2 Youths Plead No Contest in Death of 12-Year-Old Boy

Two teenagers have pleaded no contest to killing a 12-year-old boy who lived in their Calabasas group home, a crime that triggered wide reforms in the supervision of foster children, authorities said Thursday.

Brandon Sewell and Gregory Smith agreed to a sentence of 16 years to life in prison for second-degree murder in the death of Rodney Haynes. Neither will be eligible for parole before 2012.

They beat Haynes to death outside a Calabasas convenience store and left his body in a dumpster. The three had left Passageways foster home after dark to steal beer from a nearby market.

Sewell, 17, and Smith, 19, who were prosecuted as adults, confessed to sheriff’s detectives shortly after the crime on Aug. 26, 1997.

Prosecutors had sought a first-degree murder conviction but one of the defense lawyers said he would argue that the crime was manslaughter, relying in part on a psychologist’s report.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carol Chizever said that although she thought there was a strong argument for first-degree, or premeditated, murder, the lesser murder charge was a fair resolution.

The county Probation Department was widely criticized for having housed Haynes with older, more serious offenders and at a group home that did not have permanent nighttime supervision.

Two months after Haynes’ death, probation Director Walter J. Kelly acknowledged his department’s failure and announced reforms that included creation of a system to investigate the backgrounds of youths already in a home before placing others there, and segregating delinquents of different ages.