Juvenile offenders in legal limbo despite Supreme Court rulings

With her father in prison and her mother wrapped up in drugs and prostitution, LaTasha Armstead dropped out of sixth grade to take care of her little sister and grandmother.

Soon, her mom was back, promising to get clean if the 13-year-old could get her some money, Armstead said.

She and her boyfriend hatched a horrendous plan: They’d strangle her grandmother’s home health aide and steal her red Chevrolet. She watched as her boyfriend wrapped a phone cord around the woman’s neck.

Armstead, pregnant at the time of the murder in 1997, became the youngest person in Wisconsin to be charged as an adult with first-degree intentional homicide.

While her age and harrowing upbringing might have weighed in her favor in juvenile court, they seemed to work against her in adult court.

The prosecutor said Armstead’s “spousal-type relationship” with her 17-year-old boyfriend showed maturity. Her monotone voice and frozen stare while testifying — a result of shock and confusion, her lawyers said — was interpreted by jurors and the media as a lack of remorse.

She was found guilty of being party to the crime and sentenced to life in prison.

Armstead is among 68 inmates in Wisconsin serving life sentences for crimes they committed at age 16 or younger. Juveniles as young as 10 are automatically charged in adult court when they are accused of first-degree intentional homicide in Wisconsin. While judges can move cases to juvenile court where sentences are shorter and resources for rehabilitation are more widely available, they rarely do.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court banned mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles, noting such sentences fail to consider dysfunctional upbringings or peer pressure that may have contributed to the crimes. Earlier this year, the court said its ruling should be applied retroactively, giving 2,000 inmates across the country the chance to be resentenced or get out of prison early.

Since the Supreme Court rulings, 19 states have outlawed life without parole for juveniles.

But there is little chance the rulings will make a difference for the 68 juvenile offenders serving life terms in Wisconsin. Since most will technically be eligible for parole, the Supreme Court decisions won’t trigger a review of their sentences. And because parole is rarely granted in Wisconsin, release is unlikely.

Abuse and influence

Advocates for reform say treating young offenders as adults and subjecting them to life sentences ignores the growing scientific and judicial consensus: Juvenile brains aren’t fully formed and young people are more capable of rehabilitation than adults.

It’s a position some find easy to dismiss given the heinous nature of many of the crimes. In Wisconsin, one boy killed his parents, hid their bodies in a barn and threw a party. Another smothered his high school girlfriend with leaves and mud.

“The people we’re dealing with have something wrong in their brain that would enable them to do these behaviors,” said Jody Robinson, president of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Murderers. “I’m not willing to gamble on somebody else’s life.”

Robinson’s group, which has about 400 members, opposes revisiting life sentences for juveniles because it forces families to relive the original trauma and feels like justice has been lost for the victim.

While she believes some teenagers can be rehabilitated, Robinson said she is more concerned with preserving finality for grieving families.

In the Wisconsin cases, many of the terrible acts seemed to grow from outside influence. Two teenage boys were hired by a high school study hall monitor to shoot her estranged husband. One boy whose parents regularly beat him beat to death a high school classmate. He told a probation officer at the time that he lived like he was treated.

At least two dozen of the juvenile offenders had unusually traumatic childhoods or said they were coerced into committing the crime by someone older, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review of case files found.

The effects of a traumatic childhood are considerable. A national survey in 2012 found that nearly 80% of 2,500 juveniles sentenced to life had witnessed ongoing violence at home, and almost half were victims of abuse.

Before he was old enough to drive, Garland Hampton witnessed the murders of at least four friends and family members — including his mother shooting his stepfather. His grandmother routinely threatened to shoot him for mistakes as trivial as returning from the grocery store with lettuce instead of cabbage, according to his lawyer, Robin Shellow.

“Our family was the poster child for dysfunctional families,” Hampton said in a telephone interview from Oakhill Correctional Institution.

He remembers a Milwaukee County worker telling him social services received more calls from his house than any other in the county.

Hampton joined a gang at age 11. In 1994, at 15, he shot and killed a fellow gang member over a missing $100. He was sentenced to life.

Deng Yang was a 15-year-old with learning disabilities when an older neighbor pressured him to shoot his wife in exchange for $25,000 and a truck. The man handed Yang a silver handgun, gave him instructions and said that as the adult, he’d take care of everything else.

At the time Yang was convicted in 1998, judges sentenced people under the assumption they would serve about a quarter of the sentence before being released on parole, given good behavior. Thus, Yang would be eligible for parole 13 years into his life sentence.

But the same year, the state enacted truth in sentencing, which eliminated parole and required anyone sentenced after the law went into effect to serve the entire length of their sentence. While the law wasn’t supposed to affect inmates sentenced before 1999, inmates with the closest release dates are given priority for limited spots in courses and programs that are required for release.

Those sentenced under truth in sentencing provisions tend to be at the front of the line. As a result, inmates like Yang who were sentenced before the change end up serving more time than judges intended because they can’t fulfill the requirements for release.

Parole bar difficult to clear

Dean Stensberg, chairman of the Wisconsin Parole Commission since May 2015, admits the bar to earn parole is set high.

“We’re trying to weigh and balance both the potential for risk reduction and redemption, and the risk that folks will pose to people once they’re released,” he said. “If I have to make a call as the parole chair, I am always going to defer to public safety before I take a chance on redemption.”

The number of inmates released on parole has dropped from 2,325 in 2000 to 172 in 2014, the most recent figure available. Between 2011 and 2015, 44 inmates who were convicted of homicide were released on parole, according to corrections officials. That was less than half those released in the two previous five-year periods.

The Department of Corrections attributes this to the shrinking number of parole-eligible inmates; advocates of justice reform counter that there’s no evidence the parole commission is seriously considering each inmate’s case.

“Effectively, there is no parole in Wisconsin,” said Jerry Hancock, a former Wisconsin Department of Justice administrator who now works with WISDOM, a faith-based group advocating for reforms to the state’s justice system.

Hancock said Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, which has also declined to issue any pardons, has set the tone for the parole commission to parole as few people as possible.

Tom Evenson, a spokesman for Walker, said the parole commission makes its determinations based on the facts of each case. The commission operates independently of Walker’s administration, but Walker and the state Senate appoint its chairman.

Yang said each of his three meetings with a member of the parole commission lasted less than 30 minutes. Records show each ended with the same conclusion: Despite his “impressive” behavior and high reviews at a full-time job making road signs at Stanley Correctional Institution, he has not served sufficient time for punishment.

Critics say inmates such as Yang are given an indication they can earn their way out, then denied a meaningful chance even after doing all the right things.

“Yes, these people did terrible things, but are they still terrible people?” Hancock asked. “That’s a fair question that parole was designed to answer.”

Marsha Levick, a national expert on juvenile law, thinks there ought to be more flexibility for those serving time for juvenile offenses.

Levick is chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group. Parole boards, she said, tend to focus on things like employment history, family relationships and social ties when making their decisions. But people who went into prison as teenagers have little work experience and limited long-term social ties.

“One would like to think that 35, 40 years out there are still family members available to serve as resources for them, but who knows,” Levick said.

Hampton, who shot the fellow gang member as a teen, is now 37 and has served 21 years of his life sentence. He has been eligible for parole since July 2015. He never heard from his mother or grandmother after he entered prison, and lost touch with most of his eight siblings.

Hampton now has a job in the prison’s career center helping inmates nearing release write letters to potential employers. He said it can be hard to watch others envision lives outside prison, but it keeps him sharp.

“I’m always planning and making sure that what little bit I can do for myself is solid for when that time does come,” he said.

Changes afoot – or not

A few states have started to retool the parole process.

California now mandates that those charged as juveniles see the parole board 15 years into their sentences. Massachusetts’ Supreme Court simplified the process in its state so offenders convicted as juveniles have easier access to programs required for release.

Nothing of the sort has been suggested in Wisconsin.

Now, more states are focused on raising the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults. A movement to return 17-year-olds to the juvenile system has been gaining traction in Wisconsin but would exclude those who are charged with murder.

Armstead, now 33, has been in prison more than half her life. She says she regrets her part in the murder of her grandmother’s aide, who had five children.

“She didn’t deserve it,” Armstead wrote in a letter to the Journal Sentinel. “It took taking her life for me to understand how truly precious life is. Hers, mine, everyone’s.”