IN THE NEWS

February 3, 2009

Children serving life without parole: “Cruel and unusual?”

Test your knowledge:

1. In the entire world, how many children are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed when they were 13 years old?

2. In what countries are those cases?

3. How many of those cases involve crimes in which no one died?

Answers: (1) There are only eight in the entire world. (2) All eight are in the United States. (3) Only two did not commit a murder. Both are Black, and both are in Florida.

In yesterday's New York Times, Supreme Court correspondent Adam Liptak reports on one of those two. Joe Sullivan, now 33, is serving life for the 1989 rape of a 72-year-old woman. As Liptak reports it:

The victim testified that her assailant was "a colored boy" who "had kinky hair and he was quite black and he was small." She said she "did not see him full in the face" and so would not recognize him by sight. But she recalled her attacker saying something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you." At his trial, Mr. Sullivan was made to say those words several times. "It's been six months," the woman said on the witness stand. "It's hard, but it does sound similar."

Sullivan's trial lasted only one day. His lawyer, later suspended from practice, made no opening statement. Biological evidence was collected from the victim but was not presented at trial and has since been destroyed.

Now, in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, the Equal Justice Initiative argues that Sullivan’s life sentence is cruel and unusual punishment, banned by the Constitution’s 8th Amendment.

People can argue about whether imprisoning a 13-year-old for life is cruel, comments Liptak, but "there is no question that it is unusual."

Liptak's column is here.

Further resources:

Equal Justice Initiative report, "Cruel and Unusual," on 13- and 14-year-old children sentenced to life in prison

Photo credit: Equal Justice Initiative. Hat tip: Jane.

January 26, 2009

State psychologist gets 7-year prison term

Update on North Dakota child porn case

Those of you who followed the case I reported on in December 2007, involving the sexually violent predator evaluator who was addicted to child pornography, may be interested in the outcome:

Joseph Belanger, who ran North Dakota's Sexually Dangerous Individual (SDI) civil commitment program, has been sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of receiving and possessing materials involving the sexual exploitation of minors.

The arrest of the state psychologist prompted a review of more than 100 cases in which he had opined that sex offenders were dangerous and should be civilly committed, and an appeal before the North Dakota Supreme Court.

An interesting but possible unanswerable question is whether Belanger's work in the field somehow triggered his interest in child pornography.

The Associated Press story is here.

Prior blog stories on this case:

Ripple effects of psychologist's porn addiction: Sex offenders to get new trials (July 20, 2008)
Another forensic psychology sex scandal (December 9, 2007)

January 21, 2009

Mental illness: The death penalty frontier

With juveniles and the mentally retarded off the list of those eligible to be executed, severe mental illness looms as the "next frontier" of death penalty jurisprudence, asserts Bruce J. Winick, therapeutic jurisprudence scholar and a law professor at the University of Miami School of Law:

The Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia and 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons marked a significant new direction in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. This Article explores the Court's emerging conception of proportionality under the Eighth Amendment, which also is reflected in its 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana. The Article analyzes the application of this emerging approach in the context of severe mental illness. It argues that the Court can extend Atkins and Roper to severe mental illness even in the absence of a legislative trend away from using the death penalty in this context. The strong parallels between severe mental illness at the time of the offense and mental retardation and juvenile status make such an extension of the Eighth Amendment appropriate.

Severe mental illness would not justify a categorical exemption from the death penalty; rather, a determination would need to be made on a case-by-case basis. The major mental disorders, like schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder, could qualify in appropriate cases, but not antisocial personality disorder, pedophilia, and voluntary intoxication. The Article discusses the functional standard that should be used in this context, and proposes that the determination be made by the trial judge on a pretrial motion rather than by the capital jury at the penalty phase. Future implications of the Court's emerging approach also are examined.

A pdf of the full paper is available for online download here.

Hat tip: Kirk Witherspoon

January 14, 2009

Insanity verdict for soldier with PTSD

Case heralded as landmark for traumatized veterans

Photos: Sargent Binkley before and after

In a potentially landmark case, a jury in the San Francisco Bay Area has acquitted a former Army captain who used a 9mm handgun to rob a pharmacy because he was addicted to painkillers.

The Santa Clara County jury found West Point graduate Sargent Binkley not guilty by reason of insanity after hearing testimony that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his military experiences in Bosnia and Honduras. Binkley is still awaiting trial for a similar robbery in nearby San Mateo County.

Armed robbers are rarely found insane when their crimes appear rational, goal-directed, and premeditated. Additionally, California law does not allow for an insanity verdict based on addiction alone.

The defense argued that Binkley was traumatized by two events -- guarding a mass grave in Bosnia and shooting a teenager during a Honduran drug raid. His father testified that he became addicted to morphine-based painkillers after dislocating his hip in Honduras while running away from an alcohol-fueled fight over a woman.

The trial featured dueling psychiatric experts who agreed that Binkley suffers from PTSD, but disagreed on whether his symptoms were of sufficient magnitude as to render him insane, or incapable of knowing right from wrong at the time of the robberies.

Dr. Jeff Gould, originally appointed by the court in adjacent San Mateo County, testified for the prosecution that Binkley's PTSD did affect his judgment but did not render him insane.

Dr. Kenneth Seeman testified for the defense that Binkley manifested symptoms of psychosis, depression, suicidality, and anxiety in addition to PTSD and was incapable of knowing right from wrong.

Prosecutor Deborah Medved challenged Seeman on why he did not render any of these diagnoses in his original report, written a year prior to testimony. In his written report, according to news reports, Seeman opined that Binkley's insanity was due to his drug addiction. In California, addiction is barred as a basis for the legal defense of insanity. Seeman responded to the prosecutor’s challenge by saying his diagnoses had evolved over the course of his two subsequent evaluation sessions with Binkley.

In another unusual twist suggesting that the jury may have been motivated at least in part by sympathy for the defendant, the pharmacist whom Binkley robbed of Percocet testified for the defense.

The case has been the subject of web sites and petition drives pleading for leniency due to Binkley's status as a veteran. A group of military veterans had regularly attended Binkley’s court hearings. "It's a great day for our veterans who have come back suffering from PTSD to now know they can receive justice," said one, Vietnam veteran and West Point graduate Alan Lubke.

Binkley had faced a minimum term of 12 years in prison. Now, he will undergo a mental health evaluation aimed at determining whether he should be psychiatrically hospitalized or ordered into outpatient treatment.

"I am expecting the doctors will determine he has regained his sanity and is no longer a danger," said defense attorney Chuck Smith. "I hope he will be released relatively soon, like within the next six months."

San Jose Mercury News coverage is here. San Francisco Chronicle coverage is here.

Related resources:

Report: Online threat to children overblown

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series….

The panel, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

So reports Brad Stone in today's New York Times. The news report is here. The full report is here.

January 13, 2009

Stalking: New crime victimization survey

The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics has released the largest-ever study of stalking, a category of crime that was not previously included in the National Crime Victimization Survey. According to the study, intended to document the scope and types of stalking, 3.4 million Americans identified themselves as victims of stalking during a recent one-year period. Most stalkers knew their victims, and the most frequent victims -- not surprisingly -- were young women.

Tomorrow’s USA Today has the story.