Over-Punishment? Texas schools?

This article relates to New York, but the
same issue could be raised about Texas
schools. The bottom line is whether our
obsession with zero tolerance is creating
mountains out of mole hills and forgetting
that there are other ways to correct poor
behavior that doesn't relate to juvenile
delinquency or arrests or other actions
even expulsion when not truly justified.

Read the article and decide for yourself
whether we are over-punishing. There
have been no articles that I have read
which complain about students' being
harassed by security officers in Texas.

The question I am posing is whether
zero tolerance needs to be re-considered.
We do not want students using drugs, but
one Advil or Tylenol to relieve cramps or
pain from an injury is far different from
drug use. A kindergärtner who brings a
Grandparent's Swiss Army knife for show and
tell should not be expelled. The principal and
the parents could deal with this issue easily.

Bullying needs swift reprisal and maybe a few
weeks in an alternative school might be
justified. But expulsion usually results in a
student just getting into more trouble
because no one is monitoring him/her in
the average two-parents working or
single-parent home.

November 29, 2009
EDITORIAL
Over-Punishment in Schools

New York City joined a national trend in 1998 when it put
the police in charge of school security. The consensus is
that public schools are now safe. But juvenile justice
advocates across the country are rightly worried about
policies under which children are sometimes arrested and
criminalized for behavior that once was dealt with by
principals or guidance counselors working with a student’s parents.

Children who are singled out for arrest and suspension are
at greater risk of dropping out and becoming permanently
entangled with the criminal justice system. It is especially
troubling that these children tend to be disproportionately
black and Hispanic, and often have emotional problems or
learning disabilities.

School officials in several cities have identified overpolicing
as a problem in itself. The New York City Council has taken
a first cut at the problem by drafting a bill, the Student
Safety Act, that would bring badly needed accountability
and transparency to the issue.

The draft bill would require police and education officials
to file regular reports that would show how suspensions
and other sanctions affect minority children, children
with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. Detailed
reports from the Police Department would show which
students were arrested or issued summonses and why,
so that lawmakers could get a sense of where
overpolicing might be a problem.

Most important, the bill would create an easily navigable
system under which parents, students and teachers
could file complaints against school security officers.
This provision comes in response to a 2007 report by
the New York Civil Liberties Union, which said students
were being roughed up for minor infractions like talking
back or walking the halls without a pass.

The Police Department and the Department of Education
are sometimes stingy with data. But the City Council is on
the right track when it says that the disciplinary system
could benefit from greater transparency. Lawmakers who
are negotiating with the city over the language of the
bill should keep this basic point in mind.


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Just words on a Piece of Paper

In the United States, the First Amendment's Rights of
Freedom of speech and the Right to Petition the
Government for grievances are taken very seriously
by branches of government. In China, the constitution
also grants many rights, but that is sometimes where
the rights end according to the following article from
the New York Times

______________________________________
November 27, 2009
A Rare Chinese Look at Secret Detentions
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — In a rare dose of candor that contradicts past
official statements, a state-run magazine has published an
article that details a secret network of detention centers
used to prevent aggrieved citizens from lodging complaints
against the Chinese government.

Liaowang, or Outlook, a dependably stodgy publication
aimed at Communist Party bureaucrats and policy makers,
ran an exposé on Tuesday laying out the Byzantine network
of interceptors, guards and holding pens used to put off
the petitioners who flock to Beijing in the hope that the
authorities will resolve longstanding grievances, many of
them involving official corruption in their hometowns.

According to the report, which was also published online
by the official Xinhua news agency, those grabbed off the
street often have their cellphones and identification
confiscated before being locked away in guesthouses
or dank basements. After being held for days or weeks,
inadequately fed and sometimes beaten, they are shipped
back to their home provinces with the admonition that
they stay away from the capital.

At peak times, the article said, as many as 10,000 retrievers
— those paid by local officials to keep petitioners from
successfully filing their complaints — roam Beijing in search
of quarry. The report counted 73 secret detention centers,
many of them run by regional governments, and laid out in
detail the lucrative business of retrieving, detaining and
sending home petitioners. The magazine described it as a
“chain of gray industry.”

Such a system of extralegal detention, sometimes called black jails,
“damages the legitimate rights of petitioners and seriously damages
the government’s image,” the article said.

Although the right to petition the authorities is enshrined
in the Constitution, that right is frequently swallowed up
by the reality of contemporary China’s system of governance:
local officials, facing pressure to maintain social stability,
are penalized for allowing too many complainants to
find their way to the offices of the central government.

The article in Outlook comes less than two weeks after
Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting China’s
network of secret jails — a report that prompted a Foreign
Ministry spokesman to deny their existence. “There are no
black jails in China,” Qin Gang, the spokesman, said when
asked about the report. “If citizens have complaints and
suggestions about government work, they can convey
them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and
normal channels.”

Given the government’s tight control of the media,
human rights advocates expressed guarded optimism
that the article might signal a shift away from official
tolerance for the jails, which are thought to have
existed since 2005.

“The fact that the report focuses on the issue in a
substantive and detailed way gives us hope that the
Chinese government might end its longtime denial of
the existence of black jails and move toward closing
them down, liberating the detainees and bringing
the perpetrators to justice,” said Phelim Kine, a
Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

•
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Community Policing is Paying Off with Positive Results in Boston

Copied from this site:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/25/reports_of_violent_crime_dip_in_boston/

This is a good example of how community policing can produce laudable results


Violent crime down in Boston
Steady decline since ’06 credited to police work, neighborhood groups
By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | November 25, 2009

Violent crime has dipped dramatically in Boston, with homicides on a pace to decrease by 20 percent by year’s end - an encouraging trend that law enforcement officials and community activists are working to preserve during the often volatile holiday season.

The drop - 44 homicides through Sunday compared with 56 by the same date last year - is a continuation of the steady decline that began after 2006, when the number of killings reached 75.

Police and city activists who work with youth on the streets say the decrease is a result of several factors: better communication between law enforcement officials and community groups, growing weariness of violence from people in the city’s historically troubled neighborhoods, and a return to crime-fighting initiatives that were successful in the 1990s, when the city experienced a sharp fall in the number of homicides.

“I’m very happy with the way things are going,’’ Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said in an interview yesterday. “The community has been happy with the progress that’s been made and they want to see it continue, and it’s my plan to deliver that to them.’’

Federal statistics show homicides decreased slightly nationwide - about 5 percent - between 2006 and 2008, the most recent years available.

Despite the progress in Boston, community leaders and police said they do not want to take the quiet for granted, especially around Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays, when alcohol-fueled parties can lead to violence.

On Friday, leaders of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, a nonprofit organization that works closely with police to prevent crime, will launch the “Season of Peace,’’ an annual campaign that asks young people to refrain from committing acts of violence during the holidays.

Davis said he will place more patrol officers and detectives on city streets on the nights of the long holiday weekend. “We’re always cautious at this time of year,’’ he said.

The decrease in violent crime in Boston extends over recent years.

In 2005, when the number of homicides spiked to a 10-year high, 64 had been committed by Thanksgiving and 75 by the end of the year. The following year, there were 68 by the November holiday and 75 for the year. But in 2007, the number began to decline slightly with 63 homicides by Thanksgiving and 66 by year’s end.

Since then, the number of violent crimes - with the exception of rapes - has fallen steadily, a drop Davis said is in large part the result of a reinvestment in strategies that target gangs. Earlier this year, police attributed the rise in rapes to more reporting, rather than an actual increase in assaults. They also noted that the year before had seen far fewer rapes reported, which made the increase seem even more dramatic.

A key factor in the decline of other violent crimes, Davis said, is the department’s increasingly aggressive use of Operation Ceasefire, a collaboration of law enforcement and community groups that offers gang members social services like counseling, job training, and school help in exchange for an end to violence. Police and prosecutors threaten long-term federal imprisonment if gang members continue to be violent.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office attributed the drop in part to the arrests and convictions of so-called violent “impact players’’ and gang members for nonfatal shootings and gun possession cases.

’’The message is getting out that there’s going to be accountability if you use violence on the streets of Boston,’’ Conley said in a prepared statement.

Another reason, according to law enforcement officials, is the presence of more street workers, who are hired to form relationships with gang members and keep them away from crime. The Boston Foundation has added 13 more street workers to collaborate with those already working for the city.

Nature might have also lent a hand.

In June, an onslaught of rainy weather hit Boston. At the time, the commissioner welcomed the rain because he said violence is tamped down when people are inside. But yesterday, Davis dismissed its role in the overall drop, saying that when good weather returned, violence remained low.

“I think there is really good work going on out there,’’ he said.

Davis said he has assigned more officers to work in Operation Homefront, a program in which police visit high-risk minors at home to build relationships with their families. Davis said the officers have been focusing their visits on known gang members who are likely to use guns.

The department’s gang intelligence has also improved, Davis said, as more officers show up at events organized by youth groups, like the Boys and Girls Club, and district captains attend neighborhood meetings. That kind of presence engenders trust, which leads to more tips, he said.

The department’s intelligence unit, which gathers information about gang activity and crime patterns around the city, has been sharing more information with community groups that work closely with police and other law enforcement agencies.

The Rev. Jeffrey Brown, executive director of the TenPoint Coalition, said youths and adult residents deserve some of the credit for Boston’s decrease in violence. After years of tolerating shootings near their homes, many are joining or forming small neighborhood watch groups and even mediating between feuding groups in their own communities.

“It really is the beginning of an antiviolence movement,’’ Brown said, “and it’s about time.’’

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.



© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Liberals AND Conservatives Join FIght Against Overcriminalism

Hard to imagine this happening, but the point has finally arrived where
there is consensus that we have gone way too far in making acts a federal crime.

Where do you think the line should be drawn in what constitutes a crime?


Copied from the online edition of the New York TImes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 24, 2009
Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice By ADAM LIPTAK
WASHINGTON — In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption. Civil liberties groups and associations of defense lawyers have lined up on the side of the accused.

But so have conservative, libertarian and business groups. Their briefs and public statements are signs of an emerging consensus on the right that the criminal justice system is an aspect of big government that must be contained.

The development represents a sharp break with tough-on-crime policies associated with the Republican Party since the Nixon administration.

“It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”

Edwin Meese III, who was known as a fervent supporter of law and order as attorney general in the Reagan administration, now spends much of his time criticizing what he calls the astounding number and vagueness of federal criminal laws.

Mr. Meese once referred to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the “criminals’ lobby.” These days, he said, “in terms of working with the A.C.L.U., if they want to join us, we’re happy to have them.”

Dick Thornburgh, who succeeded Mr. Meese as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and stayed on under President George Bush, echoed that sentiment in Congressional testimony in July.

“The problem of overcriminalization is truly one of those issues upon which a wide variety of constituencies can agree,” Mr. Thornburgh said. “Witness the broad and strong support from such varied groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Legal Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the A.B.A., the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the A.C.L.U.”

In an interview at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group where he is a fellow, Mr. Meese said the “liberal ideas of extending the power of the state” were to blame for an out-of-control criminal justice system. “Our tradition has always been,” he said, “to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state.”

There are, the foundation says, more than 4,400 criminal offenses in the federal code, many of them lacking a requirement that prosecutors prove traditional kinds of criminal intent.

“It’s a violation of federal law to give a false weather report,” Mr. Meese said. “People get put in jail for importing lobsters.”

Such so-called overcriminalization is at the heart of the conservative critique of crime policy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce made the point in a recent friend-of-the-court brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of “honest services,” is, the brief said, both “unintelligible” and “used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”

The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law this term, indicating an exceptional interest in the topic.

Harvey A. Silverglate, a left-wing civil liberties lawyer in Boston, says he has been surprised and delighted by the reception that his new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” has gotten in conservative circles. (A Heritage Foundation official offered this reporter a copy.)

The book argues that federal criminal law is so comprehensive and vague that all Americans violate it every day, meaning prosecutors can indict anyone at all.

“Libertarians and the civil liberties left have always had some common ground on these issues,” said Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason, a libertarian magazine. “The more vocal presence of conservatives on overcriminalization issues is really what’s new.”

Several strands of conservatism have merged in objecting to aspects of the criminal justice system. Some conservatives are suspicious of all government power, while others insist that the federal government has been intruding into matters the Constitution reserves to the states.

In January, for instance, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Comstock, about whether Congress has the constitutional power to authorize the continued confinement of people convicted of sex crimes after they have completed their criminal sentences.

Then there are conservatives who worry about government seizure of private property said to have been used to facilitate crimes, an issue raised in Alvarez v. Smith, which was argued in October.

“A joint on a yacht, and the whole thing is forfeited,” said Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush.

Some religious groups object to prison policies that appear to ignore the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption, and fiscal conservatives are concerned about the cost of maintaining the world’s largest prison population.

“Conservatives now recognize the economic consequences of a criminal justice leviathan,” said Erik Luna, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.

The roots of the conservative re-examination of crime policy might also be found in the jurisprudence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The two justices, joined by liberal colleagues, have said the original meaning of the Constitution required them to rule against the government in, among other areas, the rights of criminal defendants to confront witnesses.

“Scalia and Thomas are vanguards of an understanding by the modern right that its distrust of government extends all the way to the criminal justice system,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University.

The court will hear another confrontation clause case, Briscoe v. Virginia, in January. It is a sequel to a decision in June that prosecutors may not use crime lab reports without live testimony from the analysts who prepared them.

The conservative re-evaluation of crime policy is not universal, of course. Two notable exceptions to the trend, said Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s criminal justice project, are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“Roberts and Alito are coming down consistently on the side of the government in these criminal justice cases,” Mr. Lynch said.

Some scholars are skeptical about conservatives’ timing and motives, noting that their voices are rising during a Democratic administration and amid demands for accountability for the economic crisis.

“The Justice Department now acts as a kind of counterweight to corporate power,” said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. “On the other side is an alliance between two strands of conservative thinking, the libertarian point of view and the corporate wing of the Republican Party.”

Mr. Meese acknowledged that the current climate was not the ideal one for his point of view. “We picked by accident a time,” he said, “when it was not a very popular topic in light of corporate frauds.”



Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Technology and Sex Offenders

Interesting way that law officers and helped and hindered by technology

Tracking sex-crime offenders gets trickier
Violator registry is growing as tech-savvy predators put a greater burden on officers

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 23, 2009



The pursuit of Lee Shelton began the moment the convicted sex offender was released from prison.

It ended months later with a U.S. Marshals Service helicopter hovering near a D.C. junior high school as Shelton kissed a 14-year-old boy. In between, authorities used two Global Positioning System devices to help track him, learned he was online at the library and seized a secret laptop with a power source in the trunk of his car. His parole was revoked, and he is back in jail.

Shelton, who originally was convicted of molesting boys at the National Air and Space Museum and on the grounds of the Washington Monument, is one of thousands of sex offenders accused of similar crimes after their release from prison or while on probation. His parole violation illustrates the challenges of monitoring hundreds of thousands of offenders.

The nationwide crackdown on child pornography and other sex offenses has created severe manpower shortages and technology challenges for probation officers, police and federal agents struggling to track offenders who are jumping online with cellphones and portable game systems and flocking to social networking and other sites, where children or pornography can easily be found.

There are more than 716,000 registered sex offenders nationwide, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a 78 percent increase since 2001, and that does not include all offenders because some crimes do not require registration. Sex-offender registries have grown even faster in the Washington area, with more than 24,000 people listed. Not all receive the scrutiny given to such offenders as Shelton.

The focus on crimes against children that began in the Bush administration shows no sign of abating under President Obama. Federal child sexual exploitation prosecutions are up 147 percent since 2002, and the Justice Department is hiring 81 more prosecutors for these cases. Funding for task forces that bring charges in state courts rose this year from $16 million to $75 million.

But many of those offenders are now leaving prison, even as revenue-strapped states are cutting the budgets of probation departments. In Virginia, probation and parole cuts this year totaled nearly $10 million, including $500,000 for electronic monitoring of sexually violent predators. Maryland also has cut its budget.

"The burden on probation and parole officers is going to explode," said Ernie Allen, the national center's president.

The monitoring of virtually all sex offenders is required by law when they are on probation or parole.

The problem has gained national attention with the discovery of 10 bodies and a skull at a registered sex offender's home in Cleveland and revelations that Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991 and allegedly held captive at a California sex offender's house until her reappearance in August. Officers had visited both homes and noticed nothing wrong.

Those cases underscore a troubled registry system that has been the public face of sex-offender monitoring. An estimated 100,000 offenders do not comply with registration requirements. Law enforcement doesn't know where many of them are.

But the most alarming development for officers is proliferating electronic gadgets and the temptations they pose to sex offenders. A man on probation in Iowa for molesting a 9-year-old girl, for example, was recently caught downloading pornographic images of a young girl on his PlayStation Portable -- while walking to his probation appointment.

Sometimes, offenders cannot be monitored even while in custody. David L. Franklin, a church deacon, pleaded guilty in federal court to sending child pornography to an undercover D.C. police detective. While awaiting sentencing, Franklin struck up another online conversation with the same detective, who traced the defendant to an unusual address -- the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility.

Franklin had smuggled a cellphone into his jail cell and was on his bunk, online, when guards grabbed it, sources familiar with the case said. He was sentenced last month to 135 months in prison. Franklin's attorney, Dani Jahn, declined to comment.

"When a sex offender has access to hundreds of tools, how we can possibly keep up with this explosion is beyond me," said Leonard Sipes, spokesman for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency in the District, which helped capture Shelton and supervises about 650 other sex offenders convicted in D.C. Superior Court. An attorney for Shelton could not be located.

Sipes said officers are especially worried about social networking sites frequented by children, such as MySpace, which this year said it banned 90,000 registered sex offenders. Facebook has said it is also actively trying to prevent sex offenders from joining its site.

One example: A Virginia man on probation in the District for having sex with a 16-year-old girl as two younger girls watched told officers that he kissed a 15-year-old female runaway he had picked up. Because he was prohibited from contact with minors, authorities searched his computer, which revealed that he was chatting extensively with teen girls on MySpace and stalking a 17-year-old girl in person, law enforcement officials said. His probation was revoked.

Probation and parole officers use GPS devices, polygraph tests, home visits and treatment to track sex offenders, but those tools can be used only during periods of supervision, which often end after three to five years. Parole is post-prison, while probation is generally a sentence in lieu of prison, but the terms are often used interchangeably.

The newest trend in sex-offender management is computer monitoring, which experts said is being done by a majority of state agencies. Maryland began using monitoring software for sex offenders last month; Virginia is researching it. Most federal districts monitor computers in some form.

A monitoring program installed on an offender's computer is designed to capture every keystroke, Internet site and program, including chat and e-mail. Officials can monitor the computer remotely by logging onto a Web site or getting an e-mail if the offender does anything troublesome.

"Anything they shouldn't be doing is going to leap off the page at you," said Jim Tanner, a former probation officer in Colorado and a leading proponent of monitoring. Violations are punished with warnings, harsher parole or probation conditions, parole or probation revocation or new charges if the action constitutes a crime.

Yet even this new tool is flawed. The software won't stop an offender from sneaking a laptop, using a family member's computer or logging on at the library. There is virtually no monitoring equipment for cellphones, BlackBerries or children's gaming devices, which require a time-consuming and expensive forensic analysis.

The monitoring equipment is expensive, so many agencies can't afford it or use a free program that can't retrieve deleted files.

Despite the limitations, proponents say computer monitoring is catching increasing numbers of violations and new crimes. But in the cat-and-mouse game officers play with offenders, old-fashioned police work often wins out.

D.C. probation officers learned, by questioning a man on probation for trying to rape a 9-year-old boy, that he was viewing child pornography on the computer at his mother's home, court records said. Federal agents and police searched his home.

An analysis showed the man, John Anthony, had deleted nearly 3,000 files of what the government called "sadistic and masochistic" child pornography up to an hour before the search, and officials said he was chatting on Yahoo as agents entered the house. Anthony pleaded guilty in D.C. federal court to possessing child pornography and was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison.

Aprille Cole, a nine-year veteran of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, relies on home visits, hard work and instinct in tracking sex offenders. "They're very smart and manipulative," said Cole. "We get to know their family members, friends and co-workers. We know their girlfriends and whether they have children."

On a recent visit to the Southeast D.C. apartment of a man on parole for molesting his 10-year-old daughter, Cole began firing questions the moment she and her partner, Kevin Jones, walked through the door.

"What's in that box?" she asked as she looked in the closet.

"Who is Sean?" she said as she spotted an unfamiliar name on the kitchen calendar.

"What's up with your girlfriend?"

"I'm not into girlfriends right now," the man answered.

"Then why is there a ponytail holder in your bathroom?" Cole said.

"I know he's lying about the girlfriend," she later told a reporter.

Officers would not disclose the man's name, citing privacy laws. He is not on computer monitoring because he says he doesn't have a computer.

In the man's bedroom, more than 30 stuffed animals were lined up on a table, including an oversize Elmo doll.

He said they belong to a former girlfriend.

The World is Different for a Released Prisoner

Adjusting to the changes in the world after nearly two decades in prison is hard enough, but think of the agony when you were committed for a crime you did not commit.

November 21, 2009
After 18 Years, Freed to a World With Cellphones
By JOHN ELIGON
Moments after he walked out of Sing Sing prison on Friday after serving 18 years for a crime that a judge ruled he did not commit, Fernando Bermudez Jr. was handed a cellphone so he could speak with one of his lawyers. It was the first time he had held one.
“It almost seemed like a little baby,” Mr. Bermudez said. “It was so delicate. I didn’t want to break it. I have to become more technologically advanced. I’m an anachronism, almost.”
Mr. Bermudez was accompanied by his wife, Crystal, and a husband-and-wife lawyer team, Michael and Lesley Risinger, who worked on his case. He spoke with reporters waiting for him outside the prison before getting in a car to go to the federal courthouse in White Plains to take care of paperwork.
“I’m feeling great on this glorious day of justice,” Mr. Bermudez, 40, said in a telephone interview from the car on his way to White Plains. “I greet you in the name of hope and redemption.”
He then talked about the emotions he felt as he stepped out of the prison. “What was going through my body was an exorbitant amount of palpitations,” he said, “joy and happiness to a level that I’ve never known before in my life.”
After signing documents in White Plains, Mr. Bermudez was driven to Danbury, Conn., where his wife lives, to reunite with his three children — ages 18, 8 and 3 — and her parents. There they went to a McDonald’s for a snack. Mr. Bermudez said earlier that they would head to his parents’ home in Manhattan on Friday night to eat — he was looking forward to ice cream and seafood, or “some Red Lobster type of fare.”
Mr. Bermudez was convicted in 1992 of killing Raymond Blount, 16, a year earlier after a dispute at a Greenwich Village nightclub. After his conviction, five witnesses who at trial had identified him as the killer recanted, saying in sworn affidavits that they had been coerced or manipulated by the police and prosecutors to identify Mr. Bermudez as the killer.
Those recantations were part of what led Justice John Cataldo of State Supreme Court in Manhattan to vacate Mr. Bermudez’s conviction last week.
Mr. Bermudez was not immediately released after Justice Cataldo announced his decision because he still had a 27-month federal sentence for a drug charge that he had pleaded guilty to after being arrested in the murder. A federal judge granted Mr. Bermudez bail on that charge, and his lawyers plan to argue for that sentence to be thrown out.
Mr. Bermudez said he hoped to earn the college degree he had been working toward in prison; he was five credits short of a bachelor’s in social and behavioral sciences from Mercy College. But for now, he said, he has some practical adjusting to do.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Gang Intervention Program Delayed Because of Approach Agreement or Lack thereof

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-southla-academy19-2009nov19,0,2183555.story

latimes.com

PROMISE AND PERIL IN SOUTH L.A.

Philosophies clash in plans for gang intervention academy

Two schools, led by strong personalities, were supposed to collaborate on a curriculum. When the process collapsed, one of them won a bid to run the program and the other plans to appeal.

By Scott Gold

November 19, 2009

A city-sponsored training academy for gang intervention workers will open at least a year later than Los Angeles officials had hoped after a collision of philosophies and egos -- a hitch in the city's effort to modernize its campaign against street violence.

Officials said this week that an independent panel has selected the Advancement Project, the legal advocacy, civil rights and public policy group, as the winner of a bidding process to run the academy.

But that bid was never supposed to occur. The city's original plan -- to meld the best practices of two gang intervention programs into an "official" curriculum -- collapsed, according to interviews with city officials and City Hall advisors.

Now, the academy isn't expected to open until at least the spring of 2010 -- a year later than originally envisioned. And it's not over yet: The head of a group that lost the bid called the selection process flawed and pledged to appeal the decision into next year, when the City Council will be asked to sign off on the contract.

The dispute might seem like insider politics, considering that the contract is worth just $200,000 the first year, with a possibility of $800,000 over four years. But it means the continuation of the status quo: scores of interventionists fanned out across the city, some skilled and relied upon by law enforcement, but many unregulated, untrained and operating off the books amid dangerous crosscurrents of street politics.

The delay is seen as a particularly acute problem in South L.A., where marked declines in violence have created a rare window of possibility -- one that could close if fragile understandings between rival neighborhoods begin to fray, officials said.

"South Los Angeles is in purgatory," said Jorja Leap, a UCLA Department of Social Welfare adjunct professor, a gang specialist for 30 years and a key City Hall advisor. "There could be life-threatening consequences down the line."

Gang interventionists act as liaisons between law enforcement and their communities and between rival gangs. They have existed for decades in various forms including missionaries and civil rights advocates.

Among rank-and-file officers, collaboration with interventionists remains controversial; most intervention workers were once gang members. However, senior LAPD officers, particularly in South L.A. -- including Charlie Beck, appointed police chief Tuesday by the City Council -- have come to view intervention as a messy but vital tool. Many police officials rely on interventionists to do what they cannot: control street gossip, prevent retaliation shootings or contain gang skirmishes before they become full-fledged wars.

Last year, then-City Controller Laura Chick delivered an indictment of the city's scattershot gang outreach programs. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa consolidated the programs; his Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development now oversees $20 million in annual intervention and prevention contracts.

The city also launched an effort to transform intervention into a professional field. Many interventionists are now subjected to financial audits and drug testing. The opening of the academy, where gang intervention workers would be trained and licensed, is seen as a critical step.

The city's efforts are being watched closely; federal law enforcement and military officials -- the latter wondering if similar tactics might be used in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have visited. "There is national interest in this," said Connie Rice, the prominent civil rights attorney and a leader of the Advancement Project.

The city's original plan was to combine the best practices of two intervention "schools," one run by the Advancement Project, the other, the Professional Community Intervention Training Institute, run by Aquil Basheer, a fixture in gang intervention for more than 30 years in South L.A.

From the start of discussions, it was evident there was a philosophical divide.

Rice's school focused largely on a theoretical and historical understanding of gangs. It was tied closely to the establishment; City Hall had paid the group to deliver a critique of the city's anti-gang efforts. Students were instructed to make a quiet impact by developing relationships in the community -- and not to defuse or even be near violent situations.

Basheer's school focused on hard-core, practical drills. Operating out of an old fire station, Basheer taught his students how to stage a candlelight vigil without exposing people to gunfire, how to extricate someone from an angry crowd. He demanded that his students devise on-the-spot strategies -- what to do, for instance, if a gunman is on the loose in a school cafeteria.

Neither side could agree on how to proceed -- or on what portions of the curriculum each group might oversee. Rice declined to comment about the dispute.

"It became extremely clear that there were dramatic differences," Basheer said. "We all needed to stay in our own lanes. . . . I got tired of talking. I got tired of explaining." Asked how much of the process was derailed not just by competing visions but by strong egos, Basheer chuckled and said: "Eighty or 85%."

The city retreated, opening the project up to bidding -- "the fairest, most above-board way," said Guillermo Cespedes, the mayor's new gang czar.

An advisory panel was assembled, including gang outreach workers from Chicago and the Bay Area. On Friday, the panel delivered its verdict, ranking the Advancement Project's bid in first place, ahead of Basheer's organization and a third bidder.

Susan K. Lee, the Advancement Project's director of urban peace, said the group's program would begin with a "Basic 101" course for entry-level interventionists. That would be followed with a series of advanced, 20-hour courses; one, for instance, would teach them how to proceed in a hospital after a shooting, a notoriously tricky environment.

"It's a high-risk enterprise," Rice said. "You're working with people whose backgrounds create a lot of problems -- but that's why you are working with them."

Basheer said he would appeal to the City Council. He will argue, he said, that the selection process was incomplete because panelists never visited his program -- and, he said, he'll argue that the political aplomb of the Advancement Project can never match his organization's street smarts.

"We have tested strategies, tools and tactics. We can show you an end-line product," he said. "If you're going to put together something this critical, you'd better have a thorough understanding of the culture. . . . We're taking it all the way."

scott.gold@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Learn How Texas Has Become Model of CJ Reform

Copied from: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/floridas-prison-problem-could-find-a-solution-in-texas/1052448

Legislators look west for prison solution

By Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, November 17, 2009

---

If only Florida's economy could grow like its prisons.

The state has more than 100,000 prisoners for the first time in its history. It's expected to add 14,000 in the next five years, according to the Department of Corrections. Every 1,500 new inmates need a new prison. It costs $100 million to build one and $20 million a year to run. How can a state in a perpetual budget crisis pay for all that?

"It's currently unsustainable given our fiscal situation," said Florida Tax Watch general counsel Robert Weissert.

Florida is staring at a Texas-sized problem.

Fortunately, Texas might also have the solution.

Two years ago that state faced its own prison crisis: house 17,000 new inmates by 2012 at a cost of half a billion dollars.

But Texas never built any new prisons. Instead, for half that amount, it revamped its criminal justice system, reduced its prison population and became a national model for reform.

"We hit the perfect storm at the right time," Texas legislator Jerry Madden said at the Collins Center for Public Policy's Justice Summit this week in Tampa. "We were able to say we can do this for less and, oh, by the way, our results will be better."

Here's how Texas did it.

• • •

Madden, 65, was elected to the Texas House in 1992. An engineer by trade, he started his own insurance company. In 2005, the speaker of the house made Rep. Madden chairman of the committee overseeing Texas' prisons. He did so with this order:

"The boss said I can't build anymore," Madden said.

The state already had 150,000 prison beds, but anticipated the need for thousands more. Without more prisons, where would all those inmates go?

"In Texas it's not very popular to open the door and let them out," Madden said. "I don't think it works in Florida either."

Support for reform was already building with local criminal justice groups. Think tanks lent expertise and brought data analysis to Texas' prison problem. Madden joined with a Democrat, Sen. John Whitmire, to make reform bipartisan.

It wasn't a growing population or crime rate driving all those incarcerations. Except for a slight bump in 2007, Texas' index crime rate has fallen every year since 2002.

The problem, instead, was the state's policies and programs.

The Council of State Governments Justice Center identified three factors keeping prisons full: an 18 percent increase in probation revocations from 1997 to 2006; cuts in substance abuse and mental health programs; and fewer prisoners were being paroled, or released early from prison, than state rules allowed.

• • •

The solution: add substance abuse and mental health treatment beds; add short-term residential and outpatient treatment programs; add programs that would reduce probation violations and combat recidivism; and parole more eligible prisoners (Florida abolished parole for crimes committed after 1983).

In 2007, the Texas Legislature approved $241 million to do just that. The state added more than 10,000 slots for substance abuse and mental health treatment. Funding went to new residential facilities, halfway houses and outpatient programs. But the state actually saved tens of millions because it could scrap a new prison that no longer needed to be built.

Texas still has its problems. Not every proposed program is in place yet. Some communities opposed housing the new programs.

But the state's prison population has remained steady, and now a slight decrease is projected until 2012. The average number of probationers in 2008 was 168,788 — nearly 11,000 more than two years before. But revoked probations are only up slightly.

"It's incredibly impressive what was accomplished there," Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project for the Pew Center on States, told the summit audience. "It's a really strong example of what could happen in Florida."

• • •

Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil said the data suggests Texas' reforms could work in Florida. But his agency is already straining to pay for its own reforms aimed at reducing recidivism and improving treatment.

"It's difficult to ask for more money," McNeil said, "when we're trying to hold onto what we have."

Momentum for reform in Florida, though, seems to be building. Today, Sen. Victor Crist will hold a legislative workshop in Tampa focused solely on criminal justice issues. The Republican favors "early and effective" substance abuse and mental health treatment and wants to expand work-release programs.

But the political risk of reform can be great. Madden won a tight re-election race after his opponent labeled him soft on crime — and he's a conservative Republican.

Former Florida Gov. Buddy MacKay, a Democrat, told the audience that reform can only happen if both sides lay off the other.

"The leadership of both political parties is going to have to say that everybody's fingerprints are going to be on this," MacKay said.

But change could still come if only because it has to. As Crist put it: "This session, money is going to be tight, tempers are going to be hot, and ideas are going to be needed."

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

© 2009 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times

Truth or Fiction: Teacher Puts Hit Out on Student

At first appearance, the headline looked

like a satire about a tabloid sold near

grocery store cashiers "Teacher Charged

with Terroristic Threats Against Student."

But this is a true tale and the teacher is

on leave pending the outcome of the

police investigation and its subsequent

outcome.

To read more about this, you can

visit the Findlaw Blotter which has

interesting crime and criminal news.

Truth can definitely be stranger than fiction.

Now we must wait to see what is declared as

the truth in this case.

Chance to hear about oral arguments for juvenile life without parole

C-Span has put its On America and the Courts on the web.

It begins with a summary of what the oral arguments were

for Terrance Graham who was 16 when he committed his

non-violent crime and was sentenced to life without parole.

The other case also involving life without parole was Sullivan v.

Florida and involved a 13-year old.

Then there was a portion where reporters ask questions

of the attorneys who represented the youth.

The next portion is a group which represents victims of

juveniles and the group opposes parole because it puts

the victim in the position of having to relive the event

You can see and hear the video here

over and over again.

Lock 'em Up Philosophy has Reprecussions

An article by Stuart Taylor demonstrates how

damaging the mandatory minimum sentencing

and other "lock 'em up" statutes have been to

segments of American society.

While the pending Supreme Court case on life-without-

parole terms for juveniles gets lots of attention, "the

damage done by America's prison binge over the past

30 to 40 years dwarfs the importance of all of the Court's

pending criminal cases," says National Journal columnist

Stuart Taylor. Blacks are imprisoned at a rate eight times

as high as whites, and nearly 60 percent of black male

high school dropouts, and nearly 30 percent of all black men

(if current trends continue), will spend time behind bars --

far more than in the worst days of segregation, he says.

Fear of appearing "soft on crime" prevents legislators from

amending laws so that the vicious predators are kept in

prison and the non-violent offenders get the opportunity

to turn their lives around.

Facebook Entry Proves Innocence

You read the actual article and discover that

these social networks can be used against

one in prosecutions.

This is copied from Crime and Justice News:

NY Robbery Suspect Says He's Innocent, And Facebook Proves It

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 11:49 a.m. on Oct. 17, New Yorker Rodney Bradford, 19,

sat in his father's apartment in Harlem and typed a Facebook

status update- a slang version of "where's my pancakes?"

At that same moment, a young man was committing a robbery

in the Brooklyn housing project where Bradford lived. Bradford

was charged with the crime, but the charges were dropped

when prosecutors confirmed that he was on Facebook, says

the New York Times. A legal expert said it is the first known

case of a Facebook update as alibi evidence-but probably

not the last.

John G. Browning, a Dallas lawyer who studies social networking

and the law, said, "We are going to see more of that because

of how prevalent social networking has become." With more

people revealing the details of their lives online, sites like Facebook,

MySpace and Twitter are providing evidence in legal battles.

New York Times

More homicides and more incarcerations

America leads the western world in the number of homicides

and the number of people incarcerated. This article is not

only a review of a new book that investigates why American

has such a high rate of homicide but looks back at our history.

Included is the statement by Beccaria that laws should be

agreements between members of a society but usually

arise from public anger over a specific event.

"Long ago, Beccaria pointed out the meaningfulness of the

correspondence, over time, between crime and punishment,

between one kind of violence and another. If the history of

murder contains a lesson, Beccaria believed, it was this: 'The

countries and times most notorious for severity of

punishment have always been those in which the

bloodiest and most inhumane of deeds were committed.'”

While it is possible to speculate on what aspects of American

society cause or appear to cause us to be a more violent

society than Western European nations, a definitive answer

does not appear likely.

The message that resonates involves the question of whether

incarceration for long periods of time accomplishes more

than getting a specific individual removed from society.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/11/09/091109crat_atlarge_lepore#ixzz0WfmKQSTI

California Houses Death Row Prisoners but rarely Executes Them

Living on Death Row in California offers some perks not

found in other maximum security prisons: one person to

a cell and more private visits with family. Odds of dying a

natural death are pretty high

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deathrow11-2009nov11,0,597884.story

latimes.com

Death penalty is considered a boon by some California inmates

Given the state moratorium on executions and

an appeals process that can last for decades,

inmates can expect to live a long time, and with

privileges other prisoners lack.

By Carol J. Williams

November 11, 2009

White supremacist gang hit man Billy Joe Johnson got what he asked for from the Orange County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last month: a death sentence.

It wasn't remorse for his crimes or a desire for atonement that drove him to ask for execution; it was the expectation that conditions on death row would be more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons and that any date with the executioner would be decades away if it came at all.

Although executions are carried out with comparative speed in states such as Virginia, where Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death Tuesday night,

capital punishment in California has become so bogged

down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat,

say experts on both sides of the issue.

"This is a dramatic reaffirmation of what we've already

known for some time, that capital punishment in California

takes way too long," Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the l

aw-and-order Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento,

said of Johnson's bet that he will live a long life on death row.

"This guy certainly feels like it's worth the risk."

Statistics suggest that Johnson may be correct in his calculations.

California has the nation's largest death row population, with 685 sentenced

to die by lethal injection. Yet only 13 executions have been carried out since

capital punishment resumed in 1977 and none of the condemned have been

put to death since a moratorium was imposed nearly four years ago.

Five times as many death row inmates -- 71 -- have died over that

same period of natural causes, suicide or inside violence.

Though death row inmates at San Quentin State Prison are far from coddled,

they live in single cells that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security

confines elsewhere, they have better access to telephones and they have

"contact visits" in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal

halls as in other institutions. They have about the only private accommodations

in the state's 33-prison network, which is crammed with 160,000-plus convicts.

Death row prisoners are served breakfast and dinner in their cells, can

usually mingle with others in the outdoor exercise yards while eating

their sack lunches, and have exclusive control over the television,

CD player or other diversions in their cells.

"Death row inmates probably have the most liberal telephone privileges

of anyone in state custody," said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, explaining that

they need ready access to their attorneys and can often make calls from

their cells over a phone that can be rolled along the cellblock.

The condemned wear the same jeans and chambray-shirt prison garb,

eat the same food as prepared in other prisons and enjoy the same access

to mail-order and canteen goods paid for by their families, as long as

they maintain good behavior, Thornton said.

Those on death row are also allowed more personal property

inside their cells, to accommodate their voluminous legal documents

without infringing on the 6 cubic feet of snacks and entertainment

devices allowed each prisoner, said Lt. Sam Robinson, spokesman for San Quentin.

"It's not that he thinks conditions will be better; they are better,"

Johnson's attorney, Michael Molfetta, said of his client's request for

death row. Johnson, 46, figures that he will be close to 70 by the time

his appeals are exhausted, Molfetta said, "and he says he doesn't care to live beyond that."

Johnson was convicted last month of first-degree murder with

special circumstances in the March 2002 killing of former gang associate

Scott Miller. Johnson, a "shot caller" in the white supremacist Public Enemy

Number One gang, was found guilty of orchestrating Miller's execution-style

murder for having revealed gang secrets in a television interview.

On Oct. 29, Johnson's jury decided that he should be sentenced to death.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel is expected to

impose the execution order when he formally sentences Johnson on Nov. 23.

As an "L-WOPP," a prisoner sentenced to life without the possibility of parole,

Johnson could have been sent to any maximum-security facility in the state,

where other Level IV offenders share an 8-foot-by-10-foot cell, a sink and a

toilet. Gang leaders are often sent to the special housing unit at Pelican Bay

State Prison, where they live in isolation with few of the comforts allowed elsewhere.

It costs the state about $49,000 a year to house each prisoner, according to

corrections department statistics. Thornton said her department has never

put a figure on the cost for "more staff-intensive" death row housing, but a

state commission of experts last year estimated that the additional security

and legal spending for capital inmates costs taxpayers $138,000 per

death row prisoner each year.

Legal analysts say Johnson's request for a death sentence highlights how

delays in executions could undermine any deterrent effect of California's death penalty.

"If you accept the premise that the death penalty is about retribution,

about punishing someone for intolerable acts, you might argue that it is

completely inappropriate to grant someone's request to have a death penalty

imposed because it is more suitable or convenient for him," said Kara Dansky,

executive director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University.

"It does seem to weaken the position of those who say the death penalty

is a justified mode of punishment."

Laurie Levenson, a former prosecutor now teaching criminal law

at Loyola Law School, said Johnson is probably correct in gauging

that he'll be better off on death row.

"We have a perverse system, given that we have a death row but we

don't really have executions," she said. Convicts seeking death sentences

"don't really feel like they are making life-and-death decisions."

Executions have been on hold in California for almost four years,

following a federal judge's orders for review and reform of lethal injection

procedures. Those orders came after concerns were raised that some

of those executed by the three-shot sequence might not have been

rendered unconscious by the first injection. That could expose the

condemned inmate to pain from the final shot that would be

unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, U.S. District Judge

Jeremy Fogel ruled in 2006, when he ordered the state to correct

the alleged deficiencies.

New protocols were proposed earlier this year but are pending

approval by corrections officials still sorting through thousands of

comments and challenges, and are facing at least another year

of procedural hurdles ahead of Fogel's review.

carol.williams@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Should 9-years old killer be incarcerated?

The criminal justice system is not really set up

to deal with 8-years old who intentionally kill

someone. Arizona has been trying to deal with

this youngster for a year.

Plan to imprison 9-year-old killer prompts outcry

Both sides back ouster of judge, who would reject boy's plea deal

by Dennis Wagner - Nov. 10, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

What's to become of a 9-year-old boy who pleaded guilty in connection with a murder?

That question has twisted the Apache County justice system in knots for nearly a year asattorneys, psychiatrists, victims, probation officers, a judge and residents of St. Johns consider the fate of Christian Romero.

What sentence would best serve the interests of justice, the community and the child? The query remains unanswered, compounded by small-town dynamics and financial obstacles.In the past few weeks, those issues erupted in controversy at Apache County Juvenile Court.

First, Judge Michael Roca announced that he was going to reject a plea agreement that calls for probation, instead sentencing Christian to the state's Department of Juvenile Corrections.

Then, defense attorney Ron Wood filed a motion claiming Roca was swayed by local politics and should be removed from the case for bias.

Finally, prosecutor Michael Whiting joined the defense, arguing that Roca's decision to put the child behind bars was all about money, not justice.

A Navajo County judge is expected to hear those arguments and make potentially crucial rulings on the future of the case and the defendant. A Tuesday hearing was continued; no new date was set.

Legal conundrum

On Nov. 5, 2008, Christian - at the time an 8-year-old in third grade - came home from school, loaded his .22-caliber rifle and waited.

His father, Vince Romero, arrived at the residence a short time later and was shot multiple times on the stairwell. Then, Tim Romans, a family friend and housemate, was gunned down in the front yard.

Authorities struggled to grasp the horror of it all and to deal with such an immature and diminutive defendant.

The first major issue involved prosecution. Legal experts said no child Christian's age had been tried for murder in Arizona. If the boy had been charged as an adult, the case likely would have been dismissed because he would not have been competent to assist in his own defense.

Had he been charged as a juvenile, under Arizona law, the court would have lost all control once Christian turns 18, when he would walk away without parole conditions.

And if prosecutors had decided to wait until Christian was more mature, perhaps age 15, to file adult charges, the courts would have had no control or custody in the interim.

In February, Whiting worked out what appeared to be an acceptable compromise with the boy's attorney: Christian admitted to negligent homicide in the slaying of Romans, and charges involving his father's death were dropped.

As part of the plea agreement, the boy accepted intensive probation, community treatment and possible juvenile detention - but not state incarceration.

There was no trial, just a guilty plea accepted by the judge. And although the boy accepted probation, a specific sentence was not set, pending psychiatric evaluation.

For seven months since then, Christian has remained in legal limbo, his sentencing delayed by complications and conflicts. Simply put, Apache County either had no place to put him, not enough money to pay for his placement, or both.

Now, the plea deal itself is in jeopardy. Should it collapse, the case could start over with a decision on how to prosecute.

Courtroom players

The list of courtroom players includes the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorneys, Christian's mother, her lawyers, a guardian assigned to protect the boy's interests, and probation officers.

At least a half-dozen specialists, including a Harvard-trained expert, have evaluated Christian. Although their recommendations are sealed, the cost of housing and treating him has been estimated at up to $100,000 per year, a huge sum in the small, rural county.

Whiting, the prosecutor, said it was clear early on that treatment expenses would be a concern and that sentiments in the tight-knit community might influence justice.

"It gets into politics," he said. "It gets into money."

Last month, he asked to delay yet another sentencing because he had not found a way to pay for the boy's care.

Prohibitive costs

Attorneys in the case say private treatment centers are prohibitively expensive. The regional mental-health authority has declined to take the boy. Even Arizona's juvenile-corrections system, which Roca now says is right for the boy, claims not to have a place for him.

Laura Dillingham, director of communications for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, said last week that Arizona has not imprisoned an inmate younger than 13 for at least the past decade, if ever. She said the state could not take custody of Christian.

"There's too much of an age difference," Dillingham said. "We are not equipped to handle someone that young."

The cost of housing in juvenile corrections is nearly $39,000 per inmate, plus expenses for treatment and education.

Dillingham said youths enter the system because they are deemed incorrigible, and most are tough kids with numerous offenses. She said a 9-year-old with no criminal history would have to be isolated for his own protection, with a separate staff.

'Poison' and 'politics'

After eight months of looking for an appropriate place to house Christian, Roca announced Oct. 22 that he intends to revoke the plea agreement.

The judge declared that St. Johns is "pure poison" for the boy, adding that it would be irresponsible to let him stay in town and that the juvenile-corrections system is best equipped to handle the boy.

"I don't see it as a money issue," Roca said. "I see it as an issue of not having a place to spend the money."

Whiting and Wood, opposing lawyers, said they were dumbfounded. Corrections officials made it clear they had nothing for Christian, yet the judge was planning to put the boy behind bars despite the plea deal he sanctioned.

"We all looked around: Is he being serious?" Whiting said.

Wood filed motions to remove Roca from the case or have charges thrown out entirely.

He argued that the judge demonstrated bias against Christian and made his comment about "poison" based on off-the-record conversations - he calls it "politics with a small 'p' " - rather than on court testimony or evidence.

Wood said St. Johns is hardly toxic for the boy, who has remained in town for the past year.

Both sides await today's hearing on whether Roca will remain on the case.

Meantime, Christian lives with his mother and paternal grandmother.

Michael Ellison, who represents the mother, said she just wants Christian to receive treatment and an education.