Paying an Adult Price for Crime

Her head is down. Her fingers are worrying a hole in the Formica tabletop.

She talks mainly in sullen monotones: Yes. No. Dunno. But this one thing, La’Tasha Armstead will say. It seems to seep out of her and fill the tiny interview room with confused despair.

“I feel scared,” she says.

Her fingers pick, pick. Her head sags lower.

La’Tasha, 15, is headed to prison today, for life. For a murder she committed when she was 13. She was tried as an adult. She was sentenced as an adult. She is one of the youngest homicide defendants ever seen in the nation’s criminal courts.

Should we care?

Her crime was gruesome. She and her 17-year-old boyfriend, James, wanted a car, a red Chevrolet Cavalier. So they plotted to kill the middle-age nurse who owned it.

They persuaded the nurse, Charlotte Brown, a mother of five who was caring for La’Tasha’s disabled grandma, to take the two of them for a ride. La’Tasha, in the front seat, dropped a Walkman to distract Brown. Then James, in the back, wrapped a telephone cord around Brown’s neck. At the end, La’Tasha slashed at the nurse’s throat with a steak knife, cutting superficial wounds. La’Tasha then drove to a vacant lot--James was shaking too much to steer--and together they dumped the body.

James was sentenced to life in prison. He’ll be eligible for parole in 101 years.

And La’Tasha? How much time should she serve?

Would the answer be the same if she were 20? If she were 10?

La’Tasha will find out today in court when, if ever, she’ll be eligible for parole. By law, the earliest would be 2010. Or she may never get out.

A decade ago, La’Tasha surely would have been tried as a juvenile. A judge, not a jury, would have heard her case. She would have served her time in a juvenile facility emphasizing education and counseling. And she would have gone free when she turned 18, or maybe 21.

But America has grown wary of juvenile courts.

And so tens of thousands of adolescents--not old enough to vote, not old enough to drink, but old enough to commit heinous crimes--land in the adult court system each year. Most aren’t killers. They’re drug dealers and burglars, armed assailants and thugs. Many have long rap sheets. They’re 14, 15, even 11 or 12.

So many kids are now in the adult penal system--even as the country marks the 100th anniversary of the first juvenile court--that criminologist Freda Adler of Rutgers University calls it “one of the most important issues we’ll face in the new millennium.”

Are we as a society safer now? Or are we giving up on these kids too early? Do we coddle adolescent criminals when we grant them second chances? Do we lose sight of our humanity if we don’t? Is it possible for a child to receive a fair trial in a court set up by and for adults?

At 13, Bearing Adult Burdens

“I don’t expect for people to feel sorry or feel that they have to have mercy on me. I just wish, pray and hope that they can understand me, understand where I’m coming from . . . . [B]ut no one can seem to do that.”

--La’Tasha Armstead, in an essay titled “The Way I Feel”

*

La’Tasha isn’t really sure if she’s a kid or a grown-up.

“A kid,” she says, not convincingly.

She is 15 now, having spent the last two years in juvenile detention while her attorneys fought in vain to move her out of adult court. Even at 13, however, she had experienced more than many grown-ups. As her grandma, Emily Armstead, put it: “She didn’t have a Norman Rockwell-type background.”

By age 13, La’Tasha had been raped by several neighborhood boys. She had at least one miscarriage. She had tried, painfully and with ferocious love, to get her drug-addled mom to go straight. Since her father was in prison for killing one of her 10 half-siblings, La’Tasha raised her little sister. She also washed her disabled grandma’s swollen legs, even carried her to the bathroom.

But all that responsibility shoved her way couldn’t change the calendar. She bore adult burdens. Yet she was still 13.

So, yes, she cooked for her grandma. She even had a secret ingredient for her specialty, spicy fried chicken. But like a kid, she didn’t see the point of cleaning up, leaving a teenage mess in the kitchen.

So, yes, she was pregnant again at age 13--her son was born in juvenile detention. But she still didn’t know how to put on a bra.

She liked to lick sugary Kool-Aid mix. She called her mother “Mommy-Pie.” She jumped rope. But she also helped plan a murder.

When she was on trial, La’Tasha had firm ideas about her own defense, just like any competent adult. But these were her suggestions: Her lawyers should stop questioning the witnesses, lest they annoy the judge. She should wear ripped jeans to court, because there was no rule saying she had to dress up. And during the pivotal cross-examination of her boyfriend, her lawyers should ask the following questions: Do you still love La’Tasha? Do you still think she’s pretty? Are you sleeping with anyone else?

Defense attorney Robin Shellow, who has built an impassioned career helping juveniles, points to La’Tasha’s proposed defense strategy as proof that kids do not belong in adult court.

On one level, La’Tasha surely could follow basic trial proceedings--although she did ask, on the eve of her testimony, “What does the jury do again?” But on a more fundamental level, Shellow contends, teens can’t process the gravity and complexity of a criminal court case. They care more about whether their boyfriend still loves them than about exonerating testimony. They want to wear ratty jeans, no matter what their dumb old lawyer says.

“Adult courts can’t accommodate the thoughts and feelings and motivations of children,” Shellow said. “The voice of the child in the adult court doesn’t make much sense.”

To be sure, many adult offenders are equally unsuited to aid their defense. And, as proponents of tougher sentencing point out, kids who know enough to plot a crime can’t be dismissed as tender innocents.

Still, some researchers believe that children like La’Tasha do not have the cognitive abilities to navigate the adult penal system.

In juvenile court, social workers are on hand to help young defendants. And lawyers on both sides--as well as the judge--are used to deciphering kid-speak. Plus, since the stakes are much lower, everyone involved is, at least in theory, more likely to cooperate in figuring out what’s best for the child. In contrast, adult court tends to be rushed and adversarial. And offenders constantly must weigh the pros and cons of various actions, from accepting a plea bargain to testifying in their own defense.

Most kids under 13 can’t perform such tricky mental reckoning, according to psychologist Laurence Steinberg, who has been studying such issues for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network. Kids over 16, however, do about as well as the average adult.

It’s the 13- to 16-year-olds that are hardest to peg; their skills vary by education, temperament and maturity. “We’re trying to understand where to draw the line between childhood and adulthood,” Steinberg said. “We really don’t know.”

Laws Directing More Youths to Adult Court

“There is no evidence that the defendant, if waived into the juvenile system, would eventually realize that her crime was serious. A crime of this significance demands a significant punishment, regardless of rehabilitative possibilities.”

--Circuit court decision denying La’Tasha a transfer to juvenile court

*

Under Wisconsin law, any child at least 10 years old goes to adult court automatically if charged with first-degree intentional homicide.

“They obviously understand enough to commit the crime,” reasons state Rep. Bonnie Ladwig, who helped write the law. Adult processing, she said, is therefore appropriate. “Much better than giving a slap on the wrist and putting [the offender] back on the street.”

Legislators around the nation agree.

Over the last decade, nearly every state has passed laws directing more--and younger--juveniles into adult court. In Kansas and Pennsylvania, for instance, kids as young as 14 are presumed to belong in adult court if they’re charged with certain serious felonies. In Florida, even misdemeanors can be filed in adult court if the defendant is at least 16.

California keeps all defendants younger than 14 in juvenile court, no matter the offense. But Oklahoma permits 7-year-olds in adult court, at least in principle. And 36 states set no minimum age.

In Wisconsin, young defendants in adult court receive a hearing at which a judge weighs their prior record, maturity and potential for rehabilitation, among other criteria. La’Tasha received such an evaluation when she appealed to be transferred to juvenile court. But judge after judge rebuffed her, all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

And that, prosecutor Mark Williams argues, was as it should be.

“This case was so horrific,” Williams said, “that anything less than what we did I think would diminish the severity of the offense.”

Dist. Atty. E. Michael McCann had defended La’Tasha’s adult status by arguing that she looks mature. Plus, he had said, she was in a sexual, “spousal-type relationship” with her boyfriend at the time of the murder, which “is indicative to me of a degree of maturity.”

Williams takes a different approach: La’Tasha should be in adult court, he said, because she masterminded a crime so awful that she poses a threat to society--a threat a few years in a juvenile facility would not necessarily defuse. “It was our determination originally that she was a dangerous person.” He hasn’t changed his mind.

From her bed at a Milwaukee nursing home, Emily Armstead squawked in outrage at that assessment. “Why are they howling for a child’s blood?” Armstead said, braids bobbing indignantly. “Whatever happened to rehabilitation?”

Williams’ response: Saving La’Tasha is not his job. Saving society from her is.

Terrified of What Her Future Holds

“No child should come here. No way. Send them to Texas boot camp. Anything but the adult system.”

--Inmate who was sent at age 17 to the Taychedah Correctional Facility, the women’s prison in Fond du Lac, Wis.

*

La’Tasha may go to Taychedah this afternoon. Or she may first spend a few years behind bars in a prison for serious juvenile offenders. The timing is up to corrections officials, who will evaluate her after today’s sentencing.

La’Tasha, in any case, is terrified.

She has heard that girls get raped at Taychedah. She worries she won’t get a daily phone call. She wonders what she’ll do all day in a cell. In juvenile detention she goes to school, plays cards, watches movies. She doubts they’ll let her study music at Taychedah. She doubts they’ll show “The Nutty Professor.”

Talking about her fears just scares her more. So, picking away at that Formica, she sticks with a bland projection: “It’ll just be hard.”

No one knows how many children this young face adult prison terms.

Steinberg estimates that 200,000 children under age 18 are sent to adult courts each year. Most are older teens, 16- and especially 17-year-olds. But the number of younger kids is rising. In 1996, the most recent data available, 12% of cases transferred to adult court involved defendants 15 or younger. That’s up from 7% a decade earlier.

As we’ve sent more kids to adult court, juvenile crime has plunged. The homicide rate, for instance, has fallen by more than 45% since 1993.

Supporters of the tougher laws hold up such statistics as proof that their approach works. “Yes, I feel sorry for her,” Rep. Ladwig said of La’Tasha. “But maybe this saved some lives by teaching other kids that they won’t be able to get away with it.”

Critics aren’t convinced. The crime rate may be dipping now, but they warn of trouble down the road, when the thousands of juveniles now serving terms in adult prison are released. Rehabilitation programs are sparse in prison. And studies show that kids processed through the adult system are more likely to relapse into criminal activity than counterparts treated as juveniles. One large Florida survey found that youths transferred to adult court committed crimes again 30% more often.

“Basically, when you put a child in an adult correctional facility, you’re saying: ‘We’re giving up. We’re not going to try to improve them,’ ” said Malcolm Young, a lawyer on La’Tasha’s defense team. “You’re tossing them away.”

His voice broke as he said it.

She Says She Was Just Following Orders

“Now that Latasha has had more than two years to reflect on Ms. Brown’s death, [she shows] a disturbing lack of expressed grief, remorse or sense of tragedy. . . . She clearly recognizes that what she did was morally wrong. However, she does not allow herself to face the horror of the event in fully human terms.”

--Report of Anthony Kuchan, psychologist

*

Of Charlotte Brown, La’Tasha says: “I’m sorry she’s dead.”

But she doesn’t hold herself responsible.

In fact, she tells other inmates she’s in jail for auto theft. She thinks her one fault in the whole affair was coveting Brown’s Chevy Cavalier.

When it came to the murder, she was just following James’ orders, she says. She couldn’t stop him. She claims she tried to save Brown at the end by slashing at the cord around her neck with the steak knife. She didn’t admit that for two years, however, because she didn’t want to make James mad. “I didn’t have control over what happen,” she wrote the trial judge, “because James had control over ME!”

In the end, it all comes down to this: Does society consider La’Tasha a dangerous adult, or a kid with the potential to change?

She may be both. But in court, it’s either/or: juvenile or adult.

Ask her, and she’ll work those fingernails hard on the Formica table. Her head will hunch lower still. Finally, she’ll mutter: She doesn’t think she should be treated as an adult. Doesn’t think she should be punished as one.

Why not, La’Tasha? Why not?

Her head snaps up for half a second. Her eyes flash hurt.

“ ‘Cause,” she says, as though it should be obvious. “I ain’t one.”