Document - USA: The rest of their lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States : a joint Human Rights Watch/Amnesty International Report

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

I. Summary 1

II. Recommendations 6

To the President of the United States 6

To the United States Congress 6

To the Attorney General of the United States 6

To United States Attorneys 7

To State and Federal Judges 7

To State Governors 7

To State Legislators 7

To State Prosecutors 8

To State Criminal and Juvenile Court Judges 9

To Defense Attorneys 9

To State and Federal Officials Who Fund and Administer Corrections Programs 9

Case Study: Peter A. 11

III. Background: Youth on Trial 14

Juvenile Justice Trends in the United States 14

Adult Trial of Children 16

Case Study: Samantha L. 22

IV. Sentencing of Youth to Life without Parole 25

Age, Crime, and Gender 25

Case Study: Stacey T. 28

Historical Trends in Sentencing to Life without Parole 31

State Variation in the Use of Life without Parole 34

Race 39

Case Study: Emily F. 43

V. The Difference between Youth and Adults 45

The Difference According to Psychology 45

The Difference According to Neuroscience 47

Case Study: Alexis V. 50

VI. Life without Parole in Adult Prison 52

Adjusting to Life in Adult Prison 53

The Reality of the Sentence 53

Case Study: Dean F. 55

Fear and Anger 56

Isolation, Loneliness, and Hopelessness 60

Incarceration alongside Adults 63

Access to Education and Vocational Programs 65

Case Study: Trey J. 70

Violence 70

Assault 71

Sexual Abuse and Rape 73

Potential for Rehabilitation 77

Case Study: Timothy C. 80

VII. Life without Parole under U.S. Law 82

State and Federal Law 82

Mandatory Sentences 86

Case Study: Jose A. 87

VIII. Just Sentences for Youth: International Human Rights Law 90

International Human Rights Law 90

Case Study: Troy L. 96

Practices of Other Countries 99

Case Study: Kevin C. 104

IX. Conclusion: Life without Parole and the Purposes of Criminal Punishment 105

Appendix A: Note on Research Methods 110

Appendix B: Note on Statistical Methods 111

Appendix C: Sample Letter Soliciting Data from State Correctional Department 114

Appendix D: State Population Data Table 116

Appendix E: Letters from Five Youth Offenders Serving Life without Parole Sentences in the United States 118

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The rest of their lives:

Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States

Acknowledgements

This report is the first joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International on human rights violations in the United States.

We would like to thank all of the child offenders, their parents, siblings, and friends who shared their experiences with us for this report. We would like to thank the personnel from state correctional departments across the country, but especially those in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, who contributed their experience and views to this report. We would also like to acknowledge the victims and their family members whose lives were taken or deeply harmed by the crimes committed by the youth offenders featured in this report.

Alison Parker, senior researcher in the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch researched and wrote this report. David Berger, attorney with the law firm of O’Melveny & Meyers, was Amnesty International’s researcher for this report.

The full report was edited by Amnesty International staff members in the US, at its International Secretariat in London, and by Derek Douglas, counsel at O’Melveny & Myers. (Amnesty International has a policy of not naming individual members of staff responsible for researching and producing reports.) Human Rights Watch, Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch, was the project director and principal editor; James Ross, senior legal advisor; Joseph Saunders, deputy program director; and Michael Bochenek, deputy director of the Children’s Rights Division also edited the report. Also at Human Rights Watch, Paul Jacobs, U.S. Program Associate, and Keramet Reiter, U.S. Program Associate, provided invaluable research and production assistance. Layout and production were coordinated by Andrea Holley and Keramet Reiter. Staff at Amnesty International USA provided additional project direction and editing.

A special thanks goes to Deborah Labelle, director of the Juvenile Life without Parole Initiative in Michigan, for her tireless advocacy, intelligent guidance, and vision.

A special thanks also goes to the law firm of O’Melveny and Myers, which provided pro bono legal counsel and analysis central to the creation of this report.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also wish to thank the correctional officials in thirty-nine states and the federal government for the data and additional information they contributed to this report. In addition, Deborah Labelle, director, and Anna Phillips, research coordinator of the Juvenile Life without Parole Initiative in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provided us with much needed data on the populations of child offenders serving life without the possibility of parole in numerous states, for which we are very grateful.

The following interns at Human Rights Watch worked on this report: Maura Dundon, Solmaz Firoz, Rohini Gupta, Miranda Johnson, and Shayna Parekh. The following interns at O’Melveny and Myers worked on this report: Patrick McMullen, Candance Jackson, Rebecca Ingber, Sam Walsh, Anuj Gupta, David Harris, Eric Haren and Brandi Davis. Meredith Patten and Kirsten Christiansen were statistical consultants for this report. The Chicago Committee for Human Rights Watch also provided invaluable research assistance, and Connie de la Vega, Mark Humowiecki, Anil Kalhan, Robert Schwartz, and Laurence Steinberg were very helpful advisors during our research. Human Rights Watch would also like to thank Peter Lewis, The Joyce Foundation, and the Open Society Institute, all of whom generously support our work in the United States.

It is impossible to do justice to the wealth of information accumulated during research for this report without creating a far too lengthy document. Yet, because the youth offenders we have been in touch with for this report are for the most part "hidden" from the general public, we have placed some of the letters received from them, photos, audio clips of portions of their interviews, and important court cases and briefs on both Human Rights Watch’s and Amnesty International USA’s websites. They can be found at http://www.hrw.organd http://www.aiusa.org.

I. Summary

I’m a former cop. I’m a true believer in law and order. But my son was a child when this happened. He wasn’t thinking like an adult, and he wasn’t an adult . . . how is it that the law can treat him as if he is one?

—Frank C., father of youth offender sentenced to life without parole, October 22, 2004

Children can and do commit terrible crimes. When they do, they should be held accountable, but in a manner that reflects their special capacity for rehabilitation. However, in the United States the punishment is all too often no different from that given to adults.

In civil matters, state and federal laws recognize the immaturity and irresponsibility of children. For example, they typically establish eighteen as the minimum age to get married without parental consent, to vote, to sign contracts, or to serve on a jury. Yet in forty-two states and under federal law, the commission of a serious crime by children under eighteen—indeed in some states children as young as ten—transforms them instantly into adults for criminal justice purposes. Children who are too young to buy cigarettes legally, boys who may not have started to get facial hair, kids who still have stuffed animals on their beds, are tried as adults, and if convicted, receive adult prison sentences, including life without parole (LWOP).

This report is the first ever national analysis of life without parole sentences for children. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have discovered that there are currently at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children. In the United States, departments of corrections do not maintain publicly accessible and accurate statistics about child offenders incarcerated in adult prisons, and there is no national depository of these data. Therefore, we were able to collect data on individuals sentenced to life without parole for crimes they committed as children only by requesting that it be specially produced for us by each state’s corrections department.

The public may believe that children who receive life without parole sentences are "super-predators" with long records of vicious crimes. In fact, an estimated 59 percent received the sentence for their first-ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between thirteen and fifteen years old at the time they committed their crimes. While the vast majority were convicted of murder, an estimated 26 percent were convicted of felony murder in which the teenager participated in a robbery or burglary during which a co-participant committed murder, without the knowledge or intent of the teenager. Racial disparities are marked. Nationwide, the estimated rate at which black youth receive life without parole sentences (6.6 per 10,000) is ten times greater than the rate for white youth (0.6 per 10,000).

Our research shows significant differences among the states in the use of life without parole sentences for children. For example, Virginia, Louisiana, and Michigan have rates that are three to seven-and-a-half times higher than the national average of 1.77 per 100,000 children nationwide. At the other end of the spectrum, New Jersey and Utah permit life without parole for children but have no child offenders currently serving the sentence. Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, New York, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia all prohibit the sentence for youth offenders. In May of 2005, Texas changed its law to allow individuals found guilty of a capital felony (including those below the age of eighteen) to be sentenced to life without parole. However, we could not definitively interpret this legislation, nor could we include data from Texas in this report, because the law went into effect on September 1, 2005, meaning it had not yet been applied or interpreted by the courts of Texas when this report went to press.

Before 1980, life without parole was rarely imposed on children. The number of child offenders who received the sentence each year began to increase in the late 1980s, reaching 50 in 1989. It peaked in 1996 at 152 and then began to drop off; in 2003, 54 child offenders entered prison with the sentence. But states in the U.S. have by no means abandoned the use of life without parole for child offenders: the estimated rate at which the sentence is imposed on children nationwide remains at least three times higher today than it was fifteen years ago. In fact, the proportion of youth offenders convicted of murder who receive life without parole has been increasing, suggesting a tendency among states to punish them with increasing severity. For example, in 1990 there were 2,234 youth convicted of murder in the United States, 2.9 percent of whom were sentenced to life without parole. Ten years later, in 2000, the number of youth murderers had dropped to 1,006, but 9.1 percent were sentenced to life without parole.

In addition, in eleven out of the seventeen years between 1985 and 2001, youth convicted of murder in the United States were more likely to enter prison with a life without parole sentence than adult murder offenders. Even when we consider murder offenders sentenced to either life without parole or death sentences, in four of those seventeen years, youth were morelikely than adults to receive one of those two most punitive sentences.

Such harsh treatment for youth offenders cannot be squared with the most fundamental tenets of human rights law. International standards recognize that children, a particularly vulnerable group, are entitled to special care and protection because they are still developing physically, mentally, and emotionally. States are required to offer a range of alternatives to institutionalization. The imprisonment of a child should always be a measure of last resort, focused on the child’s rehabilitation, and for the shortest suitable period of time. While incarceration may be proper for youth convicted of very serious crimes such as murder, this report argues that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole is never appropriate for youth offenders.

The dramatic increase in the imposition of life without parole sentences on child offenders in the United States is, at least in part, a consequence of widespread changes in U.S. criminal justice policies that gathered momentum in the last decades of the twentieth century. Responding to increases in crime and realizing the political advantages of promoting tough law and order policies, state and federal legislators steadily increased the length of prison sentences for different crimes and expanded the types of offenders facing prison sentences. They also promoted adult trials for child offenders by lowering the minimum age for criminal court jurisdiction, authorizing automatic transfers from juvenile to adult courts, and increasing the authority of prosecutors to file charges against children directly in criminal court rather than proceeding in the juvenile justice system. The United States thus abandoned its commitment to a juvenile justice system and the youth rehabilitation principles embedded in it.

"Adult time for adult crime" may be a catchy phrase, but it reflects a poor understanding of criminal justice principles. If the punishment is to fit the crime, both the nature of the offense and the culpability or moral responsibility of the offender must be taken into account. As the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, the blameworthiness of children cannot be equated with that of adults, even when they commit the same crime. Most recently, in Roper v. Simmons in 2005, the Court ruled that the execution of child offenders was unconstitutional, finding that juveniles are "categorically less culpable" than adult criminals. The ruling noted that juveniles lack the "well-formed" identities of adults, are susceptible to "immature and irresponsible behavior," and vulnerable to "negative influences and outside pressures." Neuroscientists have recently identified anatomical bases for these differences between juveniles and adults, establishing the behavioral significance of the less developed brains of children.

Life without parole sentences for child offenders—meaning there is no possibility of release during the prisoner’s lifetime—effectively reject the well-established principle of criminal justice that children are less culpable than adults for crimes they commit. As the father of a teen offender serving life without parole pointed out to us: "I’m a former cop. I’m a true believer in law and order. But my son was a child when this happened. He wasn’t thinking like an adult, and he wasn’t an adult . . . how is it that the law can treat him as if he is one?"(1) The anguish and anger of a victim’s family and friends may well be the same whether a murder is committed by a child or an adult. But justice requires a sentence commensurate with both the nature of the crime and the culpability of the offender.

Caption

Three Young Child Offenders

From left to right, Tina B. was fifteen in this photo and sixteen when she committed her crime; Billy L. was thirteen in this photo and fourteen when he committed his crime; Justin I. was fourteen in this photo and fifteen when he committed his crime.

For supporters of life without parole sentences, the immaturity of child offenders is not a good enough reason to abolish the sentence. They argue that the punishment also serves to deter future crime. But does youth deterrence actually happen? Research has failed to show that the threat of adult punishment deters adolescents from crime. This is not surprising, given the well-documented limited abilities of children, including teenagers, to anticipate the consequences of their actions and rationally assess their options. Few adolescents are likely to be able to grasp the true significance of a life sentence. One twenty-nine-year-old woman serving life without parole told a researcher for this report that when she was sentenced, at the age of sixteen:

I didn’t understand "life without" . . . [that] to have "life without," you were locked down forever. You know it really dawned on me when [after several years in prison, a journalist] came and . . . he asked me, "Do you realize that you’re gonna be in prison for the rest of your life?" And I said, "Do you really think that?" You know. . . and I was like, "For the rest of my life? Do you think that God will leave me in prison for the rest of my life?"(2)

Virtually all countries in the world reject the punishment of life without parole for child offenders. At least 132 countries reject life without parole for child offenders in domestic law or practice. All countries except the United States and Somalia have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly forbids "life imprisonment without possibility of release" for "offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age." Of the 154 countries for which Human Rights Watch was able to obtain data, only three currently have people serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children, and it appears that those three countries combined have only about a dozen such cases.

Sentencing children as adults means they may well enter prison while they are still under eighteen. One third of the youth offenders now serving life without parole entered prison while they were still children, in violation of international human rights standards that prohibit the incarceration of children with adults. However, regardless of the precise age at which they entered prison, all have faced the same conditions as the older adults with whom they are incarcerated: gangs, sexual predators, extortion, and violence. They also confront special hardships inherent in their sentence. Although it may take time to fully register in a child’s mind, the sentence sends an unequivocal message to children that they are banished from society forever. Youth are told that they will die in prison and are left to wrestle with the anger and emotional turmoil of coming to grips with that fact. They are denied educational, vocational, and other programs to develop their minds and skills because access to those programs is typically restricted to prisoners who will someday be released, and for whom rehabilitation therefore remains a goal. Not surprisingly, child offenders sentenced to life without parole believe that U.S. society has thrown them away. As one young man told a researcher for this report, "Seems like. . .since we’re sentenced to life in prison, society says, ‘Well, we locked them up, they are disposed of, removed.’"(3)

U.S. federal and state governments have the responsibility of ensuring community safety. However, government is also responsible for ensuring that justice is served when a person is tried, convicted, and sentenced. The terrible crimes committed by children can ruin lives, causing injury and death to the victims and grief to their families and friends. Sentencing must reflect the seriousness of the crime, but it also must acknowledge that culpability can be substantially diminished by reason of the youth and immaturity of the perpetrator. Child offenders should be given the possibility of freedom one day, when they have matured and demonstrated their remorse and capacity for rehabilitation.

Note: In keeping with international human rights standards, throughout this report we use the terms "child" and "children" to refer to persons under the age of eighteen. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to youth, adolescents, minors, and juveniles also refer to persons under the age of eighteen.

II. Recommendations

To the President of the United States

Ø Propose and urge Congress to enact legislation abolishing the sentence of life without parole for children convicted of federal crimes.

Ø Submit the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the U.S. Senate for its consent to ratification without reservation.

To the United States Congress

Ø Abolish the sentence of life without parole for children convicted of federal crimes. Enable current child offenders serving life without parole to have their cases reviewed by a court for reassessment and re-sentencing to a sentence with the possibility of parole.

Ø Consent (in the Senate) to ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child without reservation.

Ø Increase funding to states that eliminate life without parole sentences for child offenders in order to ensure state prisons can increase rehabilitative programs focused on helping such offenders to qualify for parole.

Ø Amend Part D of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to require the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to serve as a central depository, analyst, and disseminator of national data on children tried and sentenced as adults.

To the Attorney General of the United States

Ø Suspend the sentence of life without parole for child offenders pending its abolition.

To United States Attorneys

Ø In accordance with the instruction to U.S. government attorneys, contained in the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual, to consider factors such as proportionality and whether a conviction will achieve rehabilitation, do not bring charges against a youth offender that would result in a life without parole sentence when there are other charges that could be suitably brought.

To State and Federal Judges

Ø Exercise any available discretion to not impose the life without parole sentence on child offenders since it constitutes a violation of international human rights law. If the sentence is mandated by statute, evaluate whether, as applied to the defendant on trial, it would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

To State Governors

Ø Propose and urge the enactment of state legislation that eliminates the sentence of life without parole for any crime committed by a person under the age of eighteen.

Ø Until the sentence of life without parole for children is abolished, review the clemency applications of all child offenders sentenced to life without parole and commute their sentences to terms of years or give clemency. In reviewing clemency applications, take into account the international legal prohibition against life without parole for persons under the age of eighteen.

Ø Develop and publish annual statistics on youth in the adult criminal justice system, including: demographic information (age, race, sex), data on children tried in criminal court, the manner by which each child reached criminal court (e.g., transfer, direct file), the nature of the crimes alleged, existence of prior adult record, and if convicted, the precise sentence received.

To State Legislators

Ø Enact legislation that abolishes the sentence of life without parole for any offense committed by a child. Such legislation should include a retroactivity provision enabling current child offenders serving life without parole to have their cases reviewed by a court for re-assessment and re-sentencing to a sentence with the possibility of parole.

Ø Strictly limit the practice of trying children in the adult criminal courts. There should be a presumption in favor of adjudicating children’s cases in the juvenile justice system. The transfer of children’s cases to the criminal court should be strictly limited to those cases in which a balancing between the severity of a child offender’s crime, his or her age, and his or her best interests clearly points to a need for transfer, and only if accused child offenders transferred to the criminal court can be provided with the care and safeguards, such as not to be compelled to give testimony or to confess guilt, to which they are entitled under international law.

Ø Repeal or modify existing transfer provisions that automatically require all children charged with certain offenses to be tried as adults. The decision to transfer a case to the criminal courts should be subject to judicial discretion and should never be mandatory.

Ø Enact legislation that eliminates the prosecutorial option of filing cases against child offenders directly in adult criminal court. All cases against child offenders, regardless of their alleged crime, should be brought first in a juvenile court. Enact legislation that provides criminal court judges with the discretion to send child offenders to juvenile detention facilities until they are at least twenty-one, before being sent to adult prison. Ensure that offenders over the age of eighteen who remain in juvenile detention facilities are housed separately from those below the age of eighteen.

Ø Increase funding, training, and administrative support for juvenile public defender programs.

To State Prosecutors

Ø Pending the abolition of the sentence of life without parole for child offenders, cease seeking sentences of life without parole for child offenders.

Ø Instead of filing charges against child offenders directly in criminal court, refer all child offenders to juvenile court.

Ø Before any determination to transfer a case to the criminal courts is made, request and participate in, as an officer of the court, a full and fair assessment of each child offender’s competency to stand trial as an adult.

To State Criminal and Juvenile Court Judges

Ø Before a child is tried before a criminal court, automatically raise the issue of a

child defendant’s competency to stand trial as an adult.

Ø Ensure that transfer hearings for child offenders in juvenile court are meaningful and are limited to cases in which a balancing between the severity of the child offender’s crime, age, and best interests clearly points to a need for transfer. The hearing must weigh several factors, including at a minimum: the nature and seriousness of the offense, the age and history of the child, and his or her amenability to treatment. The court’s decision should be written and should explain all evidence relied upon and reasons for ruling for or against transfer to adult criminal court. If appealed, transfer decisions should be subject to review by a higher tribunal.

To Defense Attorneys

Ø Ensure that child defendants, as well as their parents or guardians, understand all procedures, defense strategies, and the seriousness of the charges, including possible sentences, so they can fully exercise their rights as clients to participate in their legal defense.

Ø Vigorously defend the interests of child defendants during competency and transfer hearings, as well as during other aspects of the criminal process.

Ø Assist child offenders in the filing of clemency applications.

To State and Federal Officials Who Fund and Administer Corrections Programs

Ø Child offenders serving life without parole should have access to all prison programs offered—educational, vocational, occupational, and other rehabilitative programs—regardless of the length of their sentence.

Ø Child offenders under the age of eighteen should not be held with adults; other decisions about where to hold youth offenders should take into account their mental and physical maturity and should be reviewed on a regular basis.

Ø Provide mental health and social services to assist youth offenders in adjusting to prison conditions as well as in coping with the length of their sentences.

Case Study: Peter A.

Peter A. was age fifteen both in this photo and when he committed his crime.

At the time of his crime, Peter A. (4) was a fifteen-year-old sophomore in high school, living at home in Chicago, Illinois with his mother, her fiancé, and his younger brother. He was seven years old when his parents divorced, and he was then raised by his mother, who supported the family through welfare and other public assistance. (5) According to Peter, he was not particularly interested in school, although he enjoyed and did well in his earth science class, which involved a lot of "lab work with my hands."(6) His probation officer reported him to be an "average student." (7)

Peter spent much of his time with his older brother, who had his own apartment. Peter said: "[My brother] tried to keep me out of trouble . . . my sophomore year—homecoming—he said, ‘there’s gonna be trouble, they’re gonna be shooting at the school. You can’t go.’ . . . and they were shooting at the school, he was right. He wouldn’t let me go to house parties or nothing. He was trying to keep me out of trouble, but at the same time, he had me along." Peter’s older brother was involved in drug dealing, mostly cocaine. Peter said he would sometimes act as a courier for his brother, delivering drugs to customers. He also learned how to steal cars at an early age and had a juvenile adjudication for possession of a stolen vehicle when he was thirteen. He was placed on one year of probation and completed it to the satisfaction of his probation officer. He had no prior record of violent crime and no prior felony convictions. (8) He experimented with both alcohol and marijuana, but says he stopped using any drugs or alcohol when he was placed on probation.

Following a theft of "drugs and money" from his brother’s apartment, Peter said that he went with an eighteen-year-old to steal a van to help to get the stolen goods back. Peter says he acted on his brother’s instructions, and he has always admitted his involvement in stealing the van. Peter says he sat in the back seat of the stolen van with another young man, age twenty-one, and the eighteen-year-old driver, both of whom had guns. They drove to the home of the men they were told had robbed Peter’s brother. No one sat in the front passenger’s seat, because "there was glass on the seat" from the window Peter had broken during the theft.

According to Peter, when the three arrived at the victims’ home, Peter stayed in the stolen van while the other two went inside. Peter heard shots, and a few seconds later one of the co-defendants came running out of the house, without having recovered the drugs or money. The two sped away from the home, leaving the other young man behind. Peter said that he learned on return to his brother’s apartment that two people had been shot to death in the botched robbery. A few days later, he found out that one of the victims was a close high school friend of his, a young man who had no involvement in the original robbery of Peter’s brother. This friend, as Peter put it, was "completely innocent . . . just in the wrong place at the wrong time." Peter was arrested approximately one week after the crime, after his two co-defendants were already in custody.

Peter was questioned for a total of eight hours at the police station, without his mother or an attorney present. During this time, he readily admitted to his role in stealing the van. (9) His admission, "which the assistant State’s Attorney wrote down, did not state whether defendant intended to kill the victims."(10) Peter explained, "Although I was present at the scene, I never shot or killed anyone." There was no physical evidence indicating that Peter had entered the victims’ home, and one of his co-defendants was proven at trial to have been the triggerman in the crime, for which he was convicted. Peter was convicted of felony murder (two counts), which carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole. He was held accountable for the double murder because it was proved he had stolen the van used to drive to the victims’ house.

The judge in Peter’s case found that Peter, without a father at home, had fallen under the influence of his older brother. The judge called Peter "a bright lad" with "rehabilitative potential" and stated that he had qualms about sentencing Peter to life without parole. In his decision, he wrote: "[T]hat is the sentence that I am mandated by law to impose. If I had my discretion, I would impose another sentence, but that is mandated by law."(11) Peter’s defense attorney told a researcher for this report that one of the other perpetrators of the crime "was subsequently acquitted. So, now you have a fifteen-year-old who was waiting outside with a stolen car doing life without parole and a murderer on the streets."(12) Peter, who has already spent nearly half his life behind bars, was twenty-nine years old when he was interviewed for this report in 2005. In prison, has obtained his G.E.D. and completed a correspondence paralegal course, from which he graduated with very good grades. (13) He works as a law clerk in the prison law library and has received one disciplinary ticket in the past six years of his incarceration for possessing an extra pillow and extra cereal in his cell. (14)

III. Background: Youth on Trial

Juvenile Justice Trends in the United States

Two hundred years ago, when the United States was still in its infancy as a nation, child offenders aged fifteen and over were charged and tried in adult criminal courts.(15) As the nineteenth century progressed, children’s welfare advocates argued that children’s potential for rehabilitation should influence the response to their criminal behavior. By 1899, many states considered it counter-productive to incarcerate children along with adult convicts and began to establish reform houses for child offenders. In addition, reformers advocated establishing a separate system of justice for children, which removed them from adult criminal courts and instead employed "open-ended, informal, and highly flexible policies to rehabilitate" youth offenders.(16) Illinois created the first juvenile court in the United States in 1899.(17) By 1925, all but two states had followed suit.(18)

Until the 1970s, children accused of criminal conduct were almost exclusively brought before juvenile courts. A child could be transferred to stand trial in adult criminal court only if the juvenile court decided that such a transfer served the best interests of the child and of the public. At the request of the prosecutor or at the initiative of the juvenile court judge, the court would hold an adversarial hearing to determine whether the case should be transferred to adult criminal court. The transfer would not be approved unless the juvenile court determined that the adult court was best equipped to adjudicate the case and appropriately address the needs of society and of the offender.(19)

Starting in the mid-1980s, the United States experienced a steep and troubling increase in violent crime, including violent crime by adolescents.(20) In the ten years prior to 1986, the number of homicides committed with guns by offenders aged fourteen to seventeen remained around 965 homicides per year. The number then began a steady rise, peaking in 1994 at 3,337 homicides. Youth homicides then began to drop; by 2002, the number of youth homicides with guns was lower than in 1976.(21)

Before it became apparent that dramatic increases in youth violent crime were a short-lived problem, the nation was consumed by anxiety that bordered on panic. In 1996, Princeton University professor John DiIulio coined the term "super-predator," warning that in the United States, "by the year 2010, there will be 270,000 more juvenile super-predators on the streets than there were in 1990."(22) Politicians and pundits throughout the country told Americans to "brace" themselves "for the coming generation of ‘super-predators.’"(23) Public confidence in the juvenile justice system began to wane as concern about youth crime grew. States embraced harsher criminal justice policies for children just as they did for adults, without stopping to ascertain whether or not they would prove effective. Racial disparities grew more pronounced as criminal sentencing became more punitive.

Figure 1, below, presents the relative percentages of black and white youth admitted to adult prisons in the United States, showing that from the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, the relative percentage of black youth offenders admitted to prison grew steeply, while declining for whites. During this same period, however, the rates at which both black and white youth were arrested for serious crimes such as murder increased.(24) Starting in the mid-1990s, the admissions of black youth to adult prison began to decline, although it remained higher than the percentages from the early 1980s.

Figure 1

(Percent of Juvenile Prison Admissions, by Race)

Source: Data from the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP). The NCRP is sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), U.S. Department of Justice, and evolved from the need to consolidate data on corrections at the national level. Its objective is to provide a consistent and comprehensive description of prisoners entering and leaving the custody or supervision of state and federal authorities. NCRP data downloads are available online at: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/NCRP/, accessed on September 6, 2005. Note that races other than white and black made up anywhere from 1.1 percent (in 1983) to 7.7 percent (in 1989) of the total prison admissions in any given year. Also, due to overlapping Census 2000 definitions between race (black or white) and ethnicity (Hispanic or non-Hispanic), Hispanics are often (though not always) included in black or white race counts and classifications.

Adult Trial of Children

Legislatures seized upon a simple formula: youth who commit "adult" crimes (e.g., murder, robbery, drug dealing) should be tried like adults. By 1997, all states but three (Nebraska, New York, and Vermont) had changed their laws to make it easier and more likely that child offenders would stand trial and be sentenced in adult criminal courts.(25) Three mechanisms have been used to increase the adult trial of juvenile offenders:

Withdrawal of Juvenile Jurisdiction: Legislation precludes juvenile court jurisdiction in certain cases, typically depending on the age of the child and the nature of the offense. For example, in some states, juvenile courts do not have jurisdiction over a child accused of first degree murder; such crimes may only be tried in adult criminal court.(26)

Discretion to Direct File: Legislation gives prosecutors the discretion to file charges against child offenders accused of serious crimes in adult criminal court rather than beginning in juvenile courts. If they have this option, prosecutors typically choose to proceed with the prosecution of children as adults.(27)

Lowering the Age for Adult Court Jurisdiction: Legislation simply lowers the age at which offenders are subject to adult trials.

As of 2005, all states and the federal government have the capacity to try certain youth as adults in criminal court. As Table 1 (below) reveals, these provisions vary from state to state, based on offense and age criteria.

Table 1: Minimum Age for Adult Prosecution and for Life without Parole Sentencing by State

State

Lowest age at offense for which adult prosecution is possible Minimum age at offense for LWOP sentencingStateLowest age at offense for which adult prosecution is possible Minimum age at offense for LWOP sentencing
Alabama	14	16	Montana	12	12

Alaska	0	No LWOP	Nebraska	0	0

Arizona	0	14	Nevada	8	8

Arkansas	14	14	New Hampshire	13	13

California	14	16	New Jersey	14	14

Colorado	12	12	New Mexico	15	No LWOP

Connecticut	14	14	New York	13	No <18 LWOP

Delaware	0	0	North Carolina	13	13

lshdrawnil
District of Columbia	0	No <18 LWOP		North Dakota	14

14
Florida	0	0	Ohio	14	14

Georgia	12	13	Oklahoma	7	13

Hawaii	0	0	Oregon	0	No <18 LWOP

Idaho	14	14	Pennsylvania	0	0

Illinois	13	13	Rhode Island	0	0

Indiana	0	16	South Carolina	0	0

Iowa	14	14	South Dakota	0	10

Kansas	10	No LWOP	Tennessee	0	0

Kentucky	14	No <18 LWOP	Texas	14	No LWOP

Louisiana	14	15	Utah	14	14

Maine	0	No LWOP	Vermont	10	10

Maryland	0	0	Virginia	14	14

Massachusetts	14	14	Washington	0	15

						Michigan	0	0	West Virginia	0	No LWOP
Minnesota	14	14	Wisconsin	0	10
Mississippi	13	13	Wyoming	13	13

Missouri	12	12	Federal	15	15

Source: National Center for Juvenile Justice, State Juvenile Justice Profiles, available online at: http://www.ncjj.org/stateprofiles, accessed on June 6, 2005; Second Chances: Juveniles Serving Life without Parole in Michigan Prisons(American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, 2004), p.3, available online at: www.aclumich.org/pubs/juvenilelifers.pdf, accessed on September 13, 2005; Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report, p. 106; and state statutory research.

In addition, in ten states youth may only receive a life without parole sentence if they are one or several years older than the minimum age for adult prosecution. In other words, minors may be prosecuted as adults in Alabama from the age of fourteen, but they may only be sentenced to life without parole if they were sixteen or older at the time of the offense. By contrast, in Colorado children as young as twelve are eligible both for trial as adults and for the life without parole sentence.

In most states that provide prosecutors the discretion to file cases in adult court, there is no judicial supervision or public accountability for their decisions, and prosecutors are not required to submit in writing the reasons for the direct charge in criminal court. However, at least six states and the federal government do attempt to limit prosecutorial discretion in some way.(28)

Transfer hearings would at least offer the possibility of a judicial examination in juvenile court of the justification for sending a child offender to be tried in criminal court.(29) These hearings are becoming increasingly rare.The available data indicate the proportion of children who have had a transfer hearing before being tried in criminal court has been steadily declining. In 1996, approximately 36 percent of child offenders in adult court had a prior transfer hearing in juvenile court; by 2000 the percentage had fallen to an estimated 13 percent.(30)

Moreover, U.S. juvenile court transfer hearings do not meet the international law standard that children accused of crimes should be dealt with, whenever appropriate, outside the realm of judicial proceedings in a criminal court.(31) U.S. transfer hearings often also give short shrift to the duty "to ensure that children [accused of crimes] are dealt with in a manner appropriate to their well-being and proportionate both to their circumstances and the offense."(32) Transfers routinely occur even in cases that appear not to merit the more punitive treatment that often results from trial and conviction in a criminal court.

When children are tried in criminal courts, little or no accommodation is made to take into account their youth. Whether eleven or seventeen, the child offender must participate in all the same pre-trial and trial procedures and confront all the same decisions that adult defendants do. Contrary to popular belief, it is the child and not his or her parent or guardian who must decide what to tell the police and defense attorneys, whether or not to follow attorney instructions, whether to testify, whether to give information to the prosecution, and whether to go to trial or accept a plea bargain.

Although common sense would suggest that many children are simply too young to undertake such weighty legal responsibilities, it is rare for courts to consider whether children lack the competence to stand trial because of their age.(33) To shed light on the challenges children tried as adults face in court, the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, whose members include leading legal and scientific professionals as well as academic experts, has been conducting a long term study of children’s trial competency. The study has examined a broad range of factors, including children’s understanding of basic elements in the judicial process and of their rights as defendants, their ability to put facts together and draw logical conclusions, and their ability to make decisions independent of pressure from authority figures.(34) The research indicates that many young adolescents, particularly those fifteen and under, are not developmentally and intellectually mature enough to be legally "competent" to stand trial.(35)

Any criminal defendant can make bad decisions. However, child offenders contacted for this report described a variety of errors in judgment in their dealings with police and during their adult criminal trials that may have been related to their youth. We found some child offenders who:

Waived their constitutional rights and made confessions, including confessions they later said were false: For example, Gary C. from Menard, Illinois said that he falsely confessed to a murder that occurred when he was fourteen years old. The police interrogated him for several hours in the company of his mother. But after his mother left the room, the interrogation continued. Gary said he was "alone" and "scared" and ultimately told the police what they wanted to hear. When he left out details or failed to make statements that fit with the version of the crime already developed by the police, he said that they helped him along, saying things such as: "[Y]ou used the ladder to get in, right?" Afterwards, no one double checked the statement. Gary said he did not know what would happen once he confessed, but he had no idea he could be sentenced to life without parole.(36)

Did not recognize bad advice from defense attorneys: Thomas M. is serving life without parole for a felony murder committed in Colorado when he was fifteen years old. Before trial, Thomas’s trial attorney, Eydie Elkins, convinced him to write a letter of remorse.(37) Elkins went to the same church as the victim’s family and delivered the letter to her pastor, who gave it to his congregant, the victim’s mother, who then turned it over to the prosecutor. Although the letter was not a direct confession, it was the primary piece of evidence used to convict Thomas of the felony murder, in which a young man was shot and killed during a botched robbery.

Were hampered by low levels of education, including illiteracy: Clifford S., who was convicted for a murder committed when he was sixteen years old, is serving life without parole in Arkansas. Clifford was illiterate. When he was interviewed for this report, he said that when he was being questioned about the crime, a detective said he could take a polygraph test if he signed a form. Clifford said that the detective "wrote stuff down on this piece of paper you know . . . You know, I can’t read and write." Clifford continued, "When he got that piece of paper, you know and I signed my name on it, he stepped out and told the police that I confessed to the crime. And I heard it and I was like, ‘No I didn’t!’" When asked if the detective told him what the paper said, Clifford answered: "No ma’am. When I went to trial, they told him to read it and that was when I first heard what he wrote. . . . And he said in court that he wrote it. Only thing I did was sign my name on it."(38)

Did not understand what was at stake during their trials: An Illinois defense attorney who represented a youth sentenced to life without parole said: "[My] client understood the proceedings. I’ve been a defense attorney for many years and he was a smart kid, he pretty much got what was going on. But it was still very difficult for him to comprehend where he might end up, to really grapple with the sentence and understand how important it was to work with me. It’s the same as a bunch of young soldiers going off to battle when they’ve never met or had anyone die before."(39)

The trial of children as adults often fails to provide children with the special safeguards and care to which they are entitled under international law. Juvenile justice advocates in the United States widely recognize that decisions to send youth to adult court are often arbitrary and unfair and pay scant attention to the goal of rehabilitation. Once in the adult system, adolescents are deprived of the wide variety of rehabilitative sentencing options that they might be eligible to receive in the juvenile court system—sentencing options that are designed to give them the tools they need to turn their lives around and become law-abiding members of society. In Florida, for example, children transferred to adult court were shown to be a third more likely to re-offend than those sent to the juvenile system for the same crime and with similar prior records.(40) In 2000, Florida had more children in adult state prisons than any other state, yet Florida’s violent juvenile crime rate was 54 percent higher than the national average.(41)

Case Study: Samantha L.

Samantha L. was age seventeen both in this photo and when she committed her crime.

Samantha L. had already spent nineteen years behind bars when she was interviewed for this report. Samantha said that her parents divorced when she was two years old and that her father "was an alcoholic" who had "raped my mom and my sister."(42) At seventeen, Samantha was unemployed and had a baby son. She had been charged as a juvenile with assault, two burglaries, and auto theft.

Samantha said she spent most of her time with her older sister, and they often dated older men. One of these men, Rick, involved her in selling marijuana. She sold marijuana to an undercover policeman and was arrested and sent to a juvenile center as a result. When Samantha was released from the juvenile center, she re-started her relationship with Rick and moved in with him.

One night, Rick talked about wanting to leave town and asked if Samantha knew of anybody who would lend her money. She suggested her closest friend’s grandfather, whose house she sometimes cleaned to earn money. They drove to his house, and Samantha and Rick went in to ask for the money. Her friend’s grandfather reminded her that she still owed him a housecleaning because of some money he had already paid her, so she decided not to ask for the money. She told Rick she wanted to leave, but he said he wanted to stay to talk to "grandpa" some more. Samantha says she went outside and waited in the truck for Rick. "Rick didn’t come out and I knew if I went in it would take him longer to leave, so I honked the horn. Rick didn’t come out so I started the truck thinking he would hear it and come out. He didn’t. I pulled around to the front of the house and Rick came out. He got into the truck and started yelling ‘I killed him!’ I thought he was just making it up . . . because Rick didn’t have any blood on him, I really thought he was lying . . . Rick drove the truck back to the man we had borrowed it from."

Samantha and Rick were arrested later that night. Samantha told a researcher for this report that she was not questioned by the police about the details of the crime, because immediately after her arrest Rick took full responsibility for the crime. Subsequently, however, he accused Samantha of the murder, claiming he had initially lied about his role in the crime, because he thought Samantha was pregnant with his child. Samantha wrote that Rick fabricated this explanation for his changed story in order to justify his altered theory of defense. She continued, "I was never pregnant by him, and my only son was seven months old at the time of the crime." Evidence introduced at Rick’s trial appeared to corroborate Samantha’s description of events.

Samantha was sentenced to life without parole for aiding and abetting first degree murder. Rick was sentenced to life without parole for first degree murder. (43) Samantha told a researcher for this report, "I know I did something wrong, but not as wrong as Rick because I wasn’t there, in the house. I wasn’t there during all of that. Rick admitted [when he was first questioned by the police] I wasn’t there, he told them I didn’t make those decisions. . . . I didn’t even hold the knife. But, I know it doesn’t matter to them."

IV. Sentencing of Youth to Life without Parole

Once children are prosecuted as adults, they become subject to the same prison sentences that can be imposed on adults, including in forty-two states, the sentence of life without parole. Only Kentucky, New York, Oregon, and the District of Columbia specifically exclude anyone under the age of eighteen who is tried as an adult from life without parole sentencing. In twenty-seven of the forty-two states in which youth can be sentenced to life without parole, the sentence is mandatory for anyone, child or adult, found guilty of certain enumerated crimes.(44)

Age, Crime, and Gender

As of 2004, there were at least 2,225 youth offenders serving life without parole in U.S prisons.(45) Because of the absence of any national database tracking the sentencing of youth to life without parole (or indeed any data tracking the presence of child offenders in adult prisons), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International compiled this figure from data obtained directly from individual state departments of corrections and other sources. This figure includes youth offenders from forty of the forty-two states in which youth offenders may be sentenced to life without parole and from the federal bureau of prisons (see Appendix B for methods).

We have data on age at offense for 1,291 of the child offenders sentenced to life without parole. As shown in Table 2, the youngest children (six in total) were thirteen years old at the time of offense, and the average age was sixteen. Sixteen percent were imprisoned for crimes committed when they were fifteen or younger. Applying this proportion to the total number of youth offenders serving life without parole suggests that some 354 youth offenders nationwide currently face a lifetime behind bars for crimes they committed before their sixteenth birthdays.

Table 2: Age of Child Offenders Sentenced to Life without Parole at Time of Offense

Age at Offense

Percentage of Child Offenders
13.00-13.99 years	0.5 percent

14.00-14.99 years	2.2 percent

15.00-15.99 years	13.3 percent

16.00-16.99 years	32.0 percent

17.00-17.99 years	52.2 percent

Total:	100.2 percent (due to rounding)

Source: Data provided from thirty-eight state correctional departments and additional other sources for the states of Alabama and Virginia.

Life without parole is imposed for a variety of crimes, as shown in Table 3.(46) However, it is most often imposed on child offenders who have been convicted of crimes of homicide, as shown in Figure 2.

Table 3: Crime Categories

General Category		Includes (in this report)

Homicide	Murder, homicide, felony murder, felony homicide, homicide by child abuse, manslaughter, and capital felony (including all degrees of each).

Other Violent Crimes	Assault, attempted murder, battery, carjacking, robbery, use of firearm, use of other weapons (including all degrees of each).

Kidnapping	Kidnapping (including all degrees of each).

Sex Crimes	Sexual battery, rape, and child molestation (including all degrees of each).

Property Crimes	Burglary and grand larceny (including all degrees of each).

Other Crime Categories Used by State Departments of Corrections	Criminal liability for another person (used only in Connecticut to label two incoming prisoners), compact prisoner (category used to label one incoming prisoner in Iowa), oth-part-2 (category used to label one incoming prisoner in Pennsylvania).

Source: see Table 2, above.

Figure 2

(Crimes Committed by Youth Sentenced to Life without Parole)

Source: see Table 2, above.

Almost 93 percent of the youth sentenced to life without parole were convicted of homicide. It is a misconception, however, that the sentence is reserved only for the most calculated and heinous of murderers. As already emphasized, it is often imposed, for example, on children convicted of felony murder—that is, on teens who participated in a felony such as robbery during which another participant in the crime killed someone without the child offender having intended the murder to occur and sometimes without even knowing the other participant was armed. In the cases examined by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, many of these felony murder crimes were robberies that went awry, often involving a group of offenders, at least one of whom was an adult. Unfortunately, data are not available to enable us to determine the nationwide number of child offenders convicted of felony murder who are serving life without parole.

However, we do know that 26 percent, or 45 of the 172 youth offenders across the nation who self-reported to us on this question, were sentenced to life without parole for felony murder.(47) We also know that 33 percent of the 24 youth offenders investigated in depth by Human Rights Watch in 2005 in Colorado are serving life without parole for felony murder offenses;(48) and that nearly half of the 146 youth surveyed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Michigan in 2004 were sentenced to life without parole for felony murder or for "aiding and abetting" a murder in which another person pulled the trigger.(49)

In terms of gender, all but a tiny fraction (2.6 percent) of the child offenders serving life without parole are male.(50) This is not surprising considering both the marked differences in violent juvenile crime rates (especially homicide offenses) by gender(51) and that boys are much more likely to be transferred to adult court than girls.(52) Although their total numbers were very small, the girls in the sample were more likely to have been convicted of homicide. Eight percent more female than male youth offenders serving life without parole were convicted of homicide.(53) The actual discrepancy may be even greater, since crime data on 18 percent of the female offenders is not available.

The specter of "super predators" created much of the national furor over youth violence. Politicians and the public thought their communities were (or would be) besieged by vicious teenagers with long records of crime. Yet few of the child offenders sentenced to life without parole fit this super predator profile. Our research suggests that 59 percent of youth offenders received a life without parole sentence for their first-evercriminal conviction of any sort. These youth had neither an adult criminal record nor a juvenile adjudication.(54) The other 39 percent had prior criminal records that ranged from convictions as adults for serious crimes such as robbery, to juvenile offenses such as getting into fights with other teenagers.(55)

Case Study: Stacey T.

Stacey T. was age thirteen in this photo and committed his crime at age fourteen.

Stacey T. was about to enter the tenth grade at a Pennsylvania high school, under a magnet program for students who excelled in school, at the time of his crime. He lived at home with his mother, a single parent. When Stacey T. was fourteen years old, he was arrested for the murder of Alexander Porter, a young man who was his girlfriend’s brother. Stacey was convicted of second-degree murder (felony murder in Pennsylvania) and sentenced to life without parole. He had no juvenile record, and this crime was his first. Stacey was charged directly in adult court; he never had a juvenile transfer hearing.

Court documents and an interview with Stacey’s attorney for this report indicate that Stacey T. agreed to participate with two adults (Henry Daniels, who was Stacey’s cousin, and Kevin Pelzer) in a robbery of Alexander Porter, who was assumed to be wealthy, because it was "common knowledge" that his family was involved in drug dealing. (56) The plan involved coercing Porter to give over the keys to his apartment so that the two adults (Daniels and Pelzer) could rob it.

The court’s decision in the case of Stacey’s cousin establishes that the three perpetrators: "[S]et up a purported drug transaction with Porter, in order to lure him to a meeting, whereupon they bound and gagged him, confiscated his keys, and stuffed him in the trunk of his car. One of the conspirators [Stacey], a ‘friend’ of Porter’s, allowed himself to be tied up in front of Porter. . . . He was ‘released’ after Porter was locked in the trunk, then taken home so that Porter would later believe that he had been murdered. The remaining conspirators drove Porter’s car, with Porter in the trunk, to the garage of one of the individuals and parked it there."(57)

Stacey explained that Daniels and Pelzer pretended to murder him in order to coerce Porter to give over the keys or face the same fate. In Pelzer’s appeal, the court described what Pelzer and Daniels did in the twenty-four hours after Stacey left the scene: "Twice during the next twenty-four hours while Porter was kept in the car trunk, the kidnappers used Porter's car on excursions. . . . First, they used the vehicle to get to Porter's parents' apartment to commit burglaries. . . . [Pelzer] and Daniels went home, slept for a few hours, then took Porter to a park, shot him four times in the neck and back with a .25 caliber handgun, and left him by the roadside where his body was discovered the following day. . . . While Porter was being bound, [Stacey] was led outside, supposedly to be punished, but actually to be released."(58) [According to Pelzer] "[M]e and [Daniels] got into the boy's car, the black shiny one to drive [Stacey] home. I drove the car. We dropped [Stacey] off and returned to my house."(59)

In short, while Stacey T. had agreed to participate in a robbery scheme, he was not present for the murder of Porter, nor was there evidence presented at trial that suggested he knew Daniels and Pelzer were going to murder Porter. Indeed, it would appear that the murder itself was never planned as part of the scheme. Stacey was convicted of second degree murder—Pennsylvania’s equivalent of a felony murder conviction in other states, and which has put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

Stacey wrote: "Convinced that I could make some money, I agreed with my cousin to rob this guy of his keys so that [my cousin] and his friend could rob the guy’s and his father’s apartment. . . . but I had no idea that this guy would end up dead. . . . Yes, I made a mistake. I associated with the wrong crowd. I engaged in committing a crime with them. However, is it fair that I spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime which was committed by someone else without my knowledge or without me being present? I feel sorry for the life which was lost in my case. I feel a deep sense of empathy for his family and what they must continue to endure in terms of pain. But this tragedy was never supposed to happen. I don’t absolve myself of all guilt. I, out of naiveness, out of influence, out of the ignorance of knowing the consequences, agreed to do a crime: a robbery."(60)

Historical Trends in Sentencing to Life without Parole

As shown in Figure 3, from 1962 until 1981, an average of two youth offenders in the United States entered prison each year with life without parole sentences. Beginning in 1982, the number began to rise markedly, peaking at 152 youth in 1996. Although the number has declined since 1996, it has never returned to the much lower figures from the 1960s to mid-1980s.

While the absolute number of youth sentenced to life without parole has decreasedsince 1996, the nationwide proportion of youth sentenced to life without parole for murder has increasedrelative to the total number of youth arrested for or reliably implicated in murders nationwide ("known murder offenders").(61)

Figure 3

(Number of Youth Offenders Admitted to Prison with Life without Parole over Time)

Source: Data provided from thirty-eight state correctional departments and additional other sources for the states of Alabama and Virginia.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have compared the number of known murder offenders (including all degrees of murder and felony murder) who were below the age of eighteen for each year from 1980 through 2000, with the number of child offenders who entered prison during those same years with a life without parole sentence. As shown in Table 4, the proportion of youth murder offenders who entered prison with life without parole sentences constituted an ever growing proportion of the number of known youth murder offenders. For example, the percentage going to prison with life without parole in 2000 was three times greater than the percentage in 1990. The data thus suggest an increasing punitiveness toward youth murder offenders.

Table 4: Youth Murder Offenders and Youth Offenders Sentenced to Life without Parole

Year

Youth Murder OffendersYouth Murder Offenders Entering Prison with LWOPPercentage of Youth Murder Offenders Entering Prison with LWOP
1980	1,460	2	0.14%

1981	1,410	5	0.35%

1982	1,235	10	0.81%

1983	1,100	33	3.00%

brdrb
1984	968	20

2.07%
1985	1,125	32	2.84%

1986	1,334	32	2.40%

1987	1,348	32	2.37%

1988	1,622	59	3.64%

1989	1,805	50	2.77%

1990	2,234	64	2.86%

1991	2,457	66	2.69%

1992	2,470	84	3.40%

1993	2,776	73	2.63%

1994	2,819	116	4.11%

1995	2,338	118	5.05%

1996	2,021	152	7.52%

1997	1,709	143	8.37%

1998	1,407	124	8.81%

1999	1,168	133	11.39%

2000	1,006	91	9.05%

Source: H. Snyder, T. Finnegan, Y. Wan, and W. Kang, "Easy Access to the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports: 1980 – 2000," 2002, available online at: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/ojstatbb/ezashr/, accessed on September 14, 2005 (using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Reports 1980-2000 [machine-readable data files]). Data on dates of entry to prison contained in data provided by thirty-eight state correctional departments and additional other sources for the states of Alabama and Virginia.

Comparing the imposition of life without parole sentences on children and adults convicted of murder casts additional light on the increasing punitiveness toward child offenders. As shown in Figure 4, in eleven out of the seventeen years between 1985 and 2001, youth convicted of murder were more likelyto enter prison with a life without parole sentence than adult murder offenders.(62) Even when death sentences are included, as shown in Figure 5, in one quarter of the same seventeen years, child murder offenders were more likely to receiveeither the death penalty or life without parolethan adults. In the remaining years, adults were only slightly more likely to enter prison with eitherlife without parole or death sentences (between 1.3 and 0.1 percentage points)—a remarkable finding given that during most of the years studied, large numbers of states had abolished the juvenile death penalty. On its face, this data suggests that states have often been more punitive towards children who commit murder than adults. At the very least, it suggests age has not been much of a mitigating factor in the sentencing of youth convicted of murder.

Figure 4

(Juvenile and Adult Murderers Sentenced to LWOP)

Source: The data are from the National Corrections Reporting Program, which is sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Stastics. NCRP data downloads are available online at: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/NCRP/, accessed on September 6, 2005.

Figure 5

(Juvenile Murder Offenders Sentenced to LWOP or Death Compared with Adult Murder Offenders Sentenced to LWOP or Death)

Source: see Figure 4, above.

State Variation in the Use of Life without Parole

There is wide variation among the states in the number of youth offenders serving life without parole sentences, as shown in Table 5, below.

New Jersey, Utah, and Vermont all have laws allowing life without parole for child offenders, but as of the end of 2003, none of them had any youth offenders serving the sentence. For this report, the federal bureau of prisons reported that they had zero youth offenders serving life without parole. However, we have since located at least one inmate, Jose A., who was fifteen at the time of his crime and is serving life without parole in the federal system.(63)

Table 5: Total Youth Serving Life without Parole by State

State

Youth LWOP Total

State

Youth LWOP Total
Alabama	15		Montana	1

5
Arizona	30

Nebraska21
Arkansas	46	Nevada	16

California	180	New Hampshire	3

Colorado	46	New Jersey	0

Connecticut	10	North Carolina	44

Delaware	7	North Dakota	1

Federal	1	Ohio	1

Florida	273	Oklahoma	49

Georgia	8	Pennsylvania	332

Hawaii	4	Rhode Island	2

Idaho	data missing	South Carolina	26

Illinois	103	South Dakota	9

Indiana	2	Tennessee	4

Iowa	67	Utah	0

Louisiana	317	Vermont	0

Maryland	13	Virginia	48

Massachusetts	60	Washington	23

Michigan	306	Wisconsin	16

Minnesota	2	Wyoming	6

				Mississippi	17
Missouri	116	Nationwide	2225

Source: Data provided by thirty-eight state correctional departments and additional other sources for the states of Alabama and Virginia.

In Figure 6, below, we present the rates at which states impose the sentence relative to state youth populations. The range in the rates is extraordinary: Virginia has the highest rate, 132.90 per 100,000 youth age fourteen to seventeen, a rate that is 886 times larger than Ohio’s lowest rate of 0.15. The national rate is 14.20.

Figure 6

(Rate of Youth Offenders Serving Life without Parole byState)

Source: Data provided by thirty-eight state correctional departments and additional other sources for the states of Alabama and Virginia. Population data were obtained from Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, "Table 2: Annual Estimates of the Population: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2003," released in September 2004, available online at: http://www.census.gov/popest/states/asrh/SC-EST2003-02.html, accessed on September 6, 2005.

The differences in the state rates of life without parole for youth do not correlate directly to differences in rates of violent crime by youth. As shown in Figure 7, there are states with high rates of youth violence but low rates of youth with life without parole sentencing such as Delaware, Illinois, and Maryland; and there are states with the reverse: high rates of youth with the sentence and lower rates of youth crime, such as Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Virginia’s rate of youth crime is 34 percent lower than Ohio’s crime rate, yet, as noted above, Virginia uses life without parole sentences for youth at a rate that is 866 times greater than Ohio’s. Missouri, on the other hand, has both relatively high rates of youth crime and high rates of sentencing youth to life without parole.

Figure 7

(Arrest Rate of Youth for Violent Crimes Compared with Sentencing Rate to LWOP)

Source: sentencing rate data provided by thirty-eight state correctional departments and additional other sources for the states of Alabama and Virginia. Arrest rate data from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), "Crime in the United States, 1997," Uniform Crime Reports(UCR), available online at: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/97cius.htm, accessed on September 14, 2005. Population data from the Bureau of Census, "Estimates of the population of states: 1997". Although many states had crime index data available for subsequent years, the data from 1997 provided rates for the largest number of states, with reporting coverage ranging from 33 to 100 percent of counties. No 1997 data were available for Florida, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

State criminal justice policies and practices clearly play a large role in the different rates of life without parole sentences for youth. One of those policy choices is that of making life without parole a mandatory sentence for certain crimes, regardless of whether it is committed by an adult or a youth. As shown in Table 6, the eight states with the highest rates of sentencing youth to life without parole all make the sentence mandatory upon conviction for certain crimes. The five states with the lowest rates of sentencing youth to life without parole (other than those that do not impose the sentence on youth at all) make the sentence discretionary. In these states, in which the judge retains the ability to weigh individual characteristics of defendants, the much lower rates of sentencing suggests judges’ assessments that life without parole is not an appropriate sentence for youth offenders.

Table 6: Mandatory or Discretionary Life without Parole by State

State

Mandatory LWOP

Rate* of Youth LWOP

State

*Mandatory LWOPRate of Youth LWOP**
Virginia	Mandatory Death (16 +) or LWOP	13.29	California	Discretionary	0.92

Louisiana	Mandatory Death (16 +) or LWOP	10.96	Washington	Mandatory LWOP	0.66

Michigan	Mandatory LWOP	5.29	Hawaii	Discretionary	0.61

Pennsylvania	Mandatory Death (16 +) or life sentence (no parole for life sentence)	4.93	Alabama	Mandatory LWOP	0.59

Iowa	Mandatory LWOP	3.82	Connecticut	Mandatory LWOP	0.56

Missouri	Mandatory LWOP	3.51	Wisconsin	Mandatory LWOP	0.49