http://edition.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/12/28/teen.brain/

Expert: Teen brain key to understanding criminal behavior

• Story Highlights
• Latest research shows brain continues to develop to age 25 and beyond
  
• Teen brains lack impulse control, sophisticated reasoning capability
  
• Some advocates say teens should be judged differently in criminal justice system.
  
• Supreme Court in 2005 outlawed death penalty for crimes committed before 18
  
• Next Article in Health »
  
  

NEW YORK (AP) -- The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.

Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institutes of Health says the brain continues to mature up to age 25 or later.

And, perhaps, a crime.

Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor, helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for a 2005 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.

That ruling relies on the most recent research on the adolescent brain, which indicates the juvenile brain is still maturing in the teen years and reasoning and judgment are developing well into the early to mid 20s. It is often cited as state lawmakers consider scaling back punitive juvenile justice laws passed during the 1990s.

"As any parent knows," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, youths are more likely to show "a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility" than adults. "These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions."

He also noted that "juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure," causing them to have less control over their environment.

Some child advocates have pointed to the Supreme Court decision and the research as evidence that teens -- even those accused of serious crimes -- should not be regarded in the same way as adults in the criminal justice system.

Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine who has testified before legislative committees on brain development, says the research doesn't absolve teens but offers some explanation for their behavior.

"It doesn't mean adolescents can't make a rational decision or appreciate the difference between right and wrong," he said. "It does mean, particularly when confronted with stressful or emotional decisions, they are more likely to act impulsively, on instinct, without fully understanding or analyzing the consequences of their actions."

Experts say that even at ages 16 and 17, when compared to adults, juveniles on average are more:

•impulsive.

•aggressive.

• emotionally volatile.

• likely to take risks.

• reactive to stress.

• vulnerable to peer pressure.

• prone to focus on and overestimate short-term payoffs and underplay longer-term consequences of what they do.

• likely to overlook alternative courses of action.

Violence toward others also tends to peak in adolescent years, says psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ash of Emory University. It's mostly likely to start around age 16, and people who haven't committed a violent crime by age 19 only rarely start doing it later, he said.

The good news here, he said, is that a violent adolescent doesn't necessarily become a violent adult. Some two-thirds to three-quarters of violent youth grow out of it, he said. "They get more self-controlled."

Some of the changes found in behavioral studies are paralleled by changes in the brain itself as youths become adults.

In fact, in just the past few years, Steinberg said, brain scans have given biological backing to commonsense notions about teen behavior, like their impulsiveness and vulnerability to peer pressure.

It's one thing to say teens don't control their impulses as well as adults, but another to show that they can't, he said. As for peer pressure, the new brain research "gives credence to the idea that this isn't a choice that kids are making to give in to their friends, that biologically, they're more vulnerable to that," he said.

Consider the lobes at the front of the brain. The nerve circuitry here ties together inputs from other parts of the brain, said Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health.

This circuitry weighs how much priority to give incoming messages like "Do this now" versus "Wait! What about the consequences?" In short, the frontal lobes are key for making good decisions and controlling impulses.

Brain scans show that the frontal lobes don't mature until age 25, and their connections to other parts of the brain continue to improve to at least that age, Giedd said.

The inexplicable behavior and poor judgments teens are known for almost always happen when teens are feeling high emotion or intense peer pressure, conditions that overwhelm the still-maturing circuitry in the front part of brain, Giedd said.

As Steinberg sees it, a teenager's brain has a well-developed accelerator but only a partly developed brake.

By around 15 or 16, the parts of the brain that arouse a teen emotionally and make him pay attention to peer pressure and the rewards of action -- the gas pedal -- are probably all set. But the parts related to controlling impulses, long-term thinking, resistance to peer pressure and planning -- the brake, mostly in the frontal lobes -- are still developing.

"It's not like we go from becoming all accelerator to all brake," Steinberg said. "It's that we go from being heavy-foot-on-the-accelerator to being better able to manage the whole car."

Giedd emphasized that scientists can't yet scan an individual's brain and draw conclusions about how mature he is, or his degree of responsibility for his actions.

Brain scans do show group differences between adult and teen brains, he said, "but whether or not that should matter (in the courtroom) is the part that needs to be decided more by the judicial system than the neuroscientist."

Steinberg, who frequently testifies on juvenile justice policy and consults with state legislators on the topic, said it's not clear to him how much the research on teen brains affects lawmakers. They seem more swayed by pragmatic issues like the cost of treating teens as adults, he said. But he noted that he has been asked to testify more in the past few years than before.

In any case, experts say, there's nothing particularly magic about the age 18 as a standard dividing line between juveniles and adults in the courtroom.

Different mental capabilities mature at different rates, Steinberg notes. Teens as young as 15 or 16 can generally balance short-term rewards and possible costs as well as adults, but their ability to consider what might happen later on is still developing, he said.

A dividing line of age 18 is better than 15 and not necessarily superior to 19 or 17, but it appears good enough to be justified scientifically, he said.

Steinberg said he thinks courts should be able to punish some 16- or 17- year olds as adults. That would be reserved for repeat violent offenders who've resisted rehabilitation by the juvenile justice system, and who could endanger other youth in the juvenile system if they returned. "I don't think there are a lot of these kids," Steinberg said.

For the rest, he thinks it makes sense to try rehabilitating young offenders in the juvenile justice system. That's better than sending them through the adult system, which can disrupt their development so severely that "they're never going be able to be a productive member of society," Steinberg said. "You're not doing society any favor at all."

Ash said that to decide whom to treat as an adult, courts need some kind of guideline that combines the defendant's age with the crime he's accused of. That should leave room for individual assessments, he said.

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But "we don't have very good measuring sticks" for important traits like how impulsive a juvenile is, he said.

In any case, the decision for each defendant should balance a number of reasons for punishment, like retribution, protecting society, deterring future crime, and rehabilitation, said Ash, who's a member of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Judicial Action.

Even if a 14-year-old murderer is held morally responsible for the crime, he will have matured by the time he's 18, and in the meantime he may be more amenable to rehabilitation than an adult murderer is, Ash said.

In fact, most experts conclude that rehabilitation works better for juveniles than for adult offenders, he said.

And just as parents know how irrational juveniles can be, Ash said, they also know that rehabilitation is a key goal in punishing them.

"What we really want," he said, "is to turn delinquent kids into good adults." E-mail to a friend

Mom hopes incarcerated son will be freed

By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer
Sun Dec 9, 12:40 AM ET

Every month or so, Missy Phillips makes a four-hour drive to visit her son in prison, refusing to accept that his fate has been sealed — and he will die behind bars. Joshua, just 23, is serving a life-without-parole sentence in Florida for a ghastly crime — the bludgeoning and stabbing of his 8-year-old neighbor, Maddie Clifton. He's nearing the end of what could be the first of many decades behind bars.

But his mother doesn't see it that way.

"We talk in terms of when he gets out, not if," Phillips says. "I have to keep some semblance of hope for both of us. I don't know how it's going to happen. I do believe that someday he will walk out of there. I can't go the other way."

Joshua Phillips was just 14 in November 1998 when Maddie, who lived across the street in Jacksonville, disappeared. He joined in the massive search for her. Police were even at his house for routine questioning. About a week later, Missy Phillips made a horrifying discovery: She noticed a wet spot near her son's water bed, pulled aside the frame and saw Maddie's feet.

Police said Joshua Phillips confessed, claiming he beat Maddie with a bat and repeatedly stabbed her in a panic to stop her screams after he accidentally hit her with a baseball. Prosecutors cast doubt on that story.

Phillips says she has repeatedly begged her son for an explanation, but has never received one.

"I used to plead, 'Josh, I found Maddie in our home. I think I deserve to know what happened,' " she says. "He won't discuss it with me. I had to learn how to step back ... and say I may never know."

Phillips, now 52, had done her own soul-searching over the years.

"I think every mother who has a tragedy of this magnitude — certainly early on, you question yourself: Did I miss something? Did I do something wrong?" she says. "Every mother who loves her child feels a responsibility. ... He's told me more than once, 'It's not anything you did or didn't do.' "

A year after the murder, Phillips says she approached Maddie Clifton's mother and they have spoken several times. And when Phillips' husband, Steve, was killed in a car accident in 2000, the girl's mother, Sheila, visited to offer her condolences. "She's a kind person," Phillips says.

Phillips has remarried — she met her British husband after he read about her son's case on the Internet and she has taken his name, though she prefers not to make it public. She says she moved twice to stay anonymous as she presses for a new trial for her son, claiming his attorney was incompetent.

She maintains her son's sentence is excessive.

"They should have some alternative way of dealing with juveniles in serious situations so they don't get their lives thrown away," she says. "That's what the state says — my son's life is worthless. Just throw away the key."

State Attorney Harry Shorstein, who prosecuted Joshua as an adult, says his case — and those of other juvenile lifers — should be reviewed at some point and the possibility of release considered if appropriate.

Phillips tries to be upbeat, but admits her resolve sometimes wavers.

"I'm human," she says. "I have my moments, my worries and my doubts."

As much as her son dominates her thoughts, she says when she sees a little girl with her family, she is haunted by memories of Maddie Clifton.

"Of course, I'm mindful of Maddie not being here," she says. "As close as I am to this tragedy, I can't say I know their pain anymore than they know mine. .. I think of them a lot. I think of Maddie a lot. ... I'll carry this with me until I die."

Harsh crimes, hard time: when juveniles are sentenced to life without parole

EDITOR'S NOTE -- What does it mean to send a kid criminal away for life, and is it just? This is another in a series of stories on a growing effort to reform penalties against juvenile offenders.

By ADAM GELLER

AP National Writer

DETROIT (AP) -- It began as a feud only a child could invent -- teenage chest-thumping over who had the right to sneak across the golf course at Germania Town & Country Club after dark and scoop lost balls out of a pond.

But by the time it ended in the pre-dawn blackness of a long-ago June morning, that juvenile bravado had exploded into a crime whose horror defied adult comprehension.

Buried inside the charred skeleton of a Saginaw home, three children -- 7-year-old Isaac Rollie and his 9- and 11-year-old sisters -- lay dead. They perished at the hands of two local teens, who hurled pop-bottle firebombs through the windows of the house on Jordan Street so one could settle a petty score.

For taking three innocent lives, a judge decided, Michael Lee Perry had to pay. Perry was 16 at the time of the fire, but for an adult crime he'd have to do adult time -- and spend the rest of his life in prison, without any chance for parole.

That was 17 years ago. And today, when Perry rises and offers his hand to a visitor allowed inside the razor wire-topped brick of Detroit's Mound Correctional Facility, it is clear that prisoner No. 217645's claim on childhood has long since lapsed.

He stands 6-foot-2, graying at the temples, his hairline receding. No question, Perry is a man now.

He appeals, though, for the understanding he says the boy he once was still deserves.

"I was wrong. I took people's lives who didn't even have a chance to grow up and experience life. But, I mean, I didn't even experience life myself,'' says Perry, now 34. "I'm not saying a child should go unpunished. ... (But) it's like I'm just abandoned, discarded, left for nothing.''

Perry is far from alone.

At least 2,381 people are serving life without parole in U.S. prisons for crimes when they were 17 or younger. The vast majority are locked up because they took another life.

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that sentencing juveniles to death is unconstitutional, advocates have been nudging lawmakers, courts and the public to go one step further and re-examine the life sentences meted out to young people convicted of the most serious crimes.

If we believe that juveniles are intrinsically different from adults -- that their judgment is lacking, that they are capable of learning from mistakes -- then how can we justify locking them away forever?

It is a difficult question and a painful one to contemplate. Some of the crimes are horrific. Others seem downright senseless. The age of the perpetrators -- and often of their victims -- is enough to make any mother or father say a quiet prayer.

Then there is the fact that laws stringently tightened in recent years often give judges and juries little or no choice in weighing punishment. In many states, the severity of the crime, not the age of the accused, mandates trial and punishment as an adult.

Even when some measure of discretion is allowed, it can distort the choices.

When the time came to sentence Michael Perry, state law forced a judge to decide between widely disparate options. He could treat Perry as a juvenile, despite the seriousness of the crime, and see him released by 21. Or he could send him away forever.

"The only conclusion that I can reach,'' Judge Leopold Borrello told two grieving families gathered in the courtroom that day, "is that the law deprives me of doing justice.''

------=

Quantel Lotts was 14. He and his brothers were spending the weekend at a friend's house in St. Francois County, Mo., and Quantel and his stepbrother Michael Barton started fighting. Quantel chased Michael -- who was three years older -- with a bow and arrow before an adult stepped in. Not long after, while they snacked, one of the younger children noticed Quantel holding a knife and reported him to Michael.

"Let's take this outside,'' Michael told Quantel. In the yard, their shoving match ended in Michael's death.

Quantel says he turned down an offer to plead to second-degree murder just before his trial began. Found guilty, he was sentenced to life without parole.

Today, speaking by telephone from prison, Quantel Lotts will not talk about what happened that day. But he remembers clearly where it left him.

"They say my stepbrother's dead and they say I killed him,'' he says. "When I first got locked up, I spent the first six months crying to myself every night.''

------=

Americans are firm believers in stiff punishment. But U.S. courts long applied a more forgiving standard when the accused was a juvenile.

Then in the late 1980s and early 1990s, alarm over violent youth crime set off widespread fears. Tales of brutal carjackings and brazen gang warfare, of remorseless kids who killed just to know what it felt like, filled headlines.

Soon, experts warned, we would be at the mercy of legions of juvenile "superpredators.'' In state after state, lawmakers and prosecutors decided to get tough.

Many states began requiring that juveniles accused of first-degree murder be tried as adults. To show they meant business, lawmakers mandated stiffer punishments. If you were convicted of murder, no matter how old, you were going to do life.

The new mind-set resulted in swift change. In 1980, just two juveniles were sentenced to life without parole, the harshest punishment possible short of the death penalty. By 1996, 152 youth offenders were sent to prison for life, according to figures compiled by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Today, inmates in 39 states and the federal prisons are serving life without parole for crimes they committed as youngsters. Five states -- Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, Florida and California -- account for two-thirds of the cases documented by the two human rights groups, which are pushing for reform.

The tougher laws were applauded by prosecutors and victims' advocates as necessary tools to fight crime and protect the public.

"If they can do these kinds of crimes, then they've got to face the punishment,'' says Maggie Elvey, a California activist whose husband, Ross, was beaten to death in 1993 by two boys, ages 15 and 16.

"My theory is when Ross can walk the face of the Earth again, that's when you can get out,'' Elvey says.

But the sharp rise in juvenile violence that the new laws were meant to fight never came. Gradually, that has led some to question whether the tougher approach went too far.

"There were all kinds of predictions (of a sharp rise in juvenile violence). I think I even made a few. But that hasn't panned out,'' says Linda J. Collier, a dean at Delaware County Community College in Media, Pa., among those who called for stiffer juvenile sentences. "There are probably many cases where I'd say, 'Yes, lock them up and throw away the key.' But there are probably other cases where that kid, if you look into his eyes, if you look into his soul, you can say yes, they can be rehabilitated.''

But how to do that? Should life without parole be eliminated for all juvenile offenders or only for some of them? What should the alternative be?

The questions get harder when they are applied to real lives rather than abstracts.

Addolfo Davis was only 14, but he'd already known plenty of trouble -- the child of a crack addict, he'd been arrested for shoplifting, robbery and other offenses starting when he was 10. His grandmother rejected a child welfare agency's recommendation that he be removed from her home, then watched as he beat his own head until it bled and burned himself with cigarettes.

Then, in October 1990, Davis joined two other teens -- one 16, the other 18 -- in something far worse. Angered because of a dispute over drug-sales territory, they set out to even a score. The trio, all carrying guns, headed to the third-floor apartment of a rival, and when it opened, pushed inside.

Davis didn't get far. One of the men inside knocked his gun away immediately and ran. But Davis' companions began shooting, killing two of those inside and wounding two others.

After he was arrested, Davis was transferred to adult court, in part because of his prior record. When he was convicted of murder -- found accountable although he hadn't fired a shot -- the law made it clear he would be sentenced to life. Today, he is 31.

"Gun towers, bars, walls, lock downs, hand cuffs, visits, letters, collect calls,'' he wrote for an assignment in a prison ministry class two years ago. "This is all I know.''

------=

On a Sunday night in 1994, the kitchen staff at Bistro Pete's was too busy to notice the restaurant's back door had been left unlocked. Suddenly, two masked figures barged into the suburban Sacramento eatery. They waved guns, and barked orders. Moments later, kitchen manager David Lamburth lay dying.

Police arrested three 17-year-olds. The shot that killed Lamburth, they said, was fired by Dwayne "Tommy'' DeLuna. At trial, DeLuna acknowledged his role but claimed the shooting was an accident.

"Show some mercy. Consider his age. I know what's in his heart,'' DeLuna's mother pleaded with the judge, after he was found guilty. "He is a good kid.''

But the victim's mother begged to differ. "He's dead. You did it. When you shot my kid, Tommy, you shot me, too.''

In weighing punishment, a judge told DeLuna the legal system had already shown mercy. If he'd been a few months older at the time of the shooting, he could've faced execution. Instead, with five months left in his childhood in the eyes of the law, he was sentenced to life without parole.

------=

Sending juveniles to prison for life raises a host of tough questions. Colorado tangled with them last year when lawmakers made juvenile lifers eligible for parole after 40 years and the governor established a special clemency board to look at those already in prison. Legislators in Illinois and California have introduced bills calling for change.

Now, Michigan -- where 306 inmates are serving life for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger -- could be the next to face those questions.

At least that is the hope of Deborah LaBelle, an Ann Arbor attorney pushing for reform. She lambastes the inconsistencies of a legal system that deems people too immature to vote or drink alcohol or serve on juries, but says they are old enough to be held accountable as adults for their crimes. Worse, she says, is that mandating life sentences forces courts to treat all youth convicted of murder the same.

"Aren't there kids who have done horrible things? Yes. But then you have to grant that aren't there kids who didn't, who just made a horrible decision,'' she says. "Shouldn't we individualize them? Aren't they at least entitled to that?''

LaBelle's files are filled with dozens of such stories.

Some echo the "poster child'' cases highlighted by advocates -- tales of teens who, at least in the retelling, are guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Often, they acted as accomplices but didn't pull the trigger, or committed crimes at the behest of someone older.

But the debate is crystallized in the cases that force hard choices -- harsh sentences vs. harsh crimes.

They are stories like Trevor Brownlee's, who admonishes himself -- 18 years too late -- for his days as a teenage drug dealer on the streets of Ypsilanti. In 1989, when Brownlee was 15, he and two friends set out for a party. Local gangs were feuding. Underneath his trenchcoat, Brownlee carried a sawed-off shotgun.

It wasn't long before Brownlee's group ran into teens they'd never seen before, in from Detroit. Soon, they started trading words over turf. The confrontation seemed to fizzle. Then, Brownlee's friend shouted an alarm: Was one of the out-of-towners reaching for a gun?

Brownlee didn't wait to find out. He fired into the Detroit teens' car, then shot one in the torso, another in the leg. The first was killed. The second was paralyzed from the waist down.

Today, Brownlee wears No. 211016 on the state blues issued to prisoners at Riverside Correctional Facility in Ionia, where he is serving life. The sentence has given him plenty of time to think about that night. What troubles him goes beyond knowledge that he killed someone. It's that, in his words, the crime was "about nothing.''

"It wasn't until I was 25 that I actually sat down and realized the full extent of what I did,'' says Brownlee, now 33. "Man, I was an idiot. That's the best way to describe it.''

Brownlee and others like him hope Michigan lawmakers see that they can learn and change, that they are worthy of a second chance. But backers of life without parole sharply disagree.

They're people like Michael Thomas, the prosecutor in Saginaw, whose strong support for juvenile life sentences is based on personal experience. Years of violent juvenile crime have defiled his hometown, making clear the need to protect the public and see that justice is done, he says.

"I think most people sitting on a jury, most people with houses in your neighborhood, pretty much understand that they (juveniles accused of heinous crimes) are the worst of the worst and that the penalty does fit the crime,'' he says.

------=

On the day Michael Lee Perry was sentenced for the Saginaw firebombing, the judge sought a middle ground that did not exist.

Instead, he sentenced Perry to life, while recommending that after 20 years a Michigan governor consider him for a reprieve, commutation or pardon.

Perry is already preparing his petition for freedom.

"When I go see Michael he gives me hope that everything will be better when he comes home,'' his mother, Maria Chavira, says.

But Perry recognizes that political calculus makes exoneration rare. Even as he reassures his mother, he tries to makes peace with the possibility that will never happen.

"If I do (spend) my life within these walls and fences, I'll accept my punishment,'' he wrote the judge two years ago, in a letter intended for the family of his victims, "and do it in the memory of the pain, suffering, heartaches and deaths I helped cause.''

"I will never forget.''

AP-ES-12-08-07 1215EST

Scientists say teen brain, still maturing, is key to understanding behavior

Scans show that the brain doesn't mature until age 25; increasingly, courts are considering such findings as they decide what punishments fit teen crime.

By Malcolm Ritter
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, December 09, 2007

NEW YORK — The teenage brain, Laurence Steinberg says, is like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.

And, perhaps, a crime.

Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor, helped draft an American Psychological Association brief for a 2005 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.

That ruling relies on the most recent research on the adolescent brain, which indicates the juvenile brain is still maturing in the teen years and reasoning and judgment are developing well into the early to mid-20s. It is often cited as state lawmakers consider scaling back punitive juvenile justice laws passed during the 1990s.

"As any parent knows," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, youths are more likely to show "a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility" than adults. " These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions."

He also noted that "juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure," causing them to have less control over their environment.

Some child advocates have pointed to the Supreme Court decision and the research as evidence that teens — even those accused of serious crimes — should not be regarded in the same way as adults in the criminal justice system.

Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine who has testified before legislative committees on brain development, says the research doesn't absolve teens but offers some explanation for their behavior.

"It doesn't mean adolescents can't make a rational decision or appreciate the difference between right and wrong," he said. "It does mean, particularly when confronted with stressful or emotional decisions, they are more likely to act impulsively, on instinct, without fully understanding or analyzing the consequences of their actions."

Experts say that even at ages 16 and 17, when compared to adults, juveniles on average are more impulsive, aggressive, emotionally volatile, reactive to stress and vulnerable to peer pressure. They also are more prone to focus on and overestimate short-term payoffs and underplay longer-term consequences of what they do. And they're more likely to overlook alternative courses of action.

Violence toward others also tends to peak in adolescent years, says psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ash of Emory University. It's mostly likely to start about age 16, and people who haven't committed a violent crime by age 19 only rarely start doing it later, he said.

The good news, he said, is that a violent adolescent doesn't necessarily become a violent adult. About two-thirds to three-quarters of violent youth grow out of it, Ash said. "They get more self-controlled."

Some of the changes found in behavioral studies are paralleled by changes in the brain itself as youths become adults. In fact, in just the past few years, Steinberg said, brain scans have given biological backing to common-sense notions about teen behavior.

It's one thing to say teens don't control their impulses as well as adults, but another to show that they can't, he said. As for peer pressure, the new brain research "gives credence to the idea that this isn't a choice that kids are making to give in to their friends — that biologically, they're more vulnerable to that," he said.

Consider the lobes at the front of the brain. The nerve circuitry there ties together inputs from other parts of the brain, said Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health.

This circuitry weighs how much priority to give incoming messages such as "Do this now" versus "Wait! What about the consequences?" In short, the frontal lobes are key for making good decisions and controlling impulses.

Brain scans show that the frontal lobes don't mature until age 25, and their connections to other parts of the brain continue to improve until at least that age, Giedd said.

The inexplicable behavior and poor judgments teens are known for almost always happen when teens are feeling powerful emotions or intense peer pressure, conditions that overwhelm the still-maturing circuitry in the front part of brain, Giedd said.

Giedd emphasized that scientists can't yet scan an individual's brain and draw conclusions about how mature he is, or the degree of responsibility he takes for his actions.

Brain scans do show group differences between adult and teen brains, he said, "but whether or not that should matter (in the courtroom) is the part that needs to be decided more by the judicial system than the neuroscientist."

There's nothing particularly magic about age 18 as a standard dividing line between juveniles and adults in the courtroom. Different mental capabilities mature at different rates, Steinberg notes. Teens as young as 15 or 16 can generally balance short-term rewards and possible costs as well as adults, but their ability to consider what might happen later on is still developing, he said.

A dividing line of age 18 is better than 15 and not necessarily superior to 19 or 17, but it appears good enough to be justified scientifically, he said.

Steinberg said he thinks courts should be able to punish some 16- or 17-year olds as adults. That would be reserved for repeat violent offenders who have resisted rehabilitation by the juvenile justice system and who could endanger other youths in the juvenile system if they returned. "I don't think there are a lot of these kids," Steinberg said.

For the rest, he says it makes sense to try rehabilitating young offenders in the juvenile justice system. That's better than sending them through the adult system, which can disrupt their development so severely that "they're never going be able to be a productive member of society," Steinberg said. "You're not doing society any favor at all."

Most experts conclude that rehabilitation works better for juveniles than for adult offenders, Ash said. And just as parents know how irrational juveniles can be, he said, they also know that rehabilitation is a key goal in punishing them.

"What we really want," he said, "is to turn delinquent kids into good adults."

Additional material from Associated Press writer Sharon Cohen.

Sentence Upheld for Fla. Child Killer

By BRIAN SKOLOFF Associated Press Writer

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) _ An appeals court has upheld a 30-year probation violation sentence for Lionel Tate, who for a time was the youngest person to be sentenced to life in a U.S. prison.

Wednesday’s ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal sets the stage for Tate’s trial on robbery charges that could carry another life term.

Tate, 20, had sought to have the sentence thrown out based on procedural mistakes, his attorney, Jim Lewis, said Thursday.

Tate was 12 at the time of the 1999 beating death of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick and became the youngest person in modern U.S. history to receive a life sentence. His lawyers initially claimed Tate killed the girl while imitating pro wrestling moves.

An appeals court overturned his first-degree murder conviction in 2004 after determining it wasn’t clear whether Tate understood the charges against him. He was freed from prison under a deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

But in May 2005, police said he robbed a pizza delivery man, and he was found to be in possession of a gun even before that, a violation of his probation.

Tate initially pleaded guilty to the robbery and unrelated gun possession charge in return for a sentence of 10 to 30 years. Against the advice of his lawyers, he withdrew the plea in the robbery case but not the gun charge, and was sentenced to 30 years.

Tate’s new attorneys said they plan to file another appeal of his probation violation sentence based on ineffective counsel.

”We’re disappointed, but it’s not the end,” Lewis said.

Prosecutors declined to comment.

No date has been set for the robbery trial.

It's all terrible. All of it.

Yes, once the media gets a-hold of a case it makes things worse. Josh's case was a house-hold name as well. Virtually all of our family and friends found out what happened to him on CNN the night he was arrested. Local media was HORRENDOUS. The notoriety only makes things harder. But of course, it's a toss-up; who's to say the kids whose cases are not blasted all over television and print media are any better off? They get left languishing all alone.

It's all terrible. All of it. My husband is English and he is absolutely appalled at what this "free" USA does to its children; it's unheard of in England to throw children away as unsalvageable. NO CHILD gets such a sentence as LWOP in Great Britain.

Missy

There are thousands of Lionels out there

Well said, Jeff.
Unfortunately this happens everywhere, not only in Florida.
Children as young as 9 and 10 are being targeted by police,
put through the juvenile system
and when they are old enough to be prosecuted as adults they are treated the same as Lionel.

The only difference is that Lionel's original case was so unusual
that he became a household word.

There are thousands of Lionels out there, some barely able to walk
waiting to become "juvenile justice's" next statistic.

Katie

The Florida judicial system is weighted in favor of abusing children

What happened to Lionel Tate is very simple. This is Florida. He was a child convicted of murder as an adult for childs play. The Florida judicial system is weighted in favor of abusing children and wonders why juvenile justice doesn't work.

Lionel was found to have been a victim of injustice and was released on a court ordered parole. On his return home, the Sheriff's Department Police made clear their unhappiness that a murderer had been released to the community. Lionel gravitated to the kind of people that he had become accustomed to through his adolescence in an adult prison. The police watched him. There were no warnings. His mother wasn't told. The police and parole made no effort at intervention. Instead, they watched and waited. They set-up a sting and they arrested Lionel with a bunch of petty dealers. The Sheriff's Department actually announced through police statements to the press that they had been right about Lionel and that he is where he belongs. Where else but in Florida can children expect to get personal police attention.

That's what happened to Lionel and to almost anyone else who ever got a major crime conviction overturned in Florida. The Boogie Man's gonna get you. The Boogie Man got Lionel.

Jeff

Attorney: Boy recants statement that Lionel Tate robbed man

CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press

Thursday, June 23, 2005

FORT LAUDERDALE — A 13-year-old boy has recanted his statement to police that Lionel Tate, once the youngest American in modern history sentenced to life in prison, robbed a pizza delivery man at gunpoint, Tate's lawyer said Wednesday.
The boy, Taquincy Tomkins, now says that a 16-year-old identified only as "Willie" committed the crime and that he initially fingered Tate out of fear of retribution and because of intense police pressure.

Attorney James Lewis said Broward County sheriff's investigators "targeted Lionel Tate from the very beginning and tried to make the pieces fit. We think we have now cracked this case."

A judge has scheduled a hearing Thursday on whether Tate, 18, should be released on bond pending another hearing on Aug. 8 to determine if his probation should be revoked because of the pizza robbery. The criminal charges could mean Tate violated his probation — and result in a possible life prison sentence — stemming from his conviction in the 1999 killing of family friend Tiffany Eunick, 6.

Tate, who was 12 when the girl was killed, made headlines around the world when he was originally sentenced to life in prison for the crime, but his conviction and sentence were overturned on appeal. Tate had originally contended that he accidentally killed Tiffany while imitating TV wrestling moves.

Broward sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal said that new physical evidence linking Tate to the May 23 crime will be presented at the hearing Thursday and that the delivery man, Walter Gallardo, has not wavered in identifying Tate as the culprit.

"We are confident in our case and we believe that Lionel Tate was responsible for the armed robbery," Leljedal said.

Private investigator Joe Carrillo said he interviewed Tomkins and his mother, Kenya Miller, for several hours Sunday at their apartment in Pembroke Park where the crime occurred. In that interview, Tomkins said his sworn, videotaped statement to police blaming Tate for the robbery was incorrect.

"I said that it was Lionel that did it ... 'cause Willie had said that he was going to kill me,'" Tomkins said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by Lewis.

Tomkins said that investigators were "threatening me" and repeatedly asked "Was it Lionel? Was it Lionel?" and telling him that if he wasn't honest about what happened "I would be in jail and I can't see my family for the rest of my life."

Lewis would not further identify "Willie," other than to say he lived in the same apartment complex where the crime occurred and that he moved away three days later. Carrillo said he has spoken with Willie and if he could find him, so could detectives.

In both statements, Tomkins said that Tate used the telephone in his apartment to order four pies from Domino's Pizza. In his new statement, Tomkins said that it was Willie, and not Tate, who came back, barged through the apartment door and confronted the delivery man with a gun after the pizzas arrived.

The gun used in the robbery has not been found, but three handguns were missing from the home Tate shared with his mother, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper.

Lewis said that Willie is taller and lighter-skinned than Tate, wore his hair in braided corn rows and had on different clothes than Tate that day. Lewis also questioned whether Gallardo could make a positive identification since the robber was wearing a cloth to mask part of his face.

Lewis said that Tate "is hopeful he will be cleared. He's hoping that justice is going to work for him."

© 2007 Naples Daily News and NDN Productions. Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps Co.

Judge Delays Robbery Trial for Lionel Tate

By KELLI KENNEDY
The Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE - The robbery trial of Lionel Tate, once sentenced to life in prison for killing a girl when he was 12, was delayed several months Monday after defense lawyers said they have evidence that proves Tate did not hold up a pizza delivery man.

Tate lawyer Jim Lewis said DNA taken from the mask allegedly used in the 2005 robbery belongs to another man. A new witness also claims Tate never committed the robbery and never carried the gun, Lewis said.

"There's great doubt to how and who committed this robbery," Lewis said.

The trial had been set to begin Monday, but the judge rescheduled it for Sept. 4 at the request of the defense and prosecutors.

Tate initially pleaded guilty to robbery and gun possession in the holdup in return for a sentence of between 10 and 30 years. He withdrew the plea in the robbery but was sentenced to 30 years on the gun charge.

Lewis asked the judge to overturn the gun possession charge, claiming that Tate's former lawyer was incompetent.

Tate, 20, refused a plea deal that would have given him a 30-year total sentence for both charges in the holdup. A conviction on the robbery charges could add a life sentence to his existing sentence.

Prosecutor Chuck Morton declined to comment on the case.

Tate was convicted in the 1999 murder of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick, and became the youngest person in modern U.S. history to get a life prison term before an appeals court intervened. Lawyers initially claimed that Tiffany, who suffered skull fractures and a lacerated liver, was accidentally killed when Tate, then 12, imitated pro wrestling moves he'd seen on television.

Tate said little in Monday's brief hearing except to answer the judge's questions.

A 12-year-old neighbor said that he allowed Tate, then 18, to use the telephone in his apartment to call for a pizza delivery. Tate then left, but later returned, forcing his way inside, authorities said.

The Domino's delivery man, Walter E. Gallardo, told police the door was open when he arrived at the apartment with four pizzas. As he entered, he saw someone with a gun that appeared to be a .38-caliber revolver.

Gallardo told detectives he "threw the pizzas and fled out the door," was chased by the gunman and fell. The delivery man returned to the apartment complex with sheriff's deputies, saw Tate in the area and identified him as the suspect, police said. No gun was recovered.

The neighbor also identified the suspect as Tate, but later said a man identified only as "Willie" did it.

Contacts for media interested in an update on Lionel Tate`s case

For Media contact:

JOE CARRILLO
CARRILLO INVESTIGATIVE CONSULTING LLC
3191 CORAL WAY
SUITE 115
MIAMI, FL. 33145
TEL. 305-567-0099
FAX. 305-567-1833


or


Denise Marhoefer
The Defense Foundation For Children USA
defensefoundation@gmail.com
The Juvenile Defender
voicemail 765.381.1112

Whodunit

Whodunit

Great Tate Debate

As told to Ed Newton

Published: August 2, 2007

• Pilar Newton

For two years now, Tailpipe has been hearing rumors about an alleged miscarriage of justice in the arrest of Lionel Tate for the armed robbery of a pizza delivery man in 2005. Tailpipe has heard the rumors and, until now, dismissed them. You remember Tate, that walking train wreck of a youth who made headlines around the world in 1999 when he was 12, killing a 6-year-old girl while demonstrating some wrestling moves on her. That led to his dubious distinction as the youngest person in U.S. history to receive a life sentence.

He evaded hard time with an appeal (in a subsequent plea deal, he got a year's house arrest followed by ten years' probation), but the teenager couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. In September 2004, police took him into custody after finding him away from home at 2 a.m. carrying an eight-inch knife. The result: another five years of probation. Nine months later, Tate was busted for the pizza stickup.

According to Tate's arrest report, Walter Gallardo was delivering pizzas to unit 208 at 3871 SW 52nd Ave. in Pembroke Park on May 23, 2005. There was no answer at the second-floor apartment, and Gallardo turned around to leave down the flight of stairs when he heard someone yell "Hey!" He walked back up and saw unit 208's door ajar. He walked in. Behind the door, Gallardo told BSO detectives, was a black man with a black handkerchief or bandanna covering his mouth and pointing an "old handgun" at the pizza deliverer. Gallardo fled, screaming for help. Later that evening, while sitting in the back seat of a squad car, Gallardo identified Tate.

A bum rap? Yeah, yeah. The perpetrator had a partially covered face, so how could the victim be so sure it was Tate? And a black handkerchief allegedly used in the crime showed traces of DNA from the prime witness against Tate. But the kid has seemed so determined to turn his life into a lethal smashup that it's hard to believe anything good about him. If convicted of the armed robbery and armed burglary charges, the now-20-year-old inmate, who's being held at the Everglades Correctional Institute, could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Private investigator Joe Carrillo is a tall, energetic, 51-year-old, Miami-based private eye whose sleuthing skills helped the Miami Police Department nab rapist Reynaldo Rapalo in 2004. Carrillo and former FBI agent Bob Whiting have been on Tate's side since his last arrest. Carrillo and Whiting say the Broward Sheriff's Office and Assistant State Attorney Charles Morton conducted an overzealous, sloppy investigation.

"They wanted the headlines," Whiting says, "because when Lionel Tate robs the pizza man, it becomes an international story. The prosecutor and the detectives working this case did not conduct themselves professionally. They took the easy way out."

Maybe so, but what about the evidence? Didn't Tate admit to calling Domino's Pizza to place the order Gallardo was delivering? And didn't the cops retrieve a text message that Tate sent to an associate to ask about robbing someone that same day? ("U still want to bust that lick after school?" Tate allegedly messaged Willie Corouthers, meaning: Did the other youth want to participate in a robbery?)

But Carrillo and Whiting say there's strong evidence now to implicate Corouthers, who lived next door to the building where the holdup took place. Corouthers' account of the robbery (he was standing at the bottom of the stairs, he says, as Gallardo fled) doesn't jibe with the victim's account, they say. And Corouthers' DNA showed up on the handkerchief, they claim. They've also turned up two new defense witnesses: a 12-year-old boy, who initially fingered Tate but then alleged that it was Corouthers who committed the robbery, and a man who says he saw Corouthers in possession of a pair of maroon shorts on the night of the robbery. The shorts were eventually identified as having been worn by the perpetrator.

When Carrillo and Whiting informed Morton, the prosecutor, of the new evidence, he did nothing, Whiting says. "He doesn't want to hear anything that would exonerate Lionel and put the onus on Willie," he says.

In Tailpipe's view, the new evidence doesn't exactly give Tate the slam dunk he needs. Law enforcement officials have responded with icy skepticism. For the record, Morton couldn't be reached for comment, but Broward Sheriff's spokesman Eliott Cohen briskly dismissed the two private eyes' charges. "I'd expect nothing less from two people who are working for the person they are trying to exonerate," Cohen said. "The court record is extensive and pretty clear" that Tate mugged the pizza man.

But the DNA evidence has been thought-provoking enough for Tate's current lawyer, Jim Lewis, to get a postponement of Tate's trial, which had been set for this past April. Judge Joel Lazarus agreed to push back the hearing until September. Maybe then the troubled young man will get past the lurid headlines and receive the fair trial he deserves.

New evidence in the notorious bad boy's latest crime

Free Lionel Tate

New evidence in the notorious bad boy's latest crime

By Francisco Alvarado

Published: August 2, 2007

• Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel/KRT

  http://media.miaminewtimes.com/1070806.0.jpg
  

  Lionel Tate and his attorney, Ellis Rubin, in 2006

Subject(s): Lionel Tate, Domino's Pizza delivery man

For the past two years, two months, and ten days, out on the western fringes of Miami-Dade County, Lionel Tate has been sitting inside a prison cell at the Everglades Correctional Institute for a crime he almost certainly didn't commit.

In fact two South Florida private investigators allege DNA evidence — as well as two new victim statements — prove Tate likely didn't rob, at gunpoint, Domino's Pizza delivery man Walter Gallardo inside a Pembroke Park apartment May 23, 2005.

"The Broward State Attorney's Office knows they got the wrong guy, but they are not going to do anything about it," hisses 51-year-old Miami private eye Joe Carrillo. "And it stinks."

Carrillo is a tall, boisterous man whose sleuthing skills helped Miami Police Department nab the Shenandoah Rapist, Reynaldo Rapalo, in 2004. He and former FBI agent Bob Whiting have been working without pay on Tate's case for almost two years.

You might remember Tate. He was 12 years old back in 1999 when he was accused of battering to death six-year-old playmate Tiffany Eunick. Two years later, Tate was tried and convicted of Eunick's first-degree murder. His trial lawyers unsuccessfully argued that Tate had been imitating wrestling moves and that the girl's death was an accident.

Two years after Eunick's death, Tate became the youngest person in U.S. history to receive a life sentence without parole. But an appeals court reversed the conviction in 2003, and he was freed a year later. He avoided a retrial by pleading guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for one year's house arrest followed by ten years' probation.

Then in September 2004 police found him a few blocks from his house at 2:00 a.m. carrying an eight-inch knife. Broward Circuit Court Judge Joel Lazarus tacked another five years onto Tate's probation.

Nine months later, Tate was busted for the pizza stickup. And because of his past problems, this one really could put him away for life.

Here's what happened, according to Tate's arrest report. Gallardo was delivering the pies about 4:20 p.m. to unit 208 at 3871 SW 52nd Ave. in Pembroke Park (just north of the Miami-Dade County line in Broward). Initially there was no answer at the second-floor apartment, so Gallardo turned around to leave.

Then the delivery man heard someone yell "Hey!" while he was descending the stairs. He walked back up, saw unit 208's door slightly ajar, and walked in. Behind the door, Gallardo told BSO detectives, was a black man with a black bandanna covering his mouth and pointing an "old handgun" at him. Later that evening, Gallardo identified Tate.

Since then Tate has been incarcerated without bond and has cycled through three defense lawyers, including the late Ellis Rubin.

At first it seemed the evidence against Tate — who's now 20 years old — was strong. He admitted calling Domino's to order the pizzas. And when police searched the apartment of a onetime neighborhood chum, Willie Corouthers, they found a pair of maroon shorts Gallardo claimed the assailant wore; they contained traces of Tate's DNA. He even accepted a plea deal but then changed his mind.

Indeed the two private eyes have uncovered evidence that should lead cops to further probe the role of Corouthers, who was 16 years old at the time of the pizza caper and lived on the first floor of the building where the crime took place. Despite several calls to a cell phone listed in public records and three visits to his last known address in Miramar, New Times could not reach Corouthers for comment.

An aspiring rapper who goes by the handle "Little Will," Corouthers met Tate through mutual friends sometime in late 2004, according to a sworn statement Corouthers gave prosecutors in September 2005. "Some days I would see him walking to school," Corouthers said. "But I never said anything to him until he started coming around where I live."

On the day of the robbery, Tate sent Corouthers a text message: "U still want to bust that lick after school?" In the statement, Corouthers explained that "bust that lick" is slang for robbery and that Tate was referring to stealing from an unidentified Hollywood teenager who carried around a lot of money. But it never happened. "That was all talk," Corouthers added.

Corouthers claimed he was on the sidewalk outside the apartment building when Gallardo drove up. "Lionel was at the top of the staircase," Corouthers told the attorneys. "He said, 'I ordered the pizza, sir.' Lionel goes into the house, and the pizza man is like right behind him." A couple of seconds later, Corouthers said, he heard Gallardo scream and saw Lionel waving a gun at the man. "The man falls, boom, and then either he fell down the stairs or he ran," Corouthers said. "He's screaming help, help, help."

That doesn't jibe with Gallardo's account. The pizza man said he didn't see anyone before knocking on unit 208. And Corouthers, whose fingerprints were found on one of the pizza boxes, didn't mention the black bandanna, which should have been obvious.

Enter Tuquincy Thompkins, who was 12 years old and lived in the apartment where the robbery took place. Initially Thompkins told BSO detectives he saw Tate rob Gallardo. Two months after the robbery, though, Thompkins recanted his story to private eye Carrillo.

During an October 11, 2005 sworn deposition, Thompkins claimed Tate wasn't there. When the pizza man entered the apartment, Corouthers was standing by the front door with a gun tucked under his waistband. "I saw him take it out," Thompkins stated. "And that's when I ran in [my mom's] room, and that's when I heard a scream." Asked by Tate's defense attorney why he didn't identify Corouthers from the beginning, Thompkins replied, "Because I was scared, and he said he was going to kill me."

Then there's the story told by Zawalski Edwards, a convicted felon who called Tate's defense team from jail. The two private eyes say Edwards was in Corouthers's apartment the night of the robbery; he claimed he saw Corouthers wearing the maroon shorts and then putting them "on top of the cabinet ... where the cops found it," Carrillo says.

Edwards has nothing to gain by implicating Corouthers, Whiting adds. "We are not law enforcement, so it's not like we can offer him anything," he says. "There was absolutely no benefit for him."

And this past February 9, a forensic case report by Virginia-based Bode Technology Group turned up significant traces of Corouthers's DNA on the black bandanna police say was used in the armed robbery.

Based on the new DNA evidence, Judge Lazarus agreed to delay the trial, which had been set for April. The next hearing will be held in September.

It's time for prosecutors to drop the case against Tate, the private eyes say. They have told Assistant Broward State Attorney Charles Morton about the exculpatory evidence, but "he doesn't want to hear anything that would exonerate Lionel."

Morton didn't return calls seeking comment. But Broward Sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen dismisses the private eyes' charges. "I'd expect nothing less from two people who are working for the person they are trying to exonerate," Cohen says. "The court record is extensive and pretty clear."

Apr 16, 2007 10:36 am US/Eastern

Lionel Tate Trial Re-Scheduled For Fall

(CBS4) FT. LAUDERDALE Convicted child killer Lionel Tate will have to wait until fall for his robbery trial.

Jury selection for the trial was expected to begin Monday, but the judge in the case has continued it until the first week in September.

The continuance was granted when Tate�s attorney, Jim Lewis, said that they received contradictory DNA results from evidence last week, prompting them to file an appeal with the 4th District Court. He also said a new witness has come forward to claim that Tate never committed the robbery and never carried the gun.

Tate is accused of robbing a pizza delivery man with a gun in 2005. If he�s convicted, it could add a life sentence onto his current 30 year sentence, which he received for violating his probation after he was caught with a gun.

Last week, Tate�s lawyers moved to have his 30-year probation sentence vacated by claiming one of his former attorneys, Ellis Rubin, was incompetent.

Tate's current attorney Jim Lewis said it's troubling that Rubin allowed Tate to refuse a plea deal which would have given him a 30-year total sentence for both the robbery and gun possession charges.

In 2001, Tate was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 6-year-old playmate Tiffany Eunick. In 2004, an appeals court overturned that sentence, and ordered him to serve a year�s house arrest and 10 years probation.

Before the appeals court intervened, Tate was the youngest person in modern U.S. history to get a life prison term.

Lewis has also filed a change of venue motion for Tate�s robbery trial. He says it will be difficult to find a jury who hasn't heard about the troubled teen because of the extensive media coverage.

Jury selection will resume on September 3rd.

Youth Who Killed at 12 Gets 30 Years for Violating Probation

Youth Who Killed at 12 Gets 30 Years for Violating Probation

May 19, 2006, Friday

By TERRY AGUAYO (NYT); National Desk

Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 21, Column 1, 369 words

DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Lionel Tate, who was sentenced to life in prison in Florida five years ago for stomping playmate to death when he was 12, is sentenced to 30 years in prison for violating probation; Judge Joel T Lazarus, who refused to accept Tate's request to withdraw guilty plea to that charge, does accept his request to withdraw guilty plea to charge of robbing pizza deliveryman at gunpoint

Sentencing Children As Adults

Sentencing Children As Adults An Article By Terence T. Gorski (03-11-01) Should children be tried in adult courts and sentenced to adult prisons? Gorski doesn't believe that they should. This article explains why.
Should children and adolescents who have not reached legal age be sentenced as adults when they commit serious crimes such as murder. It is my position that they should not. Here’s why. According to Amnesty International, a human rights watch dog organization, the United States is the only western democracy that sends youthful offenders to adult court and sentences them to adult prisons. According to amnesty international the imprisonment of youthful offenders in adult prisons violates United States international treaty obligations prohibiting cruel and inhumane treatment of children and adolescents. Is this an unwarranted or extreme position to take? I don’t believe that it is. Most youthful offenders will be physically and/or sexually assaulted within seventy-two hours of admission to adult correctional facilities. Such abuse will continue to occur on a regular basis for the duration of their incarceration. The effects of this abuse are horrific and include suicides, suicide attempts, severe personality damage, and the development of severe and permanent psychiatric symptoms. These effects make youthful offenders sentenced as adults more dangerous, not less. Our willing to do this to our children sends a strong message that the level of moral development of elected officials, judges, prosecutors and the general public is rapidly and dangerously declining. We need to ask ourselves an important question: Are we the kind of people who are capable of inflicting cruel and inhumane punishment upon our children and adolescents? As a nation, we answered that question decades ago with an emphatic no. At that time we recognized that most kids deserve a second chance and can turn their lives around with proper no-nonsense treatment in rehabilitation oriented juvenile correction centers. We backed up our answer up by developing a Juvenile Justice System that protects kids from cruel and inhumane punishment while providing rehabilitation, and teaching the skills necessary to become a productive member of society. We did all this because it’s the right thing to do. We did it because to do less would have been beneath us as one of the most moral nations in the civilized world. We built our Juvenile Justice System around three critical principles: 1. It is wrong to hold children and adolescents who have not reached legal age to adult standards. They are developmentally immature and often unclear about the nature of right and wrong and without proper adult supervision can have problems with judgment and impulse control causing them to act out impulsively without forethought; 2. With appropriate treatment most children who commit crimes, even the most violent crimes, can be rehabilitated and become responsible adults; and 3. A moral society feels obligated to give kids a second chance whenever possible by having a Juvenile Justice System designed to help kids change rather than punish them for past offenses. Our Juvenile justice system is based upon the recognition that moral societies value their children and seek to help rather than hurt, treat rather than punish, and rehabilitate rather than destroy. Not all youthful offenders can be rehabilitated. Some pose a real and present danger and need to be segregated from society. The period of confinement, however, should be designed to give youthful offenders a chance to learn, grow, and change. If long-term protective segregation is required, it should be done in adolescent correctional facilities which protect the children from harm. It is important to remember that punishment does not work. The threat of punishment is an ineffective deterrent to crime, especially for children and adolescents. Punishment is a failed a strategy for changing behavior, teaching new skills, or developing new and more positive attitudes and beliefs. The only justification for inflicting harsh punishment is to deliver vengeance in accord with the old testament standard of an eye-for-an-eye. Loved ones of victims may feel justified in crying out for vengeance. The result is tragic. Vengeance does not relieve the grief and loss. It also instills a sense of inner conflict and guilt. On a deep level most human beings intuitively know that vengeance breeds more vengeance and violence breeds more violence. When people mature to higher levels of moral development they recognize the obligation to break the cycle of vengeance and retribution. Look at the pictures of the two children below. Both are victims. One is a victim of lethal violence inflicted by a twelve year old playmate. The other is a victim of a legal system that is rapidly declining into old testament morality or retribution.
Lionel Tate, 14, cried Friday after being sentenced for the 1999 beating death of Tiffany Eunick, 6. The judge said the act was "cold, callous and indescribably cruel."	Tiffany Eunick, young girl beaten to death by 14 year old Lionel Tate.
Tiffany Eunick, age 6, was the victim of violence perpetrated by an unsupervised twelve year old, Lionel Tate. Lionel thought he was playing when he emulated the moves and tactics of the professional wrestlers who were his heroes and role models. He watched professional wrestling week after week. He witnessed hundreds if not thousands of savagely brutal acts perpetrated by professionally wrestlers assuming the persona’s of theatrical psychopaths. He watched as they savagely body slammed, knee-dropped, and kicked each other. In his immaturity, he couldn’t see that it was all a show. He had inadequate adult supervision. There was no one to point out the dangerousness and immorality of the violent displays he was witnessing. There was no adult present to impress upon his immature mind the dangerous of using such savage tactics on others. Lionel, an immature 12 year old, assumed he could do to other kids what these heroic wrestlers did to each other. He assumed the outcome would be the same – no one would really get hurt. Tragically, the showmanship of professional wrestlers can become lethal when inflicted by one child upon another. Thinking he was playing, Lionel body-slammed, head kicked, and knee dropped Tiffany. It was over quickly. Lionel was shocked and traumatized to see that he killed Tiffany. Is Lionel a hopeless psychopath who should be locked away for the rest of his life? He doesn’t appear to be. Will throwing away Lionel’s life bring back Tiffany or sooth the grief of her parents and friends? Probably not. Will Lionel be helped to become a better person as a result of his life-long imprisonment? Definitely not. He will be physically and sexually abused and psychiatrically damaged in deep and profound ways by his prison experiences. There is a strong possibility he will attempt suicide to try and escape the torturous consequences of his imprisonment. So why are we as a nation allowing this to happen? Part of the reason is because our adolescent treatment professionals, the experts trained and educated to know better, are standing silently on the sidelines. The clinical professionals who are obligated to advocate for our youth and to protect our juvenile justice system from destruction have failed to act decisively and effectively. As a result the safety of all children is progressively going at risk. How many children need to be tried, convicted, and imprisoned in adult facilities before it becomes wrong? How many children must be destroyed by a criminal justice system going out of control before we do something?