He killed his father and 27 years later is out of prison

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-prison-release-sw-zone-06may06,0,6826364.story

There is a video with the former prisoner and his views of recidivism; It is midway down the page with the article and there is a 15 second ad you see first.

chicagotribune.com

Back to a world he barely knows

Convicted in his father's murder at age 17, Paul Komyatti Jr. is being released

By Erika Slife

TRIBUNE REPORTER

May 6, 2009

INDIANAPOLIS -- With his large frame hunched over a desk, Paul Komyatti Jr. excitedly flips through an old photo album, pointing out the different pictures of him over the last three decades. There's one of his cat that he raised from a kitten. Another is with an old girlfriend. And there's a shot of him with his buddies, striking a macho pose.

What's unusual is that every photo was taken from the same place: prison.

Komyatti was sent into the Indiana correctional system as a teenager in 1983. Next week, he's scheduled to emerge as a free man at age 44. There will be no family to greet him as he takes his first steps back into society. They were all convicted for their roles in the 1983 murder of Komyatti's father, Paul Sr., who was stabbed and decapitated as he slept in his Hammond home.

Komyatti was 17 the night he held his dad's legs down while his brother-in-law stabbed him more than 30 times with a fishing knife. Komyatti was sentenced to 100 years in prison -- 55 years for murder and 45 years for conspiracy, to be served concurrently. Good behavior and education credits are leading to his early release.

Now 6 foot 5, and weighing 235 pounds, Komyatti is a lifetime away from who he was then. "Most of my memories are from behind four walls," said Komyatti in an interview with the Tribune. "Prison is like an entirely different world. It's like going to a foreign country where I do speak the language, but I have to assimilate into the culture."

He's starting to get his affairs in order. Since being moved to a transitional work-release center in September, he has signed a lease for an apartment and obtained a driver's permit and library card.

But the society he'll rejoin barely resembles the one he left. Komyatti barely knows how to use a cell phone, and recently tried the Internet for the first time. He literally had to relearn how to ride a bike.

While in prison, Komyatti earned a bachelor's degree in history from Ball State University, with honors, and associate degrees in criminal justice and general studies. He paid tuition through an education program offered to the correctional system.

He has a job in the retail sector and hopes to land a second job before summer, but he's wary about pursuing a corporate career. "They don't know me," he said. "They know one particular act."

In 1983, Komyatti was a senior at Morton High School. He earned good grades, played football and planned on going into the Air Force after graduation.

But he had a secret. His family was planning to murder his father.

According to court records, Paul Sr. "was a strict and domineering father and husband" and "on occasion drank to excess and was loud and violent." Komyatti said he was beaten so badly by his father that as a child he stuttered. His mother, he said, would take him and run away to her sister's home. But his father would always come after them, Komyatti said.

"There were occasions where he would stick a gun next to my head and he'd say he'd blow my head off if she didn't come home," he said.

For weeks, Paul Jr., his mother, sister and brother-in-law tried poisoning him. But when that failed, they hatched a new plan. As Paul Sr. slept, Komyatti and his brother-in-law crept into his room to render him unconscious with ether and inject air into his veins, making his death look like a heart attack. But during the assault, Paul Sr. woke up -- reportedly yelling, "Son, son, can't we work something out?" -- as his daughter shut the door to muffle the cries, according to court records.

Tom Vanes, a former Lake County, Ind., prosecutor, remembers that he saw no remorse from family members, including Komyatti, during the initial weeks of the investigation. 

"There was not the reaction you would expect to see for a kid who helped bury his dad. No love, no remorse, no empathy, no hesitation."

Komyatti admits there was no love for his father, but he said that doesn't excuse or justify what they did. "I didn't think there was any other options," he said. 

When he first got to prison, he was rebellious and quickly racked up violations. He tried to escape. When he was 25 he was sent to the Westville Correctional Facility, the state's most notorious prison, where he stayed on and off for the next four years.

But it was at the most secure facility where he bought a book about prisoners' rights. Soon, he was protesting prison conditions and the treatment of inmates. He went on hunger strikes and filed lawsuits. But then in 1995, it dawned on him: "I might get out one day." So he set out on a new path toward religion and education. Komyatti isn't sure what he's looking forward to most upon his release.

"I look forward to playing some handball. Maybe going to the park. I might just go over to White River and jump in the river."

Gerald Waite, an anthropology professor at Ball State, teaches inmates at the prison and has known Komyatti for 12 years.

"He's probably one of my favorite students. He's extremely capable, extremely versatile, extremely smart and charismatic. ... I think he'll adapt, but it will really test his patience."

Based on statistics, Komyatti has a good shot of never going back to jail. According to a 2004 study by The Sentencing Project, four out of five people sentenced from "a number of years" to life in prison are not rearrested when released.

"Crime is a young persons' pursuit; we know that people age out of crime," said Ryan King, a policy analyst.

Komyatti doesn't spend time thinking about what he did as a young man, but rather what he can accomplish as a free man.

"You might say I wish I had done this, or wish I had done that, or I wish I hadn't done this," he said. "At the same time, I don't dwell on them because there's nothing I can do about it. I learned from my past. You learn from your past, you don't repeat it."

eslife@tribune.com

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

Court will Consider Life with no parole for teens

Article as it appeared in NY Times

In deciding that young people could not be put to death for crimes committed before the age of majority, many Justices' reasoning could be applied in this case as well.

May 5, 2009

Justices Agree to Take Up Sentencing for Young Offenders

By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether the reasoning that led it to strike down the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago should also apply to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

The court accepted two cases on the issue, both from Florida and neither involving a killing. In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to life without the possibility of release for raping a 72-year-old woman in 1989, when he was 13. In the other, Terrance Graham received the same sentence for participating in a home invasion robbery in 2004, when he was 17 and on probation for other crimes.

In the majority opinion in the death penalty case, Roper v. Simmons, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that teenagers were immature, unformed, irresponsible and susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure.

“Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile,” Justice Kennedy concluded, is not “evidence of irretrievably depraved character.”

Outside the context of the death penalty, however, the Supreme Court has not shown much interest in cases from prisoners claiming that the sentences they received were too harsh. But Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the factors cited by Justice Kennedy concerning juveniles might well apply in noncapital cases.

“The principles driving Roper,” Professor Berman said, “would seem to suggest that its impact does not stop at the execution chamber.”

The United States is alone in the world in making routine use of life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Human rights groups say more than 2,000 prisoners in the United States are serving such sentences for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger. A vast majority of those crimes involved a killing by the defendant or an accomplice.

At the argument of the Roper case in 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia said the rationales offered against the juvenile death penalty applied just as forcefully to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

“I don’t see where there’s a logical line,” said Justice Scalia, who voted in dissent to retain the juvenile death penalty.

But Justice Kennedy wrote that life sentences would continue to deter young criminals after the death penalty became unavailable.

“The punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “is itself a severe sanction, in particular for a young person.”

Lawyers for the two Florida inmates cited international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits sentences of life without parole for juveniles. Justice Kennedy’s invoking foreign and international law in the Roper decision was controversial, and the new cases will reopen the question of how much attention the Supreme Court should pay to international law.

Bryan S. Gowdy, a lawyer for Mr. Graham, said in an interview that his client had never been convicted of the robbery that sent him to prison for the rest of his life. Though evidence was presented concerning the robbery, the trial judge found only that Mr. Graham had violated the terms of his probation after an earlier conviction for armed burglary and attempted armed robbery when he was 16.

“When our children make mistakes, are we going to lock them up and throw away the key for life?” Mr. Gowdy said. “If you follow the rationale of Roper, that’s not appropriate.”

In rejecting a challenge to Mr. Graham’s sentence last year, a Florida appeals court acknowledged that “a true life sentence is typically reserved for juveniles guilty of more heinous crimes such as homicide.” But the court added that Mr. Graham “rejected his second chance” in violating the terms of his probation “and chose to continue committing crimes at an escalating pace.”

A ruling in favor of the prisoners in the two cases — Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, and Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621 — could be quite narrow. The Supreme Court may leave for another day, for instance, the question of how murders committed by juveniles may be punished.

Last year, drawing a similar distinction, the court said in Kennedy v. Louisiana that crimes against individuals that do not involve killing, including the rape of a child by an adult, cannot be punished by death.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

Sexting and the law

This is an excellent article about the legal aspects of sexting.

I wonder if this is simply a fad of the moment brought about by the

ease of taking pictures of oneself with a web cam. The major problem is 

that the pictures have found their way on to the Internet and viewing

open to one and all with all the dangers attached.

It was on a listserv that I belong to:

http://tinyurl.com/cqp2h9

It can also be found on the findlaw web site under commentaries

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/

How do we teach that different does not mean bad?

Immigration has become a volatile issue that is apparently, no longer looked at in terms of the issues of labor, etc., but with this incident is seemingly linked with racism. Scary

Taken from New York Times Online

April 28, 2009

2 White Youths on Trial in Killing of a Mexican

By SEAN D. HAMILL

POTTSVILLE, Pa. — Ethnicity was at the center of opening arguments here Monday in the trial of two white teenagers charged in the fatal beating of an illegal immigrant from Mexico last July.

Lawyers for the two defendants described the death of the 25-year-old victim, Luis Ramírez, as a result of nothing more than a street fight gone bad in the nearby community of Shenandoah, some 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia. They denied that Mr. Ramírez had been killed because he was Mexican or in the United States illegally.

But the lead prosecutor, Robert P. Frantz, assistant Schuylkill County district attorney, told jurors that there was a reason the case had drawn close attention in the heated national debate over immigration.

“They called Mr. Ramírez a spic,” Mr. Frantz said of the defendants, Brandon Piekarski, 17, and Derrick Donchak, 19. “They told him to go back to Mexico. They told him: ‘This is Shenandoah. You don’t belong here.’ “

Mr. Piekarski’s lawyer, Frederick J. Fanelli, said Mr. Ramírez had started the brawl after taking offense at an innocent comment that one of a group of six Shenandoah Valley High School football players made to a girl who was with him.

Of the prosecutors, Mr. Fanelli said: “They chose to make this case about race. Why when the injured person is white is it a street fight, and when the injured person is a minority is it a hate crime?”

The beating occurred on the night of July 12, and Mr. Ramírez died of head injuries two days later. Mr. Piekarski faces the most serious charge, criminal homicide, because, prosecutors say, he kicked Mr. Ramírez in the head as he lay unconscious on the ground after being punched by another of the six youths. That kick proved to be the fatal blow, the prosecution says.

Mr. Donchak is charged with aggravated assault and other counts, including that of supplying a dozen 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor to his five friends before the fight.

Both defendants are also charged with ethnic intimidation.

The state charged two others in the group as well. One of them, Colin Walsh, 17, was accused of delivering the punch that knocked Mr. Ramírez unconscious. But state charges against Mr. Walsh were dropped, and he was charged instead in a federal case that has been sealed.

The other youth, who is charged as a juvenile, spoke many of the slurs directed at Mr. Ramírez, prosecutors say. His case has not yet been heard. Both he and Mr. Walsh are expected to testify as prosecution witnesses.

The furor surrounding Mr. Ramírez’s death brought demonstrations to Shenandoah last summer on behalf of immigrant rights, and counterdemonstrations as well. The largest, by groups favoring a crackdown on illegal immigrants, drew more than 500 people.

Then, when a protest outside the Pottsville courthouse, by a group supporting immigrant rights, grew so loud that it disrupted a preliminary hearing for Mr. Piekarski and Mr. Donchak, the county sheriff decided to bolster security for the trial.

Determined to keep protesters a quarter-mile from the courthouse, the sheriff, Joseph G. Groody, called in help from the local police and state troopers, who patrolled the area surrounding the courthouse Monday while a half-dozen sheriff’s deputies guarded the courtroom.

But a large rally against illegal immigration was canceled, and only three people in all showed up outside the courthouse, holding signs that said, “Self-Defense Knows No Race.”

“So far it’s been good, and I hope it stays that way,” Sheriff Groody said. “But when it comes down to the day of the verdict, I’m sure that will be a busy day.”

The sheriff said he hoped the trial would produce some larger lessons. “People have to learn to live together,” he said. “We have to learn to get along in society.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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37 Year Old is in Juvenile Detention

Truth is surely stranger than fiction.

April 26, 2009

A Killer at 16, and Still in California’s Juvenile Justice System Decades Later

By JESSE McKINLEY

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Except for one detail and one horrifying crime, Donald Schmidt is a run-of-the-mill juvenile offender. He watches television, does chores, talks to his lawyer and waits for his release.

The detail is his age: Mr. Schmidt is 37, the oldest defendant ever in California’s juvenile justice system. Just 16 when he molested and drowned a 3-year-old girl while high on methamphetamine, he has been in juvenile facilities for two decades, sometimes alongside teenagers who were not yet born when he was convicted.

Under California law, juvenile offenders who commit serious crimes can be kept in the system until they are 25. Mr. Schmidt’s detention, though, has been extended under a rarely invoked state code that allows continued detention if a jury finds the inmate has a “mental disorder, defect or abnormality that causes the person to have serious difficulty controlling his or her dangerous behavior.”

Because Mr. Schmidt was convicted as a juvenile and continued to be held under the mental health code, he cannot be transferred to an adult facility.

The code requires such petitions for extended detention to be renewed or rejected every two years. On Tuesday, prosecutors will again go to trial to argue that Mr. Schmidt should remain in juvenile custody, an argument they have made repeatedly, and successfully, since 1997, when he was first eligible for release.

“We believe he’s a psychopath,” said Bob Lee, the district attorney in Santa Cruz County. “And we believe has he has no regrets or remorse for his conduct.”

Since 1999, Mr. Schmidt has served time with other extended-term detainees at the Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino. His longtime public defender, Bill Weigel, said staff members at the facility had said that Mr. Schmidt had excelled in treatment. He has a full-time job on the facility’s paint crew, has earned a high school diploma and serves as a grief counselor for his much younger fellow detainees.

“Anyone that has had any actual contact with him will have nothing but positive things to say about him, from his behavior issues to his progress in treatment,” said Mr. Weigel, who added that Mr. Schmidt’s seven-person treatment team would testify on his behalf Monday. “They’ve worked very hard with Don.”

For its part, the California Corrections and Rehabilitation Department seems conflicted. In December, the department’s Division of Juvenile Justice, formerly the California Youth Authority, said Mr. Schmidt did not qualify for more detention, but two months later, the same department’s Juvenile Parole Board disagreed and asked Mr. Lee to pursue another two-year extension.

A psychologist asked in February by the parole board to evaluate Mr. Schmidt found that he was “a moderate risk” to public safety but that further detention was not warranted. And at a preliminary hearing on April 17, another clinical psychologist, Richard A. Starrett, told Judge Robert B. Atack of Santa Cruz County Court that while Mr. Schmidt was still a danger, he was not a psychopath.

“Over all,” Dr. Starrett testified, “he seems to be in the high to high-moderate range in propensity for future violence.”

Experts in juvenile justice say that the case is an anomaly but that it highlights the somewhat foggy terrain of so-called civil commitments as applied to juvenile sex offenders. At least 20 states have laws allowing adult sex offenders to be confined beyond their prison terms, but such rules for juveniles are much rarer, said Melissa Sickmund, the chief of systems research for the National Center for Juvenile Justice, a nonprofit research organization in Pittsburgh.

Barry Krisberg, the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, in Oakland, Calif., called Mr. Schmidt’s situation “one in a million.”

“You have somebody who is absolutely in legal limbo,” Mr. Krisberg said. “On one hand you’re saying he’s doing everything that’s being requested of him, but there are no new treatments for him to cure him. So how does he ever get out?”

Mr. Krisberg, who has often criticized the treatment of minors in custody, also questioned why a lay jury — and not mental health experts — was being asked to evaluate Mr. Schmidt.

Through his lawyer, Mr. Schmidt declined to be interviewed. In December 1988, Mr. Schmidt, a runaway with a history of drug and alcohol abuse, went to the home of Leslie Silvola with Ms. Silvola’s 17-year-old daughter, Lisa, an acquaintance. Ms. Silvola, a disabled construction worker, lived in the secluded mountain town of Lompico, about 55 miles south of San Francisco.

At some point Mr. Schmidt was apparently left alone in a bathroom with Lisa’s 3-year-old sister, Marihia, who was found a short while later unconscious in the tub. She died two days later. An autopsy revealed that she had been sodomized.

After a judge determined that his limited intelligence and maturity prevented Mr. Schmidt’s being tried as an adult, he was convicted as a juvenile of murder and sexual assault, though the sexual assault verdict was later dismissed.

Leslie Silvola, now 54, had pleaded no contest to furnishing drugs to a minor and child endangerment, in exchange for her testimony against Mr. Schmidt.

In an interview on Friday, Ms. Silvola — who has changed her last name and lives in Michigan — disputed much of the public record of Mr. Schmidt’s trial, including testimony that she had given him methamphetamine, although he tested positive for the drug upon his arrest.

Ms. Silvola, who served less than a year in county jail, said she never recovered from her daughter’s death. “I pray to God that he doesn’t get out,” she said.

But Mr. Weigel says Mr. Schmidt himself was sexually abused as a child, a fact that contributed to his attack on Marihia, which he deeply regrets.

“He’s not a danger, he’s done his time, he’s safe,” he said. “But they are using these procedural mechanisms to keep him.”

Mr. Lee, the Santa Cruz district attorney, said he had no doubts that Mr. Schmidt continued to be a threat to society.

“We are absolutely convinced that Donald Schmidt is a danger to not only our community but every community he’s released into,” Mr. Lee said. “And we will continue to try Donald Schmidt until some jury tells us not to.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Crime is down but domestic violence increased

The is also from the CJJ listserv mentioned in the previous post

Read the entire article 

Domestic Violence, Child Abuse Up In St. Louis

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

Police say domestic violence and child abuse are soaring in the city of St. Louis, 

reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Local children's hospitals say 

they're seeing more - and more severely - shaken and beaten children. 

A crisis nursery says it has a record caseload and had to turn away 

more than 200 children in March for lack of bed space. 

Police and family violence professionals say these could be 

signs that the recession is fueling violence.

There is some conflicting evidence: 

The Missouri Department of Social Services shows no 

recent uptick in child abuse and neglect. Two local shelters 

say they aren't seeing a rise in battered women seeking help, 

although experts say that could mean women are 

too afraid to leave an abuser during hard times. 

The St. Louis police chief is at a loss for another way 

to explain a sudden rise in family violence while, overall, 

reports of crime are down. "That's really the only explanation 

to have such a dramatic increase in child abuse and 

domestic abuse at a time when the unemployment rate is up," 

said Chief Dan Isom. He said the department is working with 

St. Louis Children's Hospital to study the problem.

Fifth Grade Drug Sellers; what next?

This is copied from CJJ which is a compilation of criminal justice news and which I receive as a daily email listserv. It is called Crime and Justice News by Criminal Justice Journalists

This is entire article

5th Graders Arrested In Indiana Pot Deal

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

Two Indianapolis area fifth-graders -- ages 10 and 11 - - have been arrested after police say they were caught conducting a marijuana deal at school, reports the Indianapolis Star. "We are getting to a state of emergency," said the Rev. Byron Alston, director of Save the Youth, a social services program. "When you have elementary students selling dope in the school, we've got a serious problem."

"It's kind of shocking that it would happen at an elementary school, especially this one," said a parent. "[The school] has always been a well- disciplined, well-managed school, with strict policies on dress and behavior. This is the first time we've ever heard of a problem like this." Indiana University studies on drug, alcohol and tobacco use start with Grade 6. Most state and national studies on youth drug use do not include kids younger than 12. In 2008, IU's Indiana Prevention Resource Center found that overall drug use among the state's students had dropped, and that the average age for first trying marijuana was 13.8 years.