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Is this justice?: The 'adult-time' law burdens children already handicapped by poor parenting Last of four parts Wednesday, March 21, 2001 By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Christopher M. cleaned up well for his trial for armed robbery before Common Pleas Judge Timothy O'Reilly.
Unlike many teen-age defendants who show up in oversized T-shirts and sagging jeans, Christopher dressed in a gray suit, combed his hair straight back like James Dean and hung a cross around his neck.
Unfortunately, he couldn't clean up his parents, who joined him on Sept. 9, 1997, in O'Reilly's courtroom.
His mother, Roberta, arrived in red Allegheny County Jail fatigues and silver ankle shackles because she'd violated her probation for drug possession.
His father, William, who had his own record for drug possession and driving while intoxicated, went to court with stubble on his face and 80 staples in his skull to repair injuries he'd suffered when he had rolled over a truck he'd been driving without a license. Christopher had skipped six months of high school in 1996 to care for his father after the crash.
In the back of the courtroom sat Christopher's 15-year-old brother and 9-year-old sister. They depended on 16-year-old Christopher's earnings as a basement waterproofer to support their family.
Because he was accused of a serious crime -- armed robbery -- Christopher had became one of the 129 Allegheny County teen-agers charged as adults during the first year of Pennsylvania's "adult time for adult crime" law.
The law was meant to take the state's worst juvenile criminals off the streets and put them in prison, but it often has scooped up children like Christopher who are more deprived than depraved.
Many of the teens charged that first year had lives as tragic as Christopher's.
In order to obtain some information about these teens that is normally confidential, the Post-Gazette agreed not to disclose their full identities. For that reason, and because those whose cases were transferred to the juvenile system do not have criminal records for those offenses, the newspaper is using only first names and last initials of those whose stories are told.
More than half -- 52 percent -- had been abused or neglected. Christopher was among them.
In addition, at least 40 percent were the children of criminals. Eight, including Christopher, had two parents with criminal records. And that's an incomplete count because a third of the youths did not list two parents' names on police and court papers.
Gov. Tom Ridge, who supported the get-tough legislation that treated Christopher as an adult, acknowledges that many of the teens affected were victims of abuse. "These kids didn't have much of a chance from the get-go because they didn't have much of a family," he said.
As both a prosecutor and a defense attorney in Erie, he had researched teens' backgrounds. "Your heart bleeds for these kids," he said, "because the environment in which they were raised was polluted with drugs, violence, abuse which they observed and abuse directed to them as victims. Are we surprised that their response at age 15 is not rational or normal or peaceful?"
No prior record
Though his hearing before O'Reilly would go steadily downhill, Christopher had been lucky in court up to that point.
His biggest break was that the prosecutor had agreed to his request that his trial be moved from criminal court to juvenile court. So now he faced O'Reilly, a juvenile court judge, who would send him to reform school if he was convicted instead of an adult prison.
It helped that he had no juvenile record, was only 15 at the time of the crime and wasn't accused of holding the gun during the robbery. The prosecutor decided Christopher deserved the chance to benefit from reform school.
But Christopher is an exception. In general, Pennsylvania's "adult time" law has made it harder for a teen with no previous record to get a trial in the juvenile system.
One study showed that in 1994, before Pennsylvania's "adult time" law, only 7 percent of teens transferred to criminal court were first-time offenders. After the law, more than half of the children tried as adults in 1996 -- 53 percent -- were first-time offenders.
Though Pennsylvania sends to adult criminal court only youths charged with serious felonies, other states are much more liberal. As a result, nationwide, of the juveniles tried as adults and incarcerated, nearly 40 percent went for nonviolent offenses such as burglary, car theft and drug possession in 1997.
Shay Bilchik, executive director of the Child Welfare League of America, is among the critics who say "adult time" laws have gone too far. "There is an overuse of the transfer of kids into the criminal system. These are kids who do not belong there," Bilchik said.
One such child, Bilchik said, was Anthony Laster, a mentally retarded and nearly deaf boy from Bilchik's home state of Florida. Shortly after Laster's mother died in 1998, Laster, who was 15, asked a 14-year-old boy in his special education class for lunch money. When the boy refused, Laster reached into the classmate's pocket and took $2. Laster spent the next 48 days, including his first Christmas without his mother, behind bars, charged with robbery as an adult. Only after cameramen from "60 Minutes" arrived in Boyton Beach to film one of Laster's hearings did the prosecutor drop the charges, freeing the boy from jail.
A former prosecutor, Bilchik has met children who have committed unconscionable crimes. He knows the juvenile system cannot save all of them. But, he said, the decisions about where to try children should not be made by wholesale groupings, where all 15-year-olds charged with aggravated assault go to criminal court. Instead, he said, decisions should be made based on individual children's backgrounds and circumstances.
A mother's tale
Christopher's circumstances included a recent stint in a homeless shelter because his family had been evicted from the hotel where they had been staying. By the time of his trial, they'd rented an apartment, but didn't have a phone.
His lawyer would tell the judge about that later, but first, the victims of the hold-up and his partner in crime, Adam Flint, testified against him.
Flint was 18 at the time of the robbery, just five days before Christmas in 1996. He was too old to get a transfer to juvenile court. He arrived at Christopher's trial in jail fatigues and shackles, having already been sentenced to five to 10 years for this robbery and another one.
Flint wouldn't testify until the judge threatened to hold him in contempt, after which he said he was the man with the gun and Christopher was his "companion."
A gas station clerk testified that he was mopping the floor at closing time when he turned to find a silver pistol pointed at his face. The robbers wore baseball caps pulled low and bandannas pulled up over their noses, but at one point, Christopher's bandanna slipped, and the clerk got a look at him.
Christopher, the clerk said, handed him a plastic bag and told him to fill it with cash from the register. He said they got away with about $100.
Then Christopher's mother took the stand. Before she could profess her son's innocence, she had to explain her shackles and fatigues.
She was only in jail, she said, because she had failed to report to her probation officer after she moved. And, she assured the judge, "I am addressing my drug problem."
She said that on the night of the robbery, she had dropped Christopher and Adam off at Adam's house. Then, she said, she and her husband drove to a bar across the street from the gas station and noticed police already at the station. She contended Adam and Christopher wouldn't have had time to walk from Adam's house to the gas station and rob it before she and her husband arrived by car.
The prosecutor, Eric Woltshock, was perplexed. Hadn't Adam just admitted under oath that he'd robbed the station, Woltshock asked. If he'd had time to walk to the station, the prosecutor demanded, "wouldn't Chris have been equally able to make it?"
Christopher's father told the judge that Christopher was a good boy who'd never been in trouble. "He was just truant. He missed school ... so he could stay by my side" after the truck accident. In fact, Christopher was absent for 110 days of his ninth grade year, after which a judge ruled he was a victim of neglect and ordered his parents to get him back in school.
William conceded under questioning by Woltshock that he had a financial interest in trying to make sure Christopher wasn't convicted and sent away. "After the accident, Chris became the breadwinner in the family," he said.
Then, as the prosecutor argued that the judge should convict Christopher, William reached over the chair in front of him, where he'd placed a black duffel bag and a newspaper.
One of the courtroom's deputy sheriffs, Thomas Merks, demanded, "What are you trying to do?"
Before William could answer, the deputy grabbed him and hauled him out of the courtroom.
There was a pocket knife folded into the newspaper.
Merks charged him with possession of a dangerous weapon in a courtroom, disorderly conduct and possession of an instrument of a crime. He was arraigned and held on $10,000 bond.
He would join his wife in the Allegheny County Jail that night.
Children twice failed
While not all the juveniles charged under the new law have as pathetic a story as Christopher, the law is "sucking in kids who are playing out tragic lives," said Edward Mulvey, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert in mental illness and juvenile justice.
Christopher was at least fortunate that one of his parents showed up at all of his hearings. Some of the abused and neglected teens charged as adults stand alone in court, with no one to cry for them, no one to bail them out.
Some have been in and out of foster care for years, and aren't sure how to contact a birth parent.
One was Rufus P. He and his two younger brothers had been taken from their mother when he was 8 because caseworkers found no food for them in the house. Two years and three foster placements after that, a juvenile court judge sent the three boys to live with their father. Nine months later, the judge moved them again when their father was charged with molesting his girlfriend's daughter.
Rufus confessed to robbing a pizza delivery man at knifepoint and then beating him. He remained in adult court under the new law, and was sentenced to five to 10 years. He then joined his father in state prison.
Another was Kevin W., who had been taken from his crack-addicted mother when he was 7. A school nurse reported that he was covered with bruises and scars and had a buckle-shaped mark on his chest. He often cared for his 5-year-old and 1-year-old sisters while their mother was out. They did not eat routinely, the caseworker told the judge.
When he was 15, Kevin was in a group of five boys when one of them pulled a gun and demanded money from a 13-year-old boy. Kevin's case was moved to juvenile court, where he pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy and was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service.
A study by the Child Welfare League of America of 9- to 12-year-olds arrested in Sacramento, Calif., found foster children were 67 times more likely to be arrested than children raised by their own parents. "These kids have markers on them," said welfare league Deputy Director Michael Petit.
Retired Illinois Judge Thomas Hornsby, a past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, said children's problems need to be fixed the first time the court sees them -- when it declares they're dependent because they've been abused or neglected. "First the kids come in as dependents, then as status offenders [such as truants or runaways], then as delinquents. We fail them each time. Then they commit crimes and end up in the adult court and prison. You can't talk about delinquency without talking about dependency."
Once they're delinquent, most people's sympathy for them ends, however.
They were pitiable when they were punched by their fathers at 10, but not when they are 15 and punch someone else. "Dependent kids and delinquent kids are often the same thing," said Mark Soler, president of the Youth Law Center in Washington D.C.. "But we are not willing to provide help and services for delinquent kids."
Bilchik, of the Child Welfare League in Washington D.C., said society's policies toward juvenile offenders are upside down. "We have poured millions into getting tough with kids because we fear them. If we really loved our kids, we would pour money up front to prevent abuse and neglect."
A broken family
Immediately after Christopher's father was hauled out of O'Reilly's courtroom for having a knife, the judge found Christopher delinquent -- the equivalent of a "guilty" in adult court. O'Reilly asked the probation officer for a recommendation for sentencing.
The officer suggested boot camp or an after-school program called The Academy.
Christopher's lawyer, Helen M. Lynch, asked the judge not to send him away. "He is the sole support of his family," she said.
"Tragically, he supports his family," prosecutor Woltshock shot back. "It may not be good for him to have that responsibility ... He needs to be rehabilitated."
Christopher protested. "I don't think he knows what is in my best interest. It should be up to me. I have a little sister to take care of. I have a little brother at home and my father ..."
Woltshock cut him off. "Your father was just arrested with a knife in his possession," he told the boy. "What kind of family is he going back to?" he asked the judge.
Lynch kept pleading. "He has made one big mistake. ... If you take him, his 9-year-old sister and brother will be alone tonight."
But O'Reilly didn't want the 16-year-old to have to raise a family. "I think he needs to be removed from that situation. I think this robbery had to do with that same situation -- a struggling family," he told Lynch.
"Boot camp is for wise guys. I don't see this kid as a wise guy. I think he needs the benefit of the on-grounds educational component of The Summit" -- a residential reform school.
As deputy sheriffs cuffed Christopher and took him out of the courtroom, his brother and sister remained in the back. Lynch tried to persuade child welfare caseworkers who'd sat through the hearing to allow the children to go live with an uncle.
The 15-year-old pleaded with them to let him go home. Crying, he assured them he could care for his sister by himself. He'd lost his parents. He'd lost his brother. He begged them not to take his sister from him.
But they did. They placed the children in separate group homes.
After eight months at The Summit, Christopher was moved to a group home called Circle C. He was permitted to go home to his parents four months later, in August 1998. His brother and sister returned home three months after that.
Christopher enrolled in a technical school and has managed to stay out of trouble since.
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