Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/murder/)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The first of two Iowa teenagers who pleaded guilty to beating their high school Spanish teacher to death with a baseball bat was sentenced Thursday to life with a possibility of parole after 35 years in prison.
Adrift after his father was shot and killed during an argument with a man at a Jacksonville, Fla. bar, then 14-year-old Robert LeCount spent several years burnishing his reputation as a drug-dealer and star athlete.
“We had football rivalry, we had basketball rivalry, we had baseball rivalry. That's how we dealt with a lot of things. Our energy was in the sports and in different activities.” said LeCount, now 63, a Disciples of Christ pastor whose son, then 22, was shot in their Florida hometown in 2003.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month affirmed that lifetime imprisonment without the possibility of parole is just punishment for Brett Jones, who was convicted in 2005 of murdering his grandfather, a tragedy that the then 15-year-old said was an act of self-defense.
I am a former gang member, who took the wrong course of action in joining a gang and decided to live a life of crime. My poor decisions consequently led me to commit a senseless murder and attempted murder on two innocent human beings. As a result of my actions and poor choices I am currently serving a life sentence in prison, as I am under the authority of California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation.
I write you this letter in the hope that it will shed some light into the dark and hidden dangers of gangs and the negative consequences of committing crime.
Being a part of a gang is serious and dangerous matters that have dire consequences. It’s like a deadly tornado that destroys everything and kills anyone who stands in its path.
The violent gang culture destroys countless innocent lives and creates a constant fear and intimidates the neighborhood. It also damages several families and communities in the most destructive ways.
On Nov. 14, Gary Ervin attended a vigil for a young life cut tragically short by gun violence. Days earlier, a 15-year-old was killed in a shooting near a Burger King on the northwest side of Jacksonville.
The impact of the Tessa Majors case could shape juvenile justice policy nationally, said the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
In 1978, a 15-year-old boy named Willie Bosket shot and killed two men in separate incidents, both of which involved robberies. Bosket pleaded guilty to both murders and was sentenced to five years in prison, the longest sentence allowed under state law at the time.
An hour south of Miami, down the street from an alligator farm, a security guard buzzes visitors into the Homestead Correctional Institution. Each guest’s bags are run through a rickety metal detector and he or she is issued a panic button — a portable alarm that can be clipped to a waistband and pressed if an inmate attacks.
Just as lightning flashes and dances across the sky, so too, does this life I live. In a world away, a jungle so thick that everything touches you, a war not of my making, took my father and sister in a cloud of thundering smoke.
Decades of research from the fields of criminology and adolescent brain science find that the decisions made in youth — even very unwise decisions — do not...