Ex-Penn State President Faces New Charges in Sandusky Case

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Pennsylvania will prosecute former Penn State President Graham Spanier on charges that he helped cover up sex abuse charges against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, the state attorney general announced. She also announced new charges against two Spanier deputies. “This case is about three powerful and influential men who held positions at the very top of one the most prestigious universities in the nation, three men who used their positions at Penn State to conceal and cover up for years activities of a known child predator,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly at a Harrisburg press conference on Nov. 1. The state charged Spanier with one count of perjury, two counts of endangering the welfare of children and two counts of criminal conspiracy, all third-degree felonies which are each punishable by up to seven years in prison and $15,000 fines.

Wyoming Inches toward Reform

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Wyoming looks set to require more deliberative sentencing hearings for juveniles convicted of murder, taking into account factors such as the defendant’s mental health. Like most under-18 defendants in the state, however, they will continue to go through adult court, advocates predict. Wyatt Bear Cloud’s sentence to life in prison for a 2008 murder committed in Sheridan when he was 16 wasn’t fair, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 1, citing an earlier ruling that demands thoughtful sentencing hearings for youth on murder convictions. They told the state Supreme Court to do something else with him.

Juvenile Hall Smaller in Texas

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Despite the cliché, not everything is bigger in Texas. A year after the state merged juvenile and criminal justices under one big agency and commanded it to divert youthful offenders away from big state lockups to neighborhood programs, a pair of advocates are pleased. But both have tips for states considering the same setup. The old system literally and figuratively put a lot of kids in the desert, said Benet Magnuson, a juvenile justice policy attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, an Austin-based prison reform group. “State facilities were less rehabilitative because the kids were isolated, it was hard to retain quality staff and they were ultimately unsafe for a lot of kids,” he explained.

DOJ: Sunlight, Lawsuit to Close Miss. School-to-Prison Pipeline

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The U.S. Department of Justice says a school-to-prison pipeline that runs through schools, the city police department and juvenile courts threatens children in Meridian, Miss. The school system is negotiating a new set of rules with the DOJ. The city, county, youth court and state of Mississippi, meanwhile, have just gotten hit with a federal lawsuit, and attention that may have already changed their ways. “We filed this lawsuit because we have to,” said U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin, in a public telephone conference on Oct. 25, the day after his department sued the City of Meridian, Lauderdale County, the county Youth Court judges and Mississippi’s Division of Youth Services claiming that the four agencies work together to ignore children’s due process rights and incarcerate them for minor infractions.

Illinois Advocate Sues to Speed Juvenile Parole Reform

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Juveniles who appeared before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board (IPRB) for parole revocation hearings were denied due process, according to a state-commissioned report that’s almost a year old.  It hasn’t improved since then, says a Chicago attorney who’s filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of all youth who are heading toward the board. The youths facing parole revocation hearings “don’t have an advocate, they don’t have the right to a public defender,” said Alexa Van Brunt, an attorney with the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center, part of the Bluhm Legal Clinic at Northwestern University School of Law. She filed the complaint this week on behalf of her client MH and all other similarly situated juveniles. Young defendants like MH go before the IPRB, which is the same parole board that hears adults. The board held 1,132 juvenile parole revocation hearings in 2011, according to its annual report.

Department of Justice Sues over ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’ in Meridian, Miss.

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The federal Department of Justice (DOJ) is suing the Mississippi county, city and judges who they say systematically ignore youthful defendants’ rights, resulting in a well-beaten path from school to incarceration. “The department is bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all children are treated fairly and receive the fullest protection of the law,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the DOJ Civil Rights Division, in a written statement on Oct. 24. The suit is being brought against the city of Meridian, Lauderdale County, the two judges of the county Youth Court and the state of Mississippi.“It is in all of our best interests to ensure that children are not incarcerated for alleged minor infractions, and that police and courts meet their obligations to uphold children’s constitutional rights,” he wrote. The DOJ published preliminary accusations against the now-defendants some 10 weeks ago, threatening a lawsuit if the Mississippians did not cooperate.

Pennsylvania Amends Juvenile Murder Sentencing

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Pennsylvania’s General Assembly last week, on the last day of its session, voted to end the automatic life without parole for teens convicted of first- or second-degree murder. But some advocates say the new scheme misses the point of real reform. Senate Bill 850 sets the minimum sentence for first-degree murders committed by 15- to 17-year-olds at 35 years. For younger teens, it’s 25 years. New second-degree murder minimum sentences would be broken up in the same tiers: 30 years for older teens; 20 for younger ones.

Massachusetts Leans toward Juvenile Hall for 17-year-olds

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Massachusetts looks likely to raise the age of criminal jurisdiction to 18 next year, and may make more changes as nearly simultaneous new rules from the federal government, a U.S. Supreme Court decision and a report from the state’s Child Advocate nudge Boston lawmakers toward more reforms.

“I think there’s a lot of support” to raise the age, said state Rep. Kay Khan (D-Newton), chair of the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities, as well as House sponsor of an age-raising bill that passed House and Senate committees this year. Right now, Massachusetts reserves juvenile proceedings for those under 17. Khan’s House Bill 450 simply replaced the word “seventeen” with “eighteen.”

“I’ll be working on that pretty steadily and heavily. It just doesn’t make any sense not to do that,” said Khan. That work comes as the U.S. Supreme Court and judges in state courts are more often echoing advocates for more flexibility in youth sentencing, on an argument that youths are still developing mentally and more capable of reformation than adults.

Juvenile Justice Advocates Fear Millions Cut by Sequestration

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Unless the U.S. Congress agrees on a different budget by the end of this year, stopping a so-called “sequestration” budget, federal spending on juvenile justice programs will fall by around 8 percent. A total $21 million would be sliced out of Juvenile Justice Programs under the federal Department of Justice alone, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s report on sequestration. Other spending that has some effect on juvenile welfare, such as state grants from the federal Administration for Children and Families, are also in line for cuts of around 8 percent. “We are kind of bracing ourselves,” said Kimberly Williams, juvenile justice specialist at the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission. “Last year we had only about $1.5 million in juvenile justice funding to allocate across the whole state.

DOJ Quiet on Mississippi Ultimatum to Respond to School-to-Jailhouse Pipeline Allegations

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A key deadline has passed in the federal investigation of an alleged “school-to-prison” pipeline in Meridian, Miss., without the U.S. Department of Justice taking any visible action. The DOJ threatened a federal lawsuit “unless there are meaningful negotiations … within 60 days” of an Aug. 10 public letter. That letter accused the City of Meridian, Lauderdale County and state agencies of running a shoddy juvenile justice system. African-American students and students who have disabilities, according to the letter, are disproportionately caught in the net.