Locked Away Forever After Crimes as Teenagers

[rodeodance]

NO WAY OUT
Locked Away Forever After Crimes as Teenagers

By ADAM LIPTAK

Juvenile criminals are serving life terms in at least 48 states, and their numbers have increased sharply over the past decade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/national/03lifers.html?th&emc=th

[rodeodance]

1. About 9,700

October 3, 2005
Locked Away Forever After Crimes as Teenagers
By ADAM LIPTAK

OCALA, Fla. - About 9,700 American prisoners are serving life sentences for crimes they committed before they could vote, serve on a jury or gamble in a casino - in short, before they turned 18. More than a fifth have no chance for parole.

Juvenile criminals are serving life terms in at least 48 states, according to a survey by The New York Times, and their numbers have increased sharply over the past decade.

Rebecca Falcon is one of them.

Ms. Falcon, now 23, is living out her days at the Lowell Correctional Institution here. But eight years ago, she was a reckless teenager and running with a thuggish crowd when one night she got drunk on bourbon and ruined her life.

[leveymg]

2. But, how did Laura avoid any jail time for vehicular manslaughter?

Few know that Laura Bush killed her then boyfriend when she rammed into his little Corvair in her father's Oldsmobile in 1963.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/07/earlyshow/leisure/books/main591951.shtml
"the phone would have rung with the news, preceded with an, "Ah'm so sorry to have to tell you..." My word, she hadn't been gone but a little while, and now Laura's parents were being summoned to Midland Memorial Hospital.

Laura, they learned, had been speeding blithely out of town about 8 P.M., east on Farm Road 868, her high school friend Judy Dykes in the passenger seat. She never saw the stop sign. She never saw the other car. She plowed right through that stop sign and slammed hard into the 1962 Corvair coming south and with the right-of-way, on State Road 349, the La Mesa Highway. She was fine, really, the officer assured her parents, but bruised and banged up, and awfully upset. Judy was shaking but unharmed as well. But the boy in the other car, well, the force of the broadside impact was so severe that, well...He never had a chance. Michael Douglas, golden boy of Midland, high school track star, was dead on arrival at Midland Memorial Hospital. The two girls were taken there, too, in another ambulance. Mike Douglas's father had been driving another car behind his son. He saw the entire horrific scene, the explosive beginning of a nightmare that haunted him his whole life.

The front-page story in the Midland Reporter-Telegram was blunt and nonaccusatory. "Police said death was attributed to a broken neck," the paper reported, using that passive voice peculiar to newspaper writing. But the news flew through Midland about whose actions had caused that death. Killing another person was a tragic, shattering error for a girl to make at seventeen. It was one of those hinges in a life, a moment when destiny shuddered, then lurched in a new direction. In its aftermath, Laura became more cautious and less spontaneous, more inclined to be compassionate, less inclined to judge another person.

What made the crash even more devastating was that the boy Laura killed was no stranger but a good friend of hers, a boy from her crowd. Some said Mike Douglas was her boyfriend. Or had been, or maybe she wanted him to be. ...

[murielm99]

5. Few people know.

Imagine if that had been little Hillary Rodham in a Chicago suburb.

The whole world would know. Every time she appeared with Bill as first lady, the press would have referred to it. Congress would have demanded that the case be reopened. They might have held hearings themselves on the subject. She would never have been elected to the Senate.

I don't dispute the way the police handled Laura's accident. And it was a long time ago. I dispute the double standard.

[AllegroRondo]

9. You know the rules are different for the "haves and have mores"

[Journeyman]

3. The woman who raised me was dragged from her car. . .

at an intersection in a Los Angeles suburb, thrown to the ground and shot twice through her left eye. They say the killer and his partner got some change and half a pack of smokes. The older criminal was 16, the triggerman 14. Both were put in juvenile detention, sentenced there until they were 25, but released when they were 18.

That was 32 years ago last August 9th. I think of Lucille almost every day. I suspect her killers are dead -- I hope they're dead, and I hope they died as they lived. To this day, I believe if anyone picks up a weapon and uses it in unprovoked anger they forfeit the right to all claims of childhood innocence.

[flying_wahini]

7. how horrible

so sorry for your loss, you never get over something like that

[preciousdove]

4. Race, Class and Crime

Two cases same year. Inner city latina girl just 14 was involved in a street robbery that ended in a shooting death. She was not the shooter. No record. Tried as an adult. She got life. Her sixth grade teacher begged for rehabilitation for the girl.

White 16 year olds from a wealthy suburb. Talked a ministers son in into taking his Dads' gun. They were in a parent's station wagon parked at a gas station/convenience store and the minister's son was "accidentally" shot. Tried as juveniles. No jail time. Small fines and community service.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

8. You've got it

And the disparities start even earlier, for minor offenses. A middle-class child sets a fire, he's labeled as troubled and sent for counseling. A poor or minority child does the same thing, perhaps due in part to the same mental illness, and they're labeled a bad seed and send to juvenile prison for a year. I once heard a researcher refer to juvie facilities as "mental health hospitals for poor kids."

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Don't get me started...

on this stuff.

I was reading that article over dinner tonight, and almost gagged on my food.

Every day I get an inbox full of stuff about people thrown in the slam or sitting on Death Row because it's easier to build a prison than a peaceful society.

Here's one I got yesterday:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/wonks_find_death_sentence_lynching_connection_8983