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Written by administrator
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Nov 28, 2011 at 02:41 PM |
The secret behind long sentences handed out to repeat offenders in the 18th Judicial District
By Alan Prendergast Tuesday, Nov 22 2011
On the Saturday before Easter 2010, Dennis Pauls got it into his head to give his ex-wife a plant. It was an Easter lily, a Christian symbol of suffering and renewal; tradition says white lilies bloomed where Christ's sweat fell to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane, a sign of the resurrection to come.
Pauls thought the plant made a perfect farewell gesture, a benediction and peace offering. He was 57 years old, an age when many people are preparing for their dream retirement. But Pauls had embalmed his dreams in alcohol. He'd once been a successful producer of audio-video materials for nonprofits and small businesses. He'd voted Republican, lived on a golf course in Lone Tree and been a benefactor of the local symphony orchestra. His drinking had changed all that, costing him his marriage, his friends, the house on the golf course — even his freedom.
On the day he saw the Easter plant on sale at Safeway, Pauls was making plans to leave Colorado for good. He'd just completed parole after serving several months in prison for forging checks on his ex-wife's account to pay for food and booze when he was on a bender. He considered himself a recovering alcoholic now, although he still had lapses when the thirst hit him.
He left the plant on his ex's porch with a note: Good Lord, it is Holy Week. Happy Easter. I am proud of you and Chloee. Chloee, the couple's beloved Chesapeake Bay retriever, was something else drinking had cost him. His ex had gone to court for a restraining order to keep him from bothering either one of them.
Within a few hours, Pauls began to feel anxious about what he'd just done. Leaving the plant was a violation of the restraining order. He thought about rushing back to the house to retrieve it before his ex found it, but what if someone saw him there? Better to fix a Scotch and get busy on his move to Florida.
Four months later, while in the throes of what he would later describe as a panic attack, Pauls made a frantic phone call for help from his new home in Naples, Florida. Local police did a welfare check and ran his name through their records, which turned up an arrest warrant in Colorado for the plant business. He spent three weeks in the local lockup, until Arapahoe County deputies arrived to escort him back to their jail.
Pauls didn't understand why the county was bothering with extradition over such a minor offense. He'd incurred violations of the restraining order before, calling his wife to track down tax returns and other mundane stuff — nothing violent or threatening — and he knew that such conduct was considered a misdemeanor or less.
It was only when he met with a public defender in the Arapahoe County jail that Pauls realized he was in deep trouble. He was being charged with felony stalking, the attorney explained. Pauls already had three felonies on his record: the forgery case and two drunk-driving convictions in Kansas, as well as a deferred sentence for harassment in a dispute with a neighbor. Being found guilty of a fourth felony would make him eligible for what's known in legal circles as the Big Bitch — a finding that he's a habitual criminal and thus required to be sentenced to four times the maximum of what a felony stalking rap would usually bring. (The Little Bitch, which can be applied to a defendant with two prior felonies, triples the maximum sentence.)
His lawyer told Pauls that he was looking at either 24 or 32 years in prison if the Arapahoe County district attorney pursued the habitual charge. Prosecutors were offering a twelve-year deal if he agreed to plead guilty right now instead of going to trial.
Some deal. To Pauls, twelve years in prison didn't sound any more survivable than 32, especially at his age. He was facing a potential life sentence for the crime of delivering a plant to a woman he'd been married to for decades.
"I told him there was no way I could plead guilty to stalking, something I hadn't done, and go away for twelve years," Pauls recalls. "Where is the justice in that?"
Yet the kind of lose-lose choice Pauls was offered — agree to a plea carrying an absurdly long sentence or get "bitched" — is what often passes for justice for repeat offenders in Arapahoe County. The campaign to bitch just about anybody who can be bitched in the southeast suburbs has prompted some criminal defense attorneys to refer to the place as Arapahell: an infernal region that, strictly speaking, doesn't stop at the county line. Under the leadership of District Attorney Carol Chambers, the entire 18th Judicial District, which includes Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, has become an experiment in prosecutorial overkill unlike anything else in Colorado.
Because the consequences of a habitual criminal sentence can be so grave, most prosecutors use the statute sparingly. In many districts, it's usually reserved for people who commit multiple violent crimes or career crooks, such as burglars, who may be getting caught only a few times while committing dozens or hundreds of crimes. "We see the bitch scheme as a tool to get significant prison sentences for people who need to be incarcerated for a long period of time to protect the community," says Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett. |
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Colorado Voices: Second chance for teen killers? |
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Nov 28, 2011 at 02:24 PM |
Denver Post Opinion
By Jessica Peck
The message arrived in my e-mail box late on a Friday night. It was an update from Curt Jensen, a good friend and a proud father.
Curt's son, Erik, is entering his junior year in college studying pre-medicine. He is a prolific writer, and will have soon completed his fifth book in an adventure fantasy series. He's engaged to be married, and a leader in efforts to help inmates get out of gangs. He was just featured in a French TV documentary and will soon be profiled in a book written by a best-selling author.
What parent wouldn't be proud? Sadly, key details radically transform the picture. Erik is behind bars for life. Absent changes to current law or exceptional political willpower by Colorado's elected officials, including Gov. John Hickenlooper, or the federal government, Erik will never know a day again outside prison.
Erik is just one of what activists call the "Forgotten 40," a group of Colorado teens sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for crimes committed as teens. Some are there for killing abusive parents, others for cold-blooded murder. A handful, like Erik, were never convicted of killing a person, but instead made life-altering decisions after being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Prosecutors argued that Erik helped a friend attempt to cover up a murder after it had already been committed.
Just this month, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will consider a set of cases that could ban life sentences for any inmate convicted of a crime committed at the age of 14 or younger. Alternatively, the court could go much further, banning juvenile life sentences altogether, viewing such sentences as a violation of the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
A 25-year statistical survey commissioned by the Pendulum Foundation (created by Erik's parents) comparing juvenile and adult sentences is haunting. Teens receive much harsher punishment than adults convicted of similar acts. Every year in Colorado, 30 parents are convicted of killing their own children. Their average sentence is 26 years. Contrast this with kids who kill their parents. Prior to reforms implemented after Erik was sentenced in 1999, the average teen landed 50 years.
Coming in response to the efforts of the Jensens and others, Colorado lawmakers voted in 2006 to prohibit life sentences for kids. Today, juveniles tried as adults can be sentenced to a maximum of 40 years. The law does not provide any relief to Erik and others already serving life, however. In 2007, at the insistence of state lawmakers, then-Gov. Bill Ritter established a juvenile clemency advisory board. It was promoted as a venue for commuting the sentences of those deserving parole. To date, not a single juvenile life-without-parole sentence has been shortened.
Also troubling, Colorado still provides prosecutors — not judges — sole discretion to charge juveniles as adults. Most states permit or require court review. Colorado's dysfunctional system requires prosecutors to choose between juvenile court sentencing caps of eight to nine years and the adult system that mandates at least 40 years, a methodology that fails to distinguish between juveniles committing multiple heinous acts and those teens who lack any prior criminal history but made horrific decisions in the heat of the moment.
Given the young age of so many of those convicted, the state should, at a minimum, require court review. More just, it should commit to a regular and fair parole and clemency review process.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the aforementioned cases as early as February, just a month into Colorado's state legislative session. On the heels of Ritter's inaction, this timeline could free Hickenlooper from taking a tough political stand for fairness benefitting one of the state's most despised constituencies. In the absence of political courage, or action by our nation's highest court, Erik Jensen and 2,500 others like him across the nation will continue to waste away in adult prisons as casualties not only of their own actions, but more tragically, as victims of a government that too often punishes kids far more harshly than adults.
Jessica K. Peck is a Denver attorney and political strategist with Henley Public Affairs. |
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Last Updated ( Nov 28, 2011 at 02:29 PM )
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