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.

The story, from this USA Today Article, basically goes like this: a Miami man was wrongfully accused, tried, and convicted of crimes he did not commit.  He was convicted based upon faulty evidence which had been manipulated by the local prosecutor who was looking to score a win.  By the time the truth came to light the life of an innocent man, and that of his wife and children, was ruined beyond repair.  How could this happen?

Sadly, the case outlined in the article is far from the only example of this.  As our technology advances, DNA testing has freed many people from prison, and from the convictions they were wrongly given.  In all of these cases, no matter what the differences are, you will fine one common thread: somewhere, at some point, the prosecuting attorney chose to pursue a conviction at all costs, rather than justice at all costs.  Pandemonium around events such as the recent UT shooting (University of Texas) help us understand why prosecutors, as elected officials, get carried away with the pursuit of conviction rather than the pursuit of justice.

The reality of America today is that law enforcement, like all other public functions, has limited resources.  Investigating crimes, chasing criminals, and legal prosecutions cost money — lots of it.  Resources are scarce, and the waste that would incur from admitting a wrongful arrest, releasing the former suspect, and beginning the investigation all over again, would be enough to make any prosecutor look bad to his bosses.  Essentially, there is a great deal of pressure on law enforcement personnel to get the job done, quickly, efficiently, and correctly; the first time around.  When the uncertainties inherent in human life intervene, and for whatever reason an innocent person is accused of a crime, that pressure all too often prevents justice from being done.  Rather, the prosecutors push ahead with the case, despite faulty evidence and flawed witnesses, because they need to look good to the public that elects them.  Unless they want to be out of a job.

It is exactly this pressure that makes prosecutors biased attorneys, and should prevent them from having the power to choose to charge child offenders as adults.  Despite the best intentions, despite the desire to see justice done, prosecutors simply do not have the requisite distance to enable them to examine cases objectively.  Judges do, and for that reason, Colorado needs to change its current justice system.  Let the sad stories of destroyed lives show us all that it does not take a willful decision to wrongfully imprison someone, it only takes one overworked and underpaid prosecutor choosing to take the easy road.  This should never happen, but when it happens to young people, it is even more sickening in the eyes of justice.

I don’t know exactly how tall John Caudle is, but all anyone has to do is look at a picture to know that he wasn’t simply being sent to bed without dinner. The 15-year-old murder suspect who is on trial for defending himself against severely abusive parents only weighed 97 pounds when he was arrested. But according to prosecutors he killed his parents because he didn’t want to do his chores.

So let’s put the facts in context. A healthy weight for a 15-year-old male who is 5 foot, 1 inch tall is 123 pounds…at the low end.  According to MotherJones.com, Caudle is almost 6 feet tall. At that height, Caudle should have weighed at least 147 pounds. If he were healthy, he might have weighed as much as 187 pounds. The only fact that the jury in Caudle’s trial really needs to be concerned with is that Caudle was being systematically starved.

What enrages me is that had Caudle died of malnutrition or starvation, his parents might have only gotten 16 years for child abuse resulting in death. And yet, if convicted in adult court under direct file provisions, Caudle could get as much as 80 years for defending himself.

All of this leads into a wider problem: According to ChildWelfare.gov, “Colorado [has an] estimated…50 percent to 60 percent of child deaths resulting from abuse or neglect [that] are not recorded” that way. What that means is that Colorado’s prosecutors simply aren’t enforcing child abuse laws.  Maybe if Colorado’s prosecutors were less focused on convicting kids for defending themselves and more focused on tracking down and prosecuting abusive parents, we could eliminate parricide in Colorado.

I guess prosecutors would rather spend millions of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate a kid for life than actually work to protect him and end the cycle of violence.  Apparently, it’s just more politically expedient to nail a kid whose friends can’t or don’t vote than it is to adhere to your own ethical standards.