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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #43-03 Concrete Coffins: The Juvenile Death Penalty This week on Making Contact... "Every sixteen-year old executed has been black. In every case the victims were white. In every case all the jurors were white. In every case, all the lawyers and the judge were white. So the death penalty for sixteen year olds in Louisiana, exists only for black kids who kill white people." BABICH: The United States stands alone as the sole nation on the planet that does not prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders. There are about 80 persons on death row for capital crimes they committed while under 18 years of age. The most recent execution of a juvenile offender was in April 2003 in Oklahoma. On this edition of Making Contact, the National Radio Project's Prison Desk takes a look at the juvenile death penalty in the United States. We profile two cases. We also look at the movement and issues behind abolishing the death penalty for juvenile offenders. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact -- an international radio program, seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. It was the middle of the night on September 19, 1997. A man named Jason Erie was on the side of the road in Texarkana, Texas, trying to wave someone down to help him with a jump-start. After a while, a car pulled up. Apparently, it had been a boozy ride. The two couples in the car had been drinking and smoking marijuana since the afternoon. One of the couples had gotten into a fight; Julius Murphy tried to throw himself out of the car while it traveled at more than 80 miles per hour down the interstate. According to court records, it was Murphy who assisted the stranded motorist Jason Erie with the jump-start. Eerie was gratified and gave him $5 dollars, which wasn't considered enough, though. Back in the car, one of the women, Marie Woods, was holding Murphy's .25 caliber pistol. Woods' boyfriend , a seventeen-year old named Chris Solomon, allegedly encouraged Murphy to shoot the man he just helped. Murphy walked back to Jason Erie, robbed him of his wallet and shot him point blank, in the head. The two couples fled the scene. At a stop, there was another fight between Murphy and his girlfriend, Christina Davis. She ran away, called the police, and turned in her friends. Murphy was convicted for murder and received a death sentence. And, although Chris Solomon didn't pull the trigger, under Texas' "Law of Parties" he was convicted of capital murder as well and sent to death row. Alwin Smith, the lead prosecutor in Chris Solomon's capital murder case, explains that in Texas, the driver of a get-away-car in a bank robbery, for example, is just as guilty of murder as the robber who kills a bank teller during the heist. So is the case with Chris Solomon. SMITH: In addition to that law, the facts in this case showed that Christopher Solomon had already, previous to this event, had participated in the robbery and kidnapping of another person, and while he was out on bond, committed this crime. Additionally, he instructed his cohort, Mr. Murphy, that he should kill the victim. Because that was how he got caught the last time, because they didn’t kill their victim. BABICH: But there are concerns about the testimony that implicates Solomon in the murder. His defense attorneys say that in order to protect her boyfriend, Julius Murphy, Christina Davis told police that Solomon pressured Murphy to do the shooting. The other testimony comes from Solomon's girlfriend, Marie Woods, who was an accomplice. According to court records, in her initial statements to authorities, Woods didn't mention that Solomon had anything to do with Murphy's decision to kill Jason Erie. Scott Langley is the volunteer coordinator for an Amnesty International campaign to save Chris Solomon. LANGLEY: There was a plea-bargain agreement with Marie Woods and the prosecution. Marie Woods pleaded guilty to being involved with the crime and in exchange for testifying against Chris Solomon, Mrs Woods was offered a twenty-year sentence. So what we have is a situation of an accomplice, an eyewitness accomplice giving testimony against a fellow co-defendant in exchange for a lesser sentence. Christina Davis who is Julius Murphy’s girlfriend, was the person, actually, who turned everyone in, according to what I know from the trial and no charges were every brought against Ms. Davis. BABICH: Marie Woods has yet to serve any time. Prosecutor Alwin Smith considers Woods only a "passive participant" in the murder of Jason Erie, and says that her testimony against Solomon is valid. SMITH: The only accomplices that we got any testimony from, were from the two girls that were in the car with Murphy and Solomon during the commission of the robbery. There was never any suggestion or any evidence at all, that showed that they were active participants. Only, I think Ms. Woods, was actually a passive participant in the crime, and her only involvement was she handed Murphy the gun… BABICH: And for that, says Smith, Woods will stand trial. SMITH: Ms. Woods is—currently has a case pending and she is awaiting trial on her case right now. She’s either gonna enter a plea of guilty and receive a sentence in the penitentiary or she’s gonna go to trial. Now Ms. Davis, who is the other lady that was in the car, the courts actually ruled that she was not a participant in any way, fashion or form in this case. She was not an accomplice as a matter of law. BABICH: Beyond the particulars of the murder case, there's the question of whether Chris Solomon, a seventeen year old at the time of the Jason Erie killing, was too young to be fully responsible for his actions or understand the legal ramifications. Winnie Rafael Gallegos, Chris' mother, says that at the time of his arrest her son was not fully aware of what was happening to him. GALLEGOS: When he called me, when he was in county jail. It seemed like he was in good spirits, you know, he would be joking around. I guess he didn’t think because—one, he doesn’t think because he did that crime, he should be punished for it, and I do believe that too. And I think he’s not mature enough to realize these things, that this can actually happen to him. And he doesn’t have enough self-confidence to even know this. And I don’t think he’s mature enough to tell you the truth. LANGLEY: When Chris Solomon was three years old, his father and his mother divorced and there was actually a period where Chris went for about seven years without being with his mom, living mostly with his father. BABICH: Scott Langley of Amnesty International... LANGLEY: And his father, who was in the military, traveled quite a bit. And while Chris was able to see a little bit of his world, and experience different countries, I think this caused him to be uprooted a lot and was constantly on the go and didn’t really have a place to settle and call his own and this I think, ended up fostering some personality disorders and actually during the trial, a psychological evaluation was done that classified Chris as having a personality disorder. And also Chris Solomon, as evidenced the day that the murder happened, abused drugs and alcohol at an early age, and I believe those things being big influences at the time of the murder, being under the influence of alcohol and marijuana. BABICH: Chris Solomon's background wasn't discussed during his trial. For prosecutor Alwin Smith, the law is the law; and in Texas 17 year olds involved in murder get the death sentence. SMITH: This was crime that was aggravated by the mere fact that the victim in this case was someone who had broken down on the side of the road, who had given up, was not fighting.the robbery, and in fact had already given up his wallet to Murphy before he was shot and killed point-blank, right in his forehead. So when you look at what was done to the victim in this case, and you look at Solomon’s previous criminal background, I just don’t see that there was really any option for the state of Texas. BABICH: Chris Solomon is now 22 years old. Scott Langley says that when he visits Chris, it's hard not to notice that the death row inmate is still very much like a seventeen year old, having had no opportunity to grow and mature. LANGLEY: Chris Solomon’s life on death-row in Texas, is basically living in a concrete coffin awaiting his death. It’s well known that prisoners on death-row in Texas, are only out of their cell one hour a day, being locked up 23 hours. And last month, talking to Chris on death-row, he explained to me that the hour he is allowed to be out of his cell, is basically being in another cell by himself across the hallway. BABICH: There's no execution date set for Chris Solomon. In the meantime, his mother, Winnie Gallegos, hopes for a retrial, and simply tries to cope with the fact that one day the State of Texas may execute her son. GALLEGOS: It is very hard. I try not to think about it, but um—I cry when I think about it. So, there are days that I don’t want to think about it—some people think that I take it so well, but it’s not true, I just don’t want to dwell on it, you know. BABICH: For more information on the Chris Solomon case you can go to the website savechris.org. That's savechris.org. We'll have more on the juvenile death penalty in a few moments. MUSIC BREAK You‚re listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you would like more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to contact any of our guests, please give us a call. It's toll free: 800-529-5736. That‚s 800-529-5736. You can also visit our web site at radioproject.org. That's radioproject.org BABICH: In 1988 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the minimum age for a death sentence is 15-years old at the time of the capital offense. The case of Kevin Stanford challenged that ruling in 1989, but lost. For more on that case, we turn to Making Contact's Aimee Pomerleau. POMERLEAU: Baerbel Poore was a 20-year old single mother working as a gas station attendant at the Chekkar Oil Station in Louisville, Kentucky. It was January 7th, 1981. She was closing for the night, when three young men came upon her, intending to rob the station. They sexually assaulted her, then took her to another location where she was shot twice in the head and killed. Kevin Stanford, David Buchanan and Troy Johnson were arrested within a week of the murder. Of the three, Kevin Stanford was the only one to get the death penalty. David Buchanan is serving a life-sentence and Troy Johnson spent 9 months in jail. Eileen Stanford, Kevin’s wife of 8 years, says the jury who convicted him never heard all the pertinent facts about the crime, the arrest, and his childhood. Kevin Stanford , who was 17 at the time, is now 40 years old, and has spent the last 23 years on death row. While he says he participated in the crime, Kevin Stanford says he did not commit the murder. There’s no evidence to connect him to the gun—which he says was Troy’s. Kevin was held in jail for a year and a half waiting for his trial: STANFORD: During this time his public defender came to see him only once and did not do any meaningful investigation. He also did not inform the jury that 2 eye-witnesses had identified Kevin’s co-defendant’s uncle as one of the two men walking away from the victim’s car after she was shot. Kevin had identified this man as the killer when he was beaten by police. POMERLEAU: His codefendent’s uncle, Calvin Buchanan, a fourth person involved, was never charged because he was a police informant, says Eileen Stanford. Kevin Stanford’s current lawyer, Margaret O’Donnell, says emotions about Baerbel Poore’s murder ran high in the community. O’DONNELL: All 3 boys who were arrested and charged were African-American and Ms. Poore was a white woman. Kevin Stanford was tried by an all-white jury. The evidence which was used to convict Kevin were his co-defendant’s statement which came in, not through his testimony, but through the testimony of police officers, so Kevin’s attorneys were never able to cross-examine the co-defendant. And the other co-defendant received a 9-month sentence in juvenile court to testifyagainst Kevin. And that was the main evidence that was used against him in addition to some alleged statements that Kevin made while he was in the juvenile detention center. POMERLEAU: Eileen Stanford says Kevin was singled out because he refused an offer for a deal after his arrest: STANFORD: He was very angry because of the camps he had been sent to where he had been mistreated and one of the prosecutors was one who he had dealt with before. And being a smart kid and someone who was on drugs and alcohol at the time, he basically told them to take their deal and he wasn’t going to be a rat. I think it would have been someone else if it would have been easier, but Kevin was a very likely candidate because he had no one to speak up for him. POMERLEAU: A social services report from his childhood documented that Kevin had been essentially without a family since he was 8 years-old. His mother didn’t want him. His grandmother grudgingly cared for him. Kevin Stanford was Linda Luking’s first case as a social worker. She says she had never seen so much rage contained in a body before, but as she worked with him over time, she saw that underlying the anger was a lot of pain. Stanford told Luking how he had endured years of sexual abuse from adult caretakers and older neighborhood children. LUKING: Kevin learned that if you shoplift and you stand outside the door at the store you shoplift in, that eventually the police come and they take you to the juvenile detention center. And he went on to tell me, that—he said “Linda, you have your own room there and they lock the door at night, and no one comes in to bother you. It was like, it was wonderful, and he said “they feed you,” he said “Linda, they feed you three times a day!” And when you have that much pain—most human beings cannot sustain that level of pain, and so they turn to addiction. POMERLEAU: Drugs and alcohol were a large part of his childhood, and by age 12 he was dependent on them. But the jury never got to hear any of this. In the 1980s, the juvenile death penalty system wasn’t very sophisticated; most lawyers were inexperienced and judges were not very well informed about these kinds of cases. And it wasn’t until much later that the details of the lives of offenders were taken into consideration. For Stanford, it’s too late. If information crucial to a case is not presented during the original trial, it cannot be brought out later during the appeal. Victor Strieb is a professor at the College of Law at Ohio Northern University, and is considered an expert in juvenile death penalty cases. He’s been following Stanford’s case STRIEB: There’s a very strong reason to believe that if his trial were today, and people knew about his background, he would not be acquitted, he would never be found innocent, but nobody would ever sentence him to death, because he just had been abused so horribly, and if you rape and beat and mistreat children for so long, pretty soon, you’ve got a pretty strange person. In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court decided, in a case for which Strieb served as co-counselor, to exclude anyone 15 years-olds and younger from the death penalty. A year later, lawyers tried raise the minimum death penalty age to 18 with the case of Kevin Stanford. But the court refused to set a new standard. Attorney Margaret O’Donnell. O’DONNELL: Kevin Stanford is a poster boy for the issues of lack of cognitive development for juveniles. He was immature, impulsive, he lacked self-control, had poor judgment, he had an under-developed sense of responsibility, and, he was vulnerable to the domination of his elders. POMERLEAU: Ironically, it may be prison that saved his life. Certainly, it’s clear he wasn’t heading in a positive direction before his arrest. But while in prison, he’s earned two college degrees and counsels at-risk youth; He says he’s trying to help the kids understand how their choices can affect their lives. He says he feels remorse for his part in Baerbel Poore’s death. His wife Eileen Stanford says he’s no longer the angry person he was at 17. He’s now married, has a 22 year-old daughter and a grand-daughter. Stanford has literally grown up on death row. STANFORD: He has learned so much through love, education, and a strong belief in God, to accept his childhood, and the things that happened to him. And he has used his time to learn about abuse, something he didn’t even recognize as a child. When you are brought up in that manner, you tend to assume that everyone lives that way. You don’t understand how abusive it is until you get away from it and grow. I think the unconditional love that I have given him has made a difference. For instance, he had already started a lot of change in prison before we got back in touch. But I think that is probably something he’d been looking for all of his life, was unconditional love. POMERLEAU: O’Donnell says if you send kids to death row or life sentences… O’DONNELL: Then it basically tells us that there is no way for anyone to redeem themselves. And I think that everyone needs to face the consequences of their actions, but I think there are prison sentences that can protect society, and can be fair sentences based on the circumstances of the case, and that we as a society, do not need to kill teenagers who act impulsively and recklessly without regard for the value of human life. POMERLEAU: Since his last appeal was denied by the Supreme Court, his fate is now in the hands of the Kentucky governor for clemency. In June 2003, the governor announced that he intends to commute Stanford’s sentence, but has yet to sign any papers. Most likely he’ll wait until the end of his term in December 2003.The Communications Director for the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office said he couldn’t comment because of the governor’s pending decision. For Making Contact, I’m Aimee Pomerleau BABICH: According to many observers the juvenile death penalty in the United States could be in its last days. In October 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided again not to hear the Kevin Stanford case, four dissenting justices said they were ready to declare the execution of juvenile offenders unconstitutional and "put an end to this shameful practice." Adam Ortiz, co-coordinator of the Juvenile Death Penalty Initiative, says the time may be right to abolish the juvenile death penalty. ORTIZ: Most people in the United States oppose this practice and likewise, at least anecdotally, the people I speak to are surprised that we even have it, I mean it’s such a ridiculously outdated punishment, it is so inconsistent with everything that we know about children and adolescents, that it shocks people that a few states still carry this punishment out in the middle of the night. And it is only a few states, and hopefully it’s in its last days. BABICH: In addition, the execution of juvenile offenders is banned under international law, says professor of law Victor Streib at Ohio Northern University. STREIB: International law has totally done away with the death penalty for juvenile offenders. It is now clear under internation law that it is illegal to execute juvenile offenders. There are many constitutional provisions about this, many United Nations treaties, other kinds of provisions, you can go back to the Geneva conventions in World War II and find that, in essence, we have always thought that the minimum age for the death penalty was age 18. And so now the United States is the only country in the world, literally the only country in the world that still legally authorizes the death penalty for juvenile offenders. BABICH: A legal opening, says Adam Ortiz, may be the precedent set forth by the 2002 Atkins v. Virginia case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. ORTIZ: It was cruel and unusual punishment because—for a number of reasons because they had “diminished capacities”, they weren’t able to reason as well as regular adults—they tend to follow others, they tend to act impulsively. And this was a landmark decision and in our view--and it is a view shared by the overwhelming majority of physicians, the medical community, the legal community, the children welfare community--s that children are no different, that they also have diminished capacities and deserve special protection from our society’s most harsh punishment BABICH: There are also glaring racial disparities in juvenile death sentences. Victor Streib points to Louisiana as just one example. STREIB: Every sixteen-year old executed has been black. In every case the victims were white. In every case all the jurors were white. In every case, all the lawyers and the judge were white. Not just a percentage, not just most, not just more than normal, every case. So the death penalty for sixteen year olds in Louisiana, exists only for black kids who kill white people. So our research is beginning to show that the death penalty for sixteen year-olds in those few states, so far we’re focusing on Arizona and Louisiana--but some other states have similar problems--that the racial data are just so astonishing, always kids of color, always white victims, and always all-white juries and white prosecutors. That’s sort of a small part of the juvenile death penalty, maybe just a bite of it, but I think it’s one of the most disgusting parts. And I think that’s why we need to reveal and talk about—it’s not a statistical anomaly, it’s just pure racism. ORTIZ: Two out of three inmates—juvenile inmates on death row in the United States are minority. BABICH: Adam Ortiz… ORTIZ: While 72%, almost 3 out of 4 of the victims of these juveniles are white. And this is a statistic that has been found to be very consistent across the death penalty in all states in which it’s been studied. Is that those who kill a white person, their lives are more expendable than those who kill a black person. BABICH: Almost all juvenile offenders on death row have experienced abuse and neglect while growing up. Victor Streib says that if you look at the backgrounds of some of these kids it becomes easier to understand why they turn to violence. STREIB: I represented a girl by the name of Paula Cooper in Indiana who was fifteen years old, in Gary, Indiana, where she and some of her friends were just trying to find some spending money so they went to a little old lady down the street, a nice little lady—and this is one of these “black/white” stories, I mean this was a largely black neighborhood in Gary, Indiana. And the little old lady was one of the remaining white—original white residents. The little old lady let her in and Paula and her friends stole some of her money and then Paula just exploded and stabbed her repeatedly and then killed her. The lady didn’t do anything to her, she was a sweet little old lady who was trying to help her out. So that seems unexplainable, I mean just, how in the world can that happen? And then by the time I got in the case at the Indiana Supreme Court level, we began to do some research about her background and found that in fact she had been raped and beaten by mommy’s boyfriends and she would run away from home—and it was a live-in boyfriend--and the police, cause she was only fifteen, would pick her up on the streets and call home and say we have Paula down here, you have to come and get her. So mommy’s byfriend would come down and pick her up and sign for her, and take her home and engage in the same behavior that she ran away from in the first place. BABICH: Streib says it's not excusable, but understandable that Paula violently "exploded" that day. STREIB: Now if you focus on the suffering of the victim it’s absolutely horrible. If you focused on why Paula did such a thing, I think you can understand. But the person who put this in motion, the persons who put this in motion, are all those people who abused Paula. I mean they set her up as a time-bomb and all of a sudden she exploded all over some innocent third party and Paula is spending the rest of her life in prison now. But you kinda wanna go talk to those people who did that to her originally. ORTIZ: Well one of the great things about the American justice system is that we punish people according to their culpability. We measure how blame-worthy they are. BABICH: Adam Ortiz... ORTIZ: Here we do not subject those who are mentally insane or mentally retarded to capital punishment because we know that they don’t have the capacity to fully understand the consequences of their actions, as much as healthy adults do. Children are no different and this isn’t to say that those who commit heinous crimes, regardless of what their capacities are, shouldn’t be punished, or treated or handled or forced to take responsibility for their acts. But at the same time we balance that, knowing that some categories of people do not deserve the same punishment as those that are healthy, and it’s that sense of fairness that has made our justice system strong. BABICH: And that's it for this edition of Making Contact: A look at the juvenile death penalty. Thanks for listening. This has been a special production of the National Radio Project's Prison Desk. We had interviews, research, and editorial assistance from Lauren Toker. Clea Huot provided production assistance. If you would like more information about the subject of this week's program, or if you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. That's 800-529-5736. You can also visit our website at radioproject.org. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Lisa Rudman is our executive director. Peggy Law, founding director. Associate Producer, Aimee Pomerleau. Office manager, Rosalyn Fay. Associate manager, Susanna Hines. Production intern, Lindsay Goldsmith. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National advisor, David Barsamian. And, I'm Managing Producer, Phillip Babich. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio. Until next time. |