Colorado lawmakers called for reforming the state’s approach to sentencing juveniles as adults as 15 organizations rallied together Tuesday at the state Capitol to decry a combination of laws that can put youths in prison for the rest of their lives.
State Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, the Senate majority leader, said he would propose legislation to “spur debate” about whether life without parole sentences for youths should be scaled back, allowing them a shot a early release sometime before they have served 40 years in prison.
It was an even greater step than the legislation he and Rep. Lynn Hefley, R-Colorado Springs, had introduced in recent weeks giving kids a chance at parole after four decades.
Terrance Carroll, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he will set a hearing during the next two weeks to focus on Gordon and Hefley’s legislation.
“I think a lot of these kids got caught in a tsunami of fear,” Carroll said. “I support reform.”
The lawmakers were reacting to a Denver Post investigative series that outlined questionable handling of juvenile cases in adult courts, as well as pleas for action by a large coalition of political groups, criminal-justice organizations and human-rights activists organized by The Pendulum Foundation, a Colorado Springs advocacy group for juvenile offenders.
Carroll, a Denver Democrat, said he was disturbed by state trends that have sent 45 kids to prison with no chance of release. Among his concerns, he said, is a combination of controversial laws – felony murder, prosecutorial powers allowing district attorneys to send kids 14 or older directly into adult criminal courts, and life without parole. Colorado is one of only 14 states with that cocktail of laws on its books.
The effect of the interlocking statutes was assailed by Pendulum, Amnesty International and 13 other organizations at the Capitol on Tuesday.
“Separately, each statute means tragedy,” said Mary Ellen Johnson, director of Pendulum. “Together, they lead to a perfect storm.”
Pendulum asked lawmakers to consider rehabilitation programs for juveniles rather than adult prisons and to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the 1,244 cases of youths who have been prosecuted as adults since 1998.
Sixty percent of the juvenile cases leading to life without parole in Colorado during the past six years involved felony-murder convictions, compared with 24 percent of adult cases, according to statistics compiled by The Denver Post.
Amnesty International attorney David Berger called the disproportionate number of felony-murder convictions against youths “striking.”
And the penalty of “life in prison without any possibility of parole does not hold children accountable, it holds them disposable,” Berger said.
