A new video documentary titled “Your Neighbor’s Child” was recently aired on Wyoming PBS and discusses shocking shortcomings in Wyoming’s juvenile criminal justice system.

According to Wyoming Kids Count, Wyoming has no separate juvenile justice system, so a juvenile can accumulate a criminal record in adult courts for minor offenses like smoking in school or skateboarding on a public sidewalk. The film features interviews with Wyoming lawmakers including former U.S. Senator, turned juvenile justice reform advocate, Alan Simpson. Simpson was briefly jailed when he was teenager for shooting mail boxes and punching a cop and seeks a return to policies that focus on rehabilitating kids like him.

Next to Wyoming, Colorado has one of the toughest juvenile trial and sentencing structures in the United States. While there is no formal juvenile justice system in Wyoming, most juvenile trials in Colorado are handled by District Courts and District Attorneys get to decide whether kids will be tried as juveniles or adults. In many cases, an adult trial means an adult sentence.

Reaction to your “Your Neighbor’s Child” is typical. One comment at the the Laramie Boomerang, read, ” Why do we not hold children and parents accountable. It is not societies fault but parents who think it ‘takes a village to raise a child’. It takes parents and if children are held accountable for actions at a young age we would see less problems. Just like the person who gets 7 DUI’s in 5 years. Prosecute them and punish them the first time and maybe they will think twice. ”

The problem is that when kids are punished for minor offenses they don’t learn “to think twice” about what they did. They learn to “think twice” about how they got caught. In other cases, kids get caught up in bad situations. A friend commits a serious crime like aggravated assault. Rather than turn on their friend, they try to help him or her and become a party to the crime.

The bible says, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Whether you’re a Christian or not, that’s good advice. As a society we have a responsibility to educate both youth and parents. The fact is that the law entraps young people and rather than trying to sort out what happened, we just throw kids away. That isn’t right. People like Alan Simpson and the makers of “Your Neighbor’s Child” deserve a great deal of credit for working to make things better for children and their parents.

The greatest miscarriage of justice happens when a supposedly self-correcting system fails to correct itself. Alan Sudduth was convicted as a juvenile for murder in 1995 and sentenced to 70 years in prison on a plea deal.  The problem is that Sudduth didn’t actually kill anyone and someone else has repeatedly confessed to the murder.

According to Westword, the Colorado State Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Sudduth waited too long before filing his appeal based on ineffective counsel. Sudduth’s attorney, Alison Ruttenberg, is appealing to the state supreme court. While the Court of Appeals may be technically correct according to the law, they have utterly failed to recognize the injustice that has been done.

As a general rule, there is no statute of limitations on filing murder charges and there should be no statute of limitations on overturning a wrongful conviction. The Arapahoe County District Attorney in 1995 knowingly filed adult charges against Sudduth when the preponderance of evidence pointed to someone else.  Sudduth was too young and too naive to understand the gravity of the decisions his attorneys were making on his behalf. The reason we have court appointed attorneys is to protect defendants against their own ignorance of the law. If they fail to effectively and faithfully represent the interests of their client, the system fails. No judge should ever condone that–whether it fits on their calendar or not.

Sudduth deserves parole.

There are many types of crimes, and there are many types of criminals.  Some criminals are murders, some are rapists, some rob from little old ladies in a make money online scheme, and some make the headlines of the NYTimes.  However, without a doubt, the lowest form of criminals are the pimps.  These bottom of the human barrel criminals manipulate, abuse, rape, and profit from the suffering of young girls day in and day out.  Young girls, just like Sara Kruzan, who grow up in broken homes, are forced by these people to give up their most precious human right, the right to self respect and dignity.  Pimps manipulate these young girls, tell them they are “special,” treat them like celebrities, such as an Audrina Patridge or a Jennifer Love Hewitt, and then turn around and rape them, beat them, and force them to sell their underage bodies to decrepit pedophiles.  If there was ever a prime candidate for the term “lowest of the low,” pimps are it.

When it comes to prosecuting these human refuse, however,  one might as well try to get rid of stink bugs.  The simple fact is that Pandering, the legal term for what pimps do, is a very difficult thing to prove to a jury.  To say nothing of the fact that the girls a pimp “owns” are often times so abused and confused that they will try and protect the very man that makes his living off of their daily degradation.  Given that reality, what choice does a young girl like Sara Kruzan have?  She knows that if she goes to the police, and they cannot make a case against her pimp, she will get hit, kicked, raped, and hit some more as soon as her pimp finds her.  For girls like this there is no escape, there is no protection from the law, and there are no maps to a better life.

Sara Kruzan chose to kill her pimp, a man who had manipulated and raped her from the age of 11.  This girl now sits behind bars, hoping that the California justice system will show her some mercy.  What Stop Direct File wants to know is how could it not?  Born to a home life deprived of parental love, raised by a drug addicted mother, manipulated by a pimp, who promised to be the father she so desperately wanted, and then raped and abused into a life of prostitution — how could any justice system blame her for killing her abuser when she was 16?

There is no question that murder is wrong.  However, there are many many times when extenuating circumstances make a person less guilty, or not guilty at all, of a crime.  Kill a man in self-defense, for example.  A woman who manages to kill a man who is raping her would never be convicted of murder by a jury.  Why is it different for Sara Kruzan?  The only difference I see is that she lacked the social network necessary to gain access to a decent lawyer.

At an age when more fortunate children are playing Nintendo 3DS, taking guitar lessons at the Guitar Center, or scheming ways of finding the hidden files on their Dads iPad, this poor girl was being raped, manipulated, and sold as a sex toy by a piece of human filth.  The fact that she was even prosecuted for killing such a piece of slime is bad enough, but the fact that she was given life without parole is even worse.  If there was ever a person who deserved mercy, or a situation where the demands of mercy and justice were the same, it is this one.  Free Sara Kruzan.

Noting the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to end juvenile life without parole for non-homicide offenses, the Nebraska Democratic Party recently passed a resolution that adds the elimination of JLWOP to their state legislative platform.

The Nebraska resolution states, in part, that:

WHEREAS the United States Supreme Court has again, in Graham v. Florida, reaffirmed the fundamental differences between youth and adults in their ability to exercise judgment, foresee consequences and resist peer pressure, and

WHEREAS the Court has also noted the greater capacity of youth to change, thereby making it impossible to determine at sentencing that a youth cannot be reformed…

THEREFORE be it resolved that the Democratic Party in Nebraska support legislative efforts to eliminate sentences of life without possibility of parole for crimes committed by a youth who has not yet reached the age of 18.

While Colorado eliminated Juvenile LWOP several years ago, the state still practices direct file and consecutive sentencing that can amount to virtual life sentences for kids. In Grand County, 15-year-old John Caudle is being tried as an adult and faces 80 years for allegedly slaying his abusive parents. Children like Caudle cannot forsee the consequences of their actions and have great capacity to learn from their mistakes. They should not, therefore, be subject to abusive practices like consecutive 40 year sentences that ultimately just mean another life lost at great taxpayer expense. Supreme Court members noted the limited scope of their decision by citing Colorado’s consecutive sentencing practices. An adult sentence, whether it is 40, 80, or 120 years for a juvenile does not account for an individual child’s capacity to change.

There is probably no soul sorrier for its master’s mistakes than is John Caudle’s. But the question is: Does his soul deserve redemption or condemnation? And is it the state of Colorado’s purview to make such lasting and ill-begotten judgments on its children? Every religion in the world teaches love and forgiveness and yet here we are as a state encouraging, seeking, enforcing and even disguising the basest revenge we can possibly imagine.  The Nebraska Democratic Party clearly isn’t afraid to face its demons. StopDirectFile.org hopes that in next legislative session, Colorado too can come to terms with its own, very fallible humanity.