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- Britta Slopianka, Axis of Logic
Correspondent in Germany
First-degree murder means life behind bars, regardless of age
Life without parole. If it sounds unpleasant, downright harsh, its supposed to. In Michigan, where the death penalty was banned in 1846, the mandatory punishment for a fi rst-degree murder conviction is life in prison without the possibility of parol No matter how old one is, thats a long time because there is no hope for release, unless a governor is willing to risk political backlash and commute the sentence - an almost impossible hope.
But for teenagers who are not yet considered adults, is life in prison without parole a reasonable punishment? Oakland Countys history over the past four decades is fairly rich on this issue.
One state senator, citing a study that found Michigan to be among the top states with such offenders, is pushing a bill that would ban life-without-parole sentences for offenders under ag 18. Right now, a 17-year-old is an adult in the eyes of Michigans criminal code.
In Oakland County, many youths have been charged with first-degree murder, some in cas that stunned the community, others in cases that quietly moved through the courts.
Some have avoided life withou parole. But 40 others are in prison now, serving life without parole crimes committed in Oakland County before they were 18 - of 313 such offenders in Michigan prisons. All 40 committed firstdegree murder.
Today, these men and women range in age from 19 to 61.
Some, such as Nathaniel Abraham, Michael Conat and Brandon Carnell, avoided the life-without-parole term because they were sentenced as juveniles or convicted of lesser charges.
Forty others, such as Joseph Passeno and Bruce Micheals, who kidnapped and killed a Rochester Hills couple in order to access their ATM accounts in 1989, were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced as adults to life in prison, where they sit today.
Tough-on-crime laws were passed in the late 1980s and mid-1990s because of highly publicized violent crimes. Of the 40 Oakland County offenders, 25 committed their crimes within a decade, between 1987 and 1996.
And today, three adolescents currently are charged with murder and face life without parole in Oakland County Circuit Court. In all three cases, the alleged violence is chilling. One is accused of stabbing his mother to death; one is said to have fired a gun into a car in a gang-related incident; and one allegedly returned to the scene of a carjacking with the intent of killing the victim, David Lee Bingham, a 38-year-old father of two, who was shot four times.
Two of the three were 15 at the time of their alleged crimes; one was 17.
Do young killers, if convicted of first-degree murder, deserve a second chance because of their ages?
State leaders will have to determine what is too young to be sentenced to prison for life.
Proposed change
State Sen. Liz Brater, DAnn Arbor, said young offenders deserve consideration for a second chance, not a guaranteed way out of prison, and she would do that by banning life-without-parole sentences for offenders under 18.
Basically, they were children at the time when they committed their offense, Brater said. We acknowledge they committed severe crimes. We believe they should get a second chance. We believe at some time in their lives, they should go before the parole board.
A recent study by Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch revealed that Michigan ranked second among states with offenders under 18 who were sentenced to life without parole. Several states, though, such as Texas and New York, do not have such sentences. Nationwide, at least 2,225 life-without-parole inmates were under 18 when they convicted their crimes, according to the Amnesty and Human Rights study.
This study and another by the American Civil Liberties Union showcase individual cases in which life without parole seems harsh. Some offenders did not do the actual killing, and others came from abusive homes.
As Michigans get-tough-oncrime legislation of the 1990s becomes an expensive burden on the state, lawmakers have sensed that public fear of rampant violent crime has shifted to decrying prison expenses, especially as education spending and revenue sharing with municipalities have shrunk.
Brater cited a recent Wayne State University poll that showed the public favors not locking young murderers away forever, as 72 percent of those polled believed violent offenders under 18 are strong candidates for rehabilitation.
Im not saying release everybody automatically, Brater said. All were asking with this legislation is, Take another look. This has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, and thats what parole boards do. They deserve a second chance.
Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca does not want a complete ban on life without parole, calling it a tool in his arsenal to fight crime.
I dont think it should be used in every case, but I certainly would like it as a tool to protect the public, Gorcyca said of life without parole as a sentence.
Right now, for a first-degree murder conviction, the law mandates a life-withoutparole sentence. One option might be to return authority to judges to impose the sentence if they see fit and not tie their hands.
Gruesome history
A look back at the 40 cases from Oakland County reveals that even an affluent area cannot avoid violent bloodshed.
These cases showcase both gruesome cruelty and pure coldbloodedness. Some are revolting, with children stabbed to death; others are stunning in the slight amounts for which victims died.
Michael Kvam, who was 17 when he and another man raped and killed a woman, a teenager and a little girl in Avon Township, now Rochester Hills, in 1984, shook one judge enough to change his stance on the death penalty.
And Sean Sword was 17 when he shot and killed a man working in a Rochester Hills party store in 1994, ending a string of armed robberies. Sword testified at his trial that he didnt like the tone of the victim, who told him the store was being closed: The way he said it ... I just pulled out the gun.
Several of the offenders fi t the profile of one who Brater said might deserve a second chance, coming from broken or abusive homes and having mental problems.
Anthony Bonellis attorney, James Andary, said the then-17-year-old had slipped through the cracks and should have been institutionalized when he drowned a girl who had been his friend in Orchard Lake in 1989. Robert Charles Cook, who was 17 in 1969, claimed that voices told him to climb onto a roof and shoot at people when he killed a motorcyclist.
And several of the cases feature participants who did not do the actual killing, though they helped cover up the crimes and shared in the stolen rewards. Some of these cases include:
Barbara Hernandez, then 16, watched as her 20-year-old boyfriend cut a mans throat and stabbed him 25 times so they could steal his car.
Jennifer Pruitt, who was 17, watched as her 23-year-old girlfriend stabbed an elderly man 27 times - after they had returned to his home a second time, having already stolen $93, cigarettes and other items.
John Polick was 16 when, during a break-in, he shined the flashlight on a 67-year-old woman as his elder brother beat her so badly that she later died. Polick helped steal a television from the womans Waterford Township home. Both brothers were sentenced to life.
All of these cases feature one shared quality, which is why prosecutors believed they belonged in prison for the rest of their lives.
For these killers, life was cheap.
But in Oakland County, generally, these offenders rights were well-protected.
Intense legal battles
While poor legal representation sometimes leads to overturned convictions, the cases from Oakland County tend to feature top lawyers.
Prominent defense attorneys such as Larry Kaluzny, Mitchell Ribitwer and Jerome Sabbota tried some of the cases. The late James S. Thorburn, who later served as a circuit judge known to challenge prosecutors, helped represent the countys oldest teenage offender still in prison, Sheldry Topp, who stabbed a county attorney to death in 1962.
Perhaps the biggest legal fight involved a teenager who shot somebody just because he didnt have a match to light his cigarette.
In 1980, Ronnie C. Waters, then 17 and with a group of friends acting tough at the Miracle Mile Drive-In theater in Bloomfi eld Township, fi red a handgun into a car, injuring a Clarkston man and killing his wife, 28-year-old Deborah Ann Porcelli.
Waters was defended by one of Oakland Countys top lawyers, the late William Waterman, who went on to sit on the 50th District Court bench and recently had Pontiacs district court building named after him.
Waterman argued that the shooting was compulsive, inexplicable, ridiculous and deserved a second-degree murder charge with a chance at parole. A district judge agreed, but then-Prosecutor L. Brooks Patterson successfully countered that it was a coldblooded execution, and two circuit judges and the states higher courts agreed.
With the first-degree charge holding up, Waters will not get out of prison without a governors signature - as the law stands now.
Given a break
Other teenage killers from Oakland County were given a break, even in some of the most notorious cases.
Michael Anthony Conat, now 23, shot his younger sister to death in Rochester Hills at age 16. After a lengthy debate, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to at least 25 years in prison.
Brandon Carnell, who was 14 when he killed his parents and sister in his Springfi eld Township home in 1988, was sentenced as a juvenile and held until he was 19. Since then, he has rebuilt a life without crime and is married and deeply involved with his church.
Ribitwer, who represented Carnell, said the mandatory nature of life-without-parole sentences is the problem when it comes to juveniles.
Its something that should be discretionary for the judges, said Ribitwer, who now is defending a boy who was 15 when he allegedly stabbed his mother in Rochester Hills.
Pointing to the success of Carnell, Ribitwer said: The problem is the Legislature has authorized prosecutors to decide if a 15- or 16-year-old child will be charged as an adult. The system puts a tremendous amount of discretion into the hands of the prosecutor, who represent one side of the issue.
Previously, prosecutors petitioned the court to charge a juvenile as an adult, and a dozen different criteria were examined in detail before a judge made the decision. Ribitwer said judges, who stand as the neutral party in a case, should have the authority.
But even judges must weigh the potential political disaster of giving a teenager a break and having him or her kill again.
A blown second chance
One case highlighted the fears that judges, prosecutors and legislators feel when deciding to give someone a second chance.
In 1987, Donyelle Black was a teenage terror awaiting a tragic ending. At age 15, he and another boy raped Wanda Sutherland, 39, repeatedly and, ignoring her many pleas for mercy, killed her. She was shot three times in a wooded area near her apartment off Orchard Lake Road in Pontiac on July 14, 1987, by Black, whose life of crime started at age 11 and included drugs, theft and assaults.
The boy had pulled her from her car at gunpoint after he and the friend, 14-year-old Calvin Hirsch, decided to rob someone. After they raped, robbed and beat her, Black then shot her in the head, Hirsch later testifi ed.
While Black received life in prison upon his conviction, Hirsch pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced as a juvenile. He served five years and was released at age 19.
Theres nothing worse than watching someone walk down the hallway because you cant keep them anymore, said Deborah Carley, chief deputy prosecutor in Oakland County. Its not fair to the victims and its not fair to the community.
In 1996, at age 23, Hirsch shot a couple over a $13 drug debt owed by someone else. The man was injured and his 35-year-old fiancee, Dora Lisa Shaw, was killed. A friend of hers owed Hirsch the $13. Hirsch finally was sentenced to life in prison.
With two homicides to his credit in the past 10 years, Calvin Hirsch has dug his own grave, said Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor John Pietrofesa at the time. We just put him in it. Prison did nothing to rehabilitate him.
Whether incarceration can save a young offender is the question remaining with the countys youngest killer.
A killer at 11
Nathaniel Abraham, the areas most infamous young killer, was 11 when he shot 19-year-old Ronnie Green Jr. in 1997 in Pontiac. He will soon be freed because he was sentenced as a juvenile by Oakland County Probate Judge Eugene Arthur Moore.
No matter what, Abraham will be released in 14 months, and the judge, social workers and prosecutors have closely monitored his progress at the W.J. Maxey Boys Training School near Ann Arbor.
Abraham, who turns 20 in January, wants to go to a halfway house for his last year of custody. He is to be in court Monday for a regular review hearing, a public examination into whether a child killer can be rehabilitated.
He is the reason why we should have life in prison without parole, said Carley, who regularly presses social workers and state offi cials to present all information on Abrahams status, which has been marred by problems, including assaults, slow progress and a recent investigation into whether he fathered the child of a worker there. DNA tests showed he wasnt the father.
One woman hates seeing the continued stories about Abraham, finding the attention paid to him with such a public upbringing hurtful instead of helpful.
Flawed system?
Betty Montgomery, 67, of Pontiac said she fears racism is at root for making laws so tough for young offenders, many of whom are black and come from urban areas. While Oakland County ranks second in the state with the 40 young offenders sentenced to life, Wayne County is on top of the list with 123, according to the ACLU study.
Our system hasnt made it any better, she said, believing the states resources lack quality.
But too often, she said, young men fall victim to circumstances and lose their lives with one bad decision.
These are young people, Montgomery said. They never got a chance to display their abilities. They get into drugs and they are gone. We dont have adequate programs in Oakland County for kids who are at risk with problems.
Carley, the chief deputy prosecutor, appreciates the questions society must ask as it blends public safety with properly considering the circumstances of each case.
Easy answers are impossible with this issue, and solutions cannot cover every case. Carley said prosecutors do not take lightly their role in charging a juvenile as an adult.
They are very, very difficult, Carley said. You need to look at each case individually.
But she said life without parole has served as a deterrent, knowing that their ages will not prevent them from the full punishment society has to offer.
Currently in court
Three teenagers younger than 18 are in Oakland County courts and charged with murder.
Christopher Dankovich was 15 and a freshman at Rochester Adams High School when charged with stabbing his mother 111 times in their Rochester Hills home on the night of April 24 or morning of April 25. Now 16, he is expected in court Tuesday for a preliminary exam. Charged with open murder, a jury could convict him of either first-degree or second-degree murder.
Xiong Pheng, an accused gang member, was 15 when he allegedly fired a gun into a car after a Hmong wedding ceremony, killing Yang Chong, 17, on May 28. His fi rstdegree murder trial is scheduled for February.
And Christopher Eugene Jackson, who was 17, is accused of being the triggerman in a case that shook even veteran cops who had seen it all. After carjacking David Binghams pickup truck, Jackson and his co-defendant, Cordarrel Landrum, are accused of driving around the block, returning to the Pontiac gas station and then executing Bingham as he spoke to police dispatchers. Jackson is due in court for a pretrial hearing on Wednesday.
Landrum, now 19, was 18 at the time of the shooting. Police believe he knew Jackson was going to shoot Bingham, and prosecutors believe both are equally responsible and are both charged with fi rst-degree murder.
The prosecutor handling this case said the proposed change in the law would be monumentally ironic and not serve justice.
It would be ironic if the actual shooter gets some kind of reduced sentence and the getaway driver has to go to prison for the rest of his life, said Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor John Skrzynski. He (Jackson) is the one who they actually see doing the deed. That was such a coldblooded thing. He allegedly returned to the scene to execute this guy. He came back to eliminate him as a witness.
Its hard to explain to a grieving family that the actual murderer doesnt have to pay the same price as the getaway driver. It wouldnt make sense to them, and it wouldnt make sense to anybody else.
One brothers opinion
And for the brother of David Bingham, such a change in the law would not be right.
Anybody who commits a heinous crime like this was supposedly done, I think you should pay the highest price for what youve done, said Terry Bingham of Shelby Township. I think you know what youre doing when youre 17 years old. If youre man enough to have sex with somebody, youre man enough to know what youre doing.
David Bingham visited his brothers home three or four times a week for laughs and hanging out.
Its a void in my life, said Terry Bingham, adding that the pain his family now feels will never go away. His sense of humor was one of a kind. An hour with him, and Id need about 10 minutes by myself to calm down. He was always happy about something. Even when he was kind of upset, he always tried to make a joke about it.
On July 5, David Bingham stopped for gas on his way to work. Terry Bingham said he always thinks of his brothers two children, ages 10 and 14, who have lost their father.
With a heinous crime, like murder or rape, you dont give them a second chance, because they are sick people, Terry Bingham said. We dont need people like that on the streets.
Cost of security?
Carley agrees with Terry Bingham, that murderers do not belong free in society.
If life in prison without the possibility of parole is a great enough deterrent, maybe its the right thing, said Carley, who was hired as a prosecutor on the day of Glenn and Wanda Tarrs slaying in 1989, a day she remembers vividly because of the shock at the two fresh-faced teenagers who kidnapped and killed them.
Today, the faces of Joseph Passeno and Bruce Micheals show a life spent in prison, with Passenos numerous facial tattoos most striking.
Brater, though, believes that throwing away the key may be the wrong answer in every cases, partially because of the expense. She said one out of every $5 in the states general fund goes to prisons, and that number has to be reduced - a difficult task with such tough sentencing laws.
We do have to look at the possibility of rehabilitation, Brater said.
Barbara Levine, of the Citizens Alliance of Prisons and Public Spending, said the 1983 state budget saw only 5 percent of the general fund go to corrections. Tough-oncrime laws have pushed that to 20 percent with $1.8 billion spent on prisons from Michigans general fund.
Crime rates have been falling pretty steadily since the early 1980s, Levine said. Crime is directly infl uenced by the economy.
And the state leaders must acknowledge that teenage killers lack the maturity and impulse control of adults, she said.
Also, her organization has said that once these offenders hit their 30s or 40s, they are the least likely to re-offend when released.
To just throw them (juveniles) away ... and to tell them there is no chance of being rehabilitated, it is not civilized, Levine said. It is not what most of the world does.
According to the Human Rights study, only Israel, Tanzania and South Africa have such juvenile offenders serving life without parole.
It is a waste of life and resources, and it is not necessary to keep the public safe, Levine said. I think the budget is going to be the driving factor in this.
First-degree facts
First-degree murder is the only crime that features a sentence of mandatory life in prison without parole. First-degree murder can be charged in two ways: premeditated murder or felony murder.
Felony murder is a homicide that occurs during the commission of a selected number of felonies. Typically, it involves armed robbery, but it can also come from child abuse, arson or rape.
Premeditation involves planning and it can take seconds or days. Instead at looking at the time, jurors consider whether a man or woman had time to reconsider their actions.
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/
111305/loc_2005111303.shtml
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