By Mary Ellen Johnson, Executive Director, The Pendulum Foundation

John Caudle was fourteen-years-old when he killed his mother and step-father in their secluded home near Monte Vista, Colorado. The crime made national news. Parricide generally does.

There are two ways of handling a parricide case. If the child’s lucky, prosecutors and press will investigate before “creating a narrative.” They’ll key on one truth – kids who kill their parents generally have a very good reason, so let’s determine that reason before playing Mr. Hardcore and gunning for the kid’s life. Or, they’ll declare this kid is Satan’s spawn and we’re going to take him out.

In John Caudle’s case there was a bit of both. Looking at this skinny kid in over-sized glasses, the community didn’t see the devil in a tattered t-shirt. Plus stories of abuse immediately began circulating.

A family friend told us, “There are some really weird stories which make me think his mom was mentally unstable.  Joanne used to do some weird sadistic sorts of things that were more emotionally abusive and really cruel…Apparently, John kept quiet about a lot of the abuse because his mother would threaten him.  The stories I have heard from credible sources even involve John being tasered by his mom for punishment.  And this is when he was 7 or 8 years old.  John did not qualify for the school breakfast and lunch program because his step father made too much money.  Yet, his teachers noticed that he always seemed to have a lunch that looked scraped together.  And from the police report, when they went to the crime scene they noted very little food in the house.  Apparently, his mother and step-father would eat dinner and then when they finished John was allowed to make his own dinner.  Consequently, he lived on hot dogs and spaghetti.  I guess life is actually better in prison in some ways.  At least he gets regular meals.”

In many cases of child abuse, these kids are invisible to anyone with the authority to intervene. “I didn’t know anything was wrong,” they say after a tragedy.  “The parents seemed like nice people.” “He was a good student – a little different maybe. But we had no idea.” Such was not the case with John. Social Services followed Joanne and John through various states and investigations, including Colorado. Here, a teacher reported John after he came to school with a black eye. John was never removed from his house, though classes were ordered.

Despite the abuse, despite community sympathy, despite available legal alternatives to a harsh adult sentence, District Attorney David Mahonee believes it’s his duty to make sure a severely abused kid who got no help from the system and felt trapped in a endless nightmare, should be locked away for the rest of his natural life. Because make no mistake: when John Caudle is convicted — and he will be in a state where DA’s have a 90% conviction rate – he will be immediately sent into the adult prison system. No stopover in juvenile hall until John’s 18 or 21. No sir, not here in Colorado. Put him in with the biggest and baddest. He killed his parents, he was convicted, he deserves no mercy. And he won’t receive any.

John Caudle is still months away from trial. Because of Colorado law, he is kept isolated.  John exists in a legal limbo: the state says he’s an adult and he must be treated as an adult. The state also says he’s a kid and has to be kept separated from adults. However, since there are few accommodations for children in your local jail the solution is to keep him walled off from most human contact. While John’s attorneys are consumed by his case, pre-trial preparation  does NOT necessarily include a lot of one-on-one time with your client, especially when the jail is 45 minutes away.  During the school year former teachers volunteered to keep John abreast of his studies, but their visits averaged about 4 hours a week, and for the rest of the valley it’s still summer. No classes. Most of John’s time is spent watching television, sometimes reading, occasionally writing  letters. No friends. Little communication. Lots of time to think .No one to help him sort through his past, or his deed. Recently two other juveniles who were direct filed into the adult system and kept isolated as  John is being isolated, committed suicide.

Isn’t it ironic that a kid who went through hell with his parents is going through hell at the hands of the state?

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.