John Michael Caudle, a 14 year old child who is charged with murdering his mother and stepfather, is the latest name to add to the list of direct file victims. As the article in the Valley Courier explains, this child can now look forward to solitary confinement and the detestation of his fellow humans, and all because a DA decided that vengeance should trump compassion and justice.

Whatever the details surrounding the killings, which we will learn in good time, there is one certainty: John Michael Caudle is a very scared, angry, and unstable child.  His underdeveloped adolescent brain snapped for some reason, and now, rather than receiving mental help and rehabilitation in a suitable juvenile facility, the state of Colorado is considering whether this child should be thrown into the adult prison system and left to rot.

In this season of peace and hope, is it too much to ask that John Michael Caudle be given the help he needs to recover and develop into a healthy and productive adult?  Have the wellsprings of our culture’s compassion for troubled children dried up?  Violence is a fact of life, but why compound the tragic loss of two lives with the avoidable destruction of a third?

In a recent article from the Denver Daily News Mr. Ted Tow, the executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council insisted that cases involving juveniles were always “carefully examined” by DA’s prior to determining if they will seek sentencing as an adult.

While it is nice to hear that cases are “carefully examined” by DA’s (and honestly, is that not simply the minimum standard?) examining those cases is not the prerogative of the prosecutor’s office; prosecuting them is. Judges do not have to please political supporters and worry about votes and elections. Judges do not have to fear making the tough, but morally correct, decisions;  DA’s do.  I would not want to place my child at the mercy of a DA–especially one that feigns objectivity when his or her imperative is prosecution.

Dec. 2, 2009 DENVER, Colo. – A recent poll of Colorado voters found that by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, the public believes that judges, not District Attorneys, should be responsible for deciding how to prosecute children. Conducted by national pollsters Ridder Braden, Inc. on November 6, the poll found that more than 65% of Colorado voters favor leaving the decision about how to try juveniles up to a judge.

There are currently hundreds of young men and women serving decades – even life sentences – in Colorado prisons. The decision to try a 14, 15, 16 or 17-year-old as an adult in each case is made by one person — a District Attorney. District Attorneys are not required to follow any guidelines and do not have to document how they made their decision. There are no checks and balances and no hearing before a judge. Prosecutors generally make decisions about whether to “direct file” children within 72 hours .

Opponents of direct file feel this leaves defense teams too little time to gather relevant facts regarding the circumstances surrounding a crime or a young defendant’s state of mind. According to Mary Ellen Johnson, Executive Director of Pendulum Juvenile Justice, the problem is really one of impartiality in the judicial system. “District Attorneys are not impartial judges,” says Johnson. “They often have a political interest in prosecuting kids as adults.”

A growing coalition of advocates, including the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center, Colorado Criminal Defense Bar and Youth Transformation Center ask if a system based on direct file is fair. Should the decision to incarcerate kids in the adult system at an annual cost of millions of dollars be left in the hands of one politically elected official?

Colorado taxpayers overwhelmingly say “No” and Johnson agrees. “Our system is supposed to be based on the rule of law. The bottom line is that we need an impartial person charged with protecting the public and the rehabilitation of juveniles to make decisions that will affect kids for the rest of their lives.”

Whether or not legislation will be introduced in 2010, Johnson and other advocates say opposition to direct file will not go away. “The people are behind ending direct file. In 2008, the legislature passed a mild bill softening direct file provisions. Governor Ritter vetoed it. Perhaps it’s time to ask the people to decide.”

This article asks a very serious question and presents three sobering examples of what can happen when the legal system is mislead, misused, and otherwise used as a tool of revenge and not as a blind guarantor of justice.  Are we foolish enough to believe that situations like the ones talked about in this article are too rare to worry about?  Are we foolish enough to believe that DA’s and other prosecutors are always the objective and level headed guardians of the law they are meant to be?

The legal system in America, while it may be miles above the legal system of other, less developed, nations, is still far from perfect.  We still condemn innocent people because of poor detective work, because of fear and prejudice, and most sadly of all, because of ignorance.

It is a sad enough reality that adults in this world are forced to contend with legal systems which, more often than not, are not concerned about justice as much as revenge; the fact that children have to deal with such  systems is unconscionable.  When a child is lost to the faceless, heartless, soulless, Gomorrah of our prison system we as a society have failed that child.  Many children grow up in fear, abuse, poverty, and ignorance.  If their situations drive them to break a law of society should society respond by locking them away, throwing away the key, and simply writing them off as a life wasted before it even began?  Or should society try and solve the real, tough, issues that led to that child’s behavior?

The Willie Horton ad that ran against presidential candidate Michael Dukakis cost Americans hundreds of billions of unnecessary dollars and put hundreds of thousands of people behind bars for far longer than necessary – all lest future politicians be labeled “soft on crime.”

To no avail.   Republicans always call Democrats “soft-on-crime.” That’s just what they do.  In response, Democrats have ratcheted  up prison sentences, built countless unnecessary prisons, and poured money into “corrections” that they’ve taken out of education, transportation and other social programs that actually better our collective quality of life.

Yet no one ever points out that all those billions, all that caged misery rotting the soul of America has occurred not because we as a nation are “tough-on-crime,” but because we’re dumb-on-crime.

Punishment without programs doesn’t work. Neither does retribution.

In the case of Maurice Clemmons, many of my fellow liberals have gleefully jumped on Mike Huckabee for pardoning Clemmons. Twenty years after Willie Horton, they are viciously re-paying the Dukakis slander. As a bonus, they hope to destroy Huckabee’s  career, as well.

They are so wrong.

I applaud Governor Huckabee for granting  1,033 pardons. Yes, he should have vetted some of the applicants more thoroughly; maybe he was a bit gullible when applicants professed a similar religious persuasion. But the vast majority of the people he pardoned are now tax-paying, law-abiding, productive citizens.

I vote for more courageous governors to grant more commutations, more clemencies and more pardons. I vote for more elected officials who believe that compassion and mercy are as  important a component of justice as imprisonment.

Here in Colorado mercy from the governor is about as rare as a sighting of Big Foot. Used to be that prisoners, including some violent ones, semi-regularly received pardons or commutations. In the 1960’s, a sixteen-year-old who killed his parents was pardoned and went on to become a doctor. We believed in redemption then. We believed people could change. NOBODY received a life without parole sentence and when they exited prison, few were ever heard from again. But now that we live in mindless fear of being murdered in our beds or clubbed outside a Starbucks by a toothless meth head or losing all our savings to the charming gentleman we met on an internet dating site, we want to lock up and/or execute the world.

In case you haven’t heard: we already lock away more people than any other nation and we remain more violent. Punishment DOESN’T work. And one more thing that isn’t mentioned: Maurice Clemmons was severely mentally ill. How about these warning signs: Family members  reported that Clemmons said he could fly and that he expected President Obama to visit to “confirm that he is Messiah in the flesh.”

Sending somebody to prison as a kid does not do much for his mental health. And since we’re spending all that money on “corrections” we don’t have any left over for treatment of those with troubled or broken minds.  Institutions have been closed. Programs curtailed. If a person is mentally ill, we all too often lock him away in prison where we won’t have to deal with him or think about him. We bury hundreds of thousands in a system that was never meant to handle the mentally ill – and then we’re surprised and outraged when we’re confronted by a Maurice Clemmons.

Our response is to lash out in yet more fear and yet more anger and demand yet more punishment.

But isn’t it strange. No matter how many millions we lock up, we still cower in our beds and look over our shoulders coming out of a Starbucks and we still get hustled by con men on-line and off.

Prisons are twenty-first century charnel houses of the soul.  We don’t care. Those inside are moral lepers.  They’ve broken rules. They’ve committed bad, sometimes evil deeds. Look, they’re caged. They must be lesser humans. But we on the outside have broken rules and have committed bad, sometimes evil deeds. Yet, we expect, nay, we demand forgiveness. Where we insist that “the other” accept responsibility for their transgressions, we insist that we must be excused.

And along comes Mike Huckabee, who believes all the tenets of the Bible, including, “Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

Governor Huckabee did something unforgivable. He tempered justice with mercy for “the other.”

Now we will crucify him. Now, no other governor will even think about lessening a prison sentence, no matter how worthy the applicant.

We will waste more billions on prison, and the stench from the charnel houses will eventually pervade every corner of this once-great nation.

That’s what being tough-on-crime really means