims rights issue if the changes are only for future sentences. Anyone who attempts retroactive changes in the laws, however, is up against a significant conflict with the constitutional rights victims have in all 50 states to notification and a voice in their cases, to include sentencing.

We believe this is the case because of the serious and broad support in our nation for holding fully accountable those who know it is wrong to kill (as most everyone does who is not a very young child of virtually pre-school age) and who plots and carries out brutal, aggravated and extremely heinous murders, multiple murders, or murders with special aggravated circumstances. We have not seen any evidence yet from all the studies already done that most "juvenile lifers" were under "peer pressure" when they killed, or that they were acting impulsively, or that they did not know what they were doing. And because most people, while being sympathetic for mistakes made by younger people, value public safety most of all and do not wish to risk their communities given what we know all people, regardless of age, are capable of.

The Life Without Parole sentence is widely regarded as the appropriate sentence for those who show an exceptional disregard for human life. Many believe they have simply lost the right to walk among us. And while most of us believe that this sentence should be incredibly rare, and only reserved for the proverbial "worst of the worst", sadly, there are such truly bad actors among us human beings on planet Earth.

The most complicated aspect of the issue is the human rights question - that no matter the act, no one under that magic age of 18 according to some international treaties should receive a life sentence.

But victims rights are human rights also. And if a reasonable determination can be made with full due process by many fine expert legal minds functioning in full integrity that the killer would never meet the standards of the state for parole, then the victims rights to not have to be tortured by re-engaging constantly with the offender in hearings and reviews for release should take precedence.

And if the offender advocating for change in the law do not find and notify every victims family member of their proposed legislation while they can still have a voice in the process then they are guilty of violating the most innocent and injured of all people - the victims - in order to help the most guilty - the killers. This set of priorities makes no sense.

Ultimately their decisions to do the right things by the victims in these cases, if they ever do finally make those choices, may be motivated by political pragmatism. Because with public sentiment towards guilty murderers being what it is, they do not stand a chance of passing any major legislation with victim opposition.

We do not question the motives of those who advocate for juvenile aged killers. We all love children. We all want to help raise the best children we can. We should not be criticized in any way for not loving and valuing and caring about young people as much, or more, than they do who advocate for these young offenders.  We say "care more" because we understand some advocacy groups take on the JLWOP issue because it enhances access to funding for their organizations.

We do believe that they see the world as they would like it to be, however. With regards to the dangers inherent in human nature and what some people are capable of, we sadly have been forced to see the world as it IS.

And we have paid the highest price imaginable to learn that lesson.

Letter from JLWOP victim to the Alabama Legislature

April 13, 2009

To Alabama State Legislators:

I respectfully request that you allow me to live the rest of my days in peace.  Peace in knowing that the person who has been convicted of murdering my brother Joseph Daniel (Danny) Sledge will stay in prison.  Nathan Boyd was tried, convicted and a jury of twelve decided on life without parole instead of death.  I understand the state is under great pressure to have a balanced budget.  I too am under great pressure trying to explain to my brother’s children, grandchildren, parents, siblings and a host of family and friends why the state of Alabama continues to put us through a process we never wanted to be a part of.

I respectfully request that you do not support House Bill 714 and if you do support this bill, please respond to my request.  I really need an explanation to the reasoning that anyone would support this bill.  Stand publically and let us here your explanation of why a person that has such little regard for someone else’s life should be considered for this bill.  Do we not have laws to arrest, try and sentence a person of a crime? Do we not have an appeal process? Why then does our state legislature need to override a jury’s decision?

This is madness.

The second defendant Eric Boyd will get out one day.  We understand the process of parole and will participate in the process.

Please just one time in the ten years since my brother has been murdered may I count on any Legislators from North Alabama to stand with victims and say we are for the judicial process and we will see that sentences handed down will be carried out?

Respectfully,

Mary Anne Rippey

FLORIDA

Push to change JLWOP laws in Florida after the Supreme Court rules in spring 2010