The United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows children
under 18 to be sentenced to life without parole. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International report that more than 2,000 inmates are currently serving life
without parole in the United States for crimes committed when they were
juveniles; in the rest of the world, there are only 12 juveniles serving the
same sentence, according to figures reported to the United Nations' Convention
on the Rights of the Child.
In When Kids Get Life, FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel (The O.J. Verdict,
Innocence Lost) travels to Colorado to profile five individuals sentenced to
life without parole as juveniles. Colorado was an early pioneer in juvenile
justice, focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment. But in the late
1980s and 1990s, when a sharp increase in violent crimes by young offenders
attracted enormous press coverage, legislators nationwide clamped down. In
Colorado, the General Assembly eliminated the possibility of parole for life
sentences and expanded the power of district attorneys to treat juveniles as
adults. In 1992, the United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights, which requires that juvenile imprisonment focus on
rehabilitation, but the U.S. reserved the right to sentence juveniles to life
without parole in extreme cases involving the most hardened of criminals ─ the
worst of the worst.
Jacob Ind
The crime scene was gruesome. In December of 1992, 15-year-old Jacob Ind
murdered his mother and stepfather. The troubled family life that led to such a
heinous crime slowly unfolded over the course of his trial. Jacob's defense
claimed he and his brother had endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of his
stepfather. Prosecutors argued the defense was exaggerating the abuse to give
Jacob an excuse to kill. Jacob is now 29. "All I wanted was something to end,"
he says. "I didn't really grasp the permanency of their deaths. I definitely
didn't understand the gravity of what it means to kill somebody." But the
mandatory sentencing law for first-degree murder made no exceptions, regardless
of age. Judge Jane Looney declared at sentencing that her "hands were tied." She
was required by law to sentence Jacob to life without parole.
Nathan Ybanez and Erik Jensen
In 1998, Nathan Ybanez and Erik Jensen were high school students in a wealthy
suburb of Denver and members of a band called Troublebound. Erik came from a
secure, affluent household; Nathan came from an abusive one. Within a year and a
half of their meeting, Nathan killed his mother, and Erik was implicated in the
crime by another friend involved in the cover-up. Both Nathan and Erik were
sentenced to life without parole. How did two boys with no criminal records end
up involved in murder and penalized with a sentence the U.S. claims to reserve
for "hardened criminals" who constitute "an extreme danger to society?" "In 10
years I'll either be on the streets or dead," says Erik, now serving his ninth
year in jail. "I'm not going to keep doing this."
Trevor Jones
Trevor Jones was trying to scam $100 from a classmate, but the plan went awry;
the gun he had feigned offering for sale discharged and killed Matt Foley, who
was attempting to purchase the weapon. At the trial, the jury determined that
Trevor had no intention of shooting anyone and what had happened was reckless
manslaughter -- basically a very bad accident. But because the accident occurred
in the commission of armed robbery, Trevor was found guilty of felony murder,
which carried a mandatory life sentence. He is now spending his 10th year in
prison. Felony murder is a controversial law that charges criminals with murder,
regardless of intent, if a death occurs in the commission of another felony. And
felony murder assigns the same culpability to everyone involved in the felony,
even if the actual murder is committed by only one person in a group,
unbeknownst to the others. Alison Parker, a senior researcher with Human Rights
Watch, has estimated that 26 percent of juvenile offenders sentenced to life
without parole nationwide were convicted of felony murder.
Andrew Medina
Andrew Medina was also charged and sentenced for felony murder. He was only 15
when he and two acquaintances attempted a carjacking. No one knew for sure which
of the three suspects fired the shot that killed the driver, 17-year-old
Kristopher Lohrmeyer. But two of the suspects made deals with the prosecutor,
pleading guilty to second-degree murder and naming Andy as the triggerman. Andy,
however, was not convicted of pulling the trigger but simply for being party to
the carjacking at the time of Lohrmeyer's murder. That was enough for felony
murder, and he was sentenced to life without parole. Andy is currently in the
Colorado State Penitentiary, the state's supermax facility, where he has served
more than four years locked down in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.
The Ongoing Debate
In spite of the dire predictions of the '80s and '90s, teenage crime rates have
gone down. Fear of young offenders seems to have subsided. In 2005, the U.S.
Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles, and there were some
discussions across the country about re-examining the harsh punishments meted
out to juvenile offenders. In 2006, Colorado passed a bill ending its practice
of sentencing juveniles to life without parole; instead, juveniles who receive a
life sentence will have to serve 40 years before they are eligible for parole.
But the bill was not retroactive, and the 45 former juveniles now serving life
without parole in Colorado -- including Jacob, Erik, Nathan, Trevor and Andy --
will likely die in prison. "The decision to not make it retroactive was probably
a compromise, perhaps a political deal," says Columbia University law professor
Jeffrey Fagan. "The families of victims are very powerful advocates." Gail
Palone, the mother of Trevor's victim, is unforgiving: "At least their family
gets to go to the prison system and spend Thanksgiving with them. We never got
that. We have to go to the cemetery. When Trevor was found guilty, they promised
us that he would get life in prison with no chance of parole. The state promised
us that, and the state should see to it that that's what happens." The opponents
of juvenile life without parole vow to continue their effort. Curt Jensen,
Erik's father and co-founder of the Pendulum Foundation, explains: "It's been an
ongoing battle now for six years basically, for educating the public and working
with the state Legislature. It's a battle that only ends when this state
Legislature and the next governor agree that juveniles have to be treated
differently than adults and that they have to be given a second chance.