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.

The star of Robert Rodriguez’s new film, Machete, wasn’t always just acting. In a recent interview with TIME, Danny Trejo talks about his career as a juvenile drug addict and armed robber; a career that took him to “every penitentiary in the state of California” before he turned his life around and became a drug counselor in L.A.

Trejo was a real live tough guy whose best friend applied his first prison tattoo with a needle and thread. He changed. As an adult, he’s led a stellar career that has placed him in more than 200 films playing (usually) the villain that he used to see himself as. The irony doesn’t escape him and he laughs off the violence portrayed in Machete by explaining that “[it's] almost funny. It’s not gory. You’re shocked, and then you laugh.”

The fact is that Trejo got lucky. Once they’re in, most kids like him don’t ever get out of the system. Some are relegated to institutions for the rest of their lives for a single mistake. In Colorado alone, there are 49 offenders sentenced to life without parole as children. Yet, some of those kids’ crimes were as innocuous as helping an armed robber like Trejo get away from what turned out to be a botched job. They are the unlucky few.

Many of us have stories like Trejo’s. Many of us had violent or abusive childhoods. Many of us were lucky enough not to get caught up in the system. Don’t we owe the unlucky ones a little understanding? Life sentences for kids–even the ones who were party to a criminal act that resulted in death–are wrong. They deny children the right to make the choice that Trejo made. They deny them the right to become adults.

If Trejo is an example of ‘the worst of the worst’ and he was rehabilitated then our denial of childrens’ humanity and potential for change is a truly sad reality.

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?

Colorado by all accounts is under extreme fiscal stress. Indeed, a recent report by the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute found that “job losses in 2009 and 2010 indicate a full rebound[from the Great Recession in Colorado] is years away.” In short hand that means a long-term slump in the tax base that supports warehousing children for the rest of their lives.

According to a recent opinion article by Paul Wachter at aolnews.com, the economic slump is the perfect opportunity for the Obama Administration to take up prison reform. StopDirectFile.org agrees and suggests that prison reform ought to start where the system is most detrimental to budgets: juvenile justice.

As Wachter notes, many prison reform activists argue that the justice system should focus more on rehabilitation efforts and reduce penalties…” But the reason we should focus on juvenile justice reform first is simply that society suffers the most prolonged effects of incarceration and repeat crime from juvenile offenders that we fail to reform or keep locked up because of the “heinousness of their crimes.”

What we fail to realize is that some of the “most heinous” criminals are also the least dangerous. In Colorado the Department of Corrections currently houses about 15 inmates who were sentenced to life as juveniles for crimes like aiding and abetting a murder suspect. While helping a known murder suspect get away with the crime certainly shows poor judgment and is certainly worthy of punishment, a life sentence might be a bit stiff. When you consider that the total cost to incarcerate those non-violent offenders is just under $500,000 per year, it just seems ridiculous. When you figure that over their lifetimes they’ll cost the state just over $26 million, you want to rip your hair out.

StopDirectFile.org has been fairly critical of corrections practices in the past. Today, we had opportunity to test some of those criticisms through a tour of the Level 4 Limon Correctional Faciltity. Entering the Correctional Facility under a darkened sky we were not optimistic that our views would change much. We were intimidated by the imposing fences and high walls.  But as we reached the other side of the yard our perceptions began to change.

We were ushered quickly up some stairs and into a meeting room where we were met by Warden Angel Medina and his team. After some brief introductions Captain Ken Sokol began his presentation on the facility’s new STAR Program. Far from intimidating, the program he presented was down right impressive.  Focused entirely on cognitive behavior change, the STAR program interfaces with vocational education and distance learning programs to incentivize individual  responsibility and is designed to positively influence the culture of the entire facility.

While Department of Corrections employees steadfastly clung to the necessity of abandonment practices like administrative segregation, the mission statement of the Limon facility reflected a deep dedication to both security and rehabilitation.

Limon Correctional Facility serves the Colorado Department of Corrections by providing a progressive and comprehensive risk reduction program in a Level IV correctional facility to offenders who continue to, or have demonstrated behaviors that are dangerous, disruptive and/or defiant.

We are a powerful team who work collaboratively with others to interrupt an offender’s risk and threat through proactive assessment, case management, and cognitive restructuring programs that are evidenced-based.

We believe in holding offenders accountable while supporting their change….

Many organizations tout their mission in name, but fail to keep to its letter. But at the Limon Correctional Facility, the mission is sacrosanct among employees. Stopping in the yard before moving to the “incentive pod,” Warden Medina proved this point by quizzing several new corrections officers: “How do we make decisions in our facility?” The answer was almost immediate: “According to the mission, sir.”

Even prisoners who had not yet entered the STAR program understood its value and told us that, while they doubted that STAR had any real-world application or relevance to prison life, it had the potential to hasten their release.  Meeting with prisoners who were in the program, the effects were more than evident. One prisoner told our group that the most valuable element in his education was “to simply stop and think.”

StopDirectFile.org has stated several times over that we support “sentence reform that provides appropriate community protections by removing offenders from society until they are no longer a threat; provides victims with a sense of justice, not revenge; and gives offenders an opportunity for rehabilitation, not cold storage.”

While StopDirectFile.org disagrees with practices like administrative segregation and sentences that offer offenders little incentive to cooperate, we wholeheartedly support both the mission and practices demonstrated at the Limon Correctional Facility. Other facilities and the entire criminal justice system should, and can, learn from Limon’s example.

According to a recent Denver Post article, Gov. Bill Ritter is set to appoint several judges to the bench, including a vacancy created by Supreme Court Judge Mary Mullarkey’s recent decision to step down.   StopDirectFile.org has to ask, “what’s the point?” What’s the point when the judges you’re appointing aren’t really allowed the full scope of decision-making power that Coloradans believe they ought to have? What’s the point when a prosecutor can make an extra-judicial decision that no judge can overturn?

The power to direct file charges against a child isn’t just procedural authority, it is judicial authority. In effect, when a prosecutor chooses to file adult charges against a child, he or she is choosing a sentencing range for that child and pronouncing their judgment on that child in open court. Legal precedent in Colorado is clear. According to Colorado Revised Statutes,”the authoritative expression of legal conclusions in declaring the sentence of the law…and the pronouncing of judgment in open court in the presence of those affected thereby, so as to bind and control persons and property” are judicial functions that “cannot be lawfully exercised, except by those entrusted therewith by the people under the constitution.” De Votie v. McGerr, 14 Colo. 577, 23 P. 980 (1890).

Most states preserve separation of powers in filing adult charges by holding what is called a ‘transfer hearing.’ During a transfer hearing, from juvenile to adult court, a prosecutor presents his or her evidence against an accused child. A defense attorney then has the opportunity to cross examine that evidence before a judge. Based on the presentation and cross examination of evidence, the judge then determines the appropriate venue for trying a child. But NOT in Colorado. In Colorado we presume a child’s guilt just enough to make sure that they face consequences as an adult. In Colorado we make sure that a prosecutor’s decision to file adult charges is not subject to judicial review. That’s wrong and Gov. Ritter’s appointments, as a result, have no real meaning.

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.