THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF VICTIMS OF JUVENILE LIFERS

We, the Victims’ Families For The Death Penalty, endorse this victims’ rights organization, NOVJL, an abbreviation for The National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers. We also support this victims’ rights group, regardless of whether they are Pro-Death Penalty or not. We post on this on this date, June 25, 2012, the SCOTUS case, Miller V. Alabama, held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.teenkillers.org/

Murder Victims Families of Those Killed By Teens

We are murder victims families of those killed by offenders under age 18 at the time of the crime. The stories of some of our murdered loved ones can be found on our “Memorials” pages, the heart and soul of this website and organization. 

We exist to support and inform each other. We take no organizational stand on what sentences for these offenders should be – case specifics and victims’ views vary widely. Such decisions are made by our courts interpreting laws passed by all of us through our elected leaders. How these offenders are sentenced is the subject of a significant public policy debate currently.

We exist to support the rights of all victim family members to be heard in the process and participate fully as they choose in the criminal justice system. Read more About Us and What We Believe. 

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.teenkillers.org/index.php/about-us/who-we-are/

Our Organization

We are heartbroken. People we love were murdered.

We exist to support and inform each other, and to advocate for our rights in the criminal justice system.

Victims Rights are the law and in constitution in all 50 states and in the Federal system. Those rights include being treated with dignity and respect, being informed of and participating in all criminal justice proceedings on the same basis as the offender, being able to consult with prosecutors, being able to make a statement before the sentencing of the offender, being kept safe, being notified of any matters pertaining to the release of the offender, receiving restitution from the offender, having support people accompany us to court, etc.

NOVJL recognizes and embodies the tragedy that infuses every aspect of this issue of teens who kill. Despite the fact that many would paint us as opponents of criminal justice reform, that is NOT what we are. We do not take any specific position on what sentencing should be – that is the pervue of legislatures and courts.  Victims differ on the specifics, state laws and individual cases vary widely, and we support all victims families, no matter their position. We believe victims voices must be heard in the public policy debate about these very complicated matters. We insist, as is our legal right, that all victims families be informed of all matters pertaining to the sentencing and possible release of the offenders in our loved ones murders. We know the issues are complicated and run across a broad range of problems.

Many of us believe each crime and punishment should be decided on a case by case basis. The decision belongs to us all in a democracy – to the legislatures, the courts, and the legal experts familiar with the facts of each case.

We understand the problems in the criminal justice system, as with any complex human institution. We recognize it is in need of reform. We fully recognize the problems in the lives of young people who turn to violence. We do not question the intentions of most well-meaning juvenile advocates who want to help ameliorate the problems of economic issues, race, class, family disintegration, mental health, and troubled communities that contribute to crime.

But the issue of sentencing in these cases often comes down to one basic question: are there even a few people who, while still at a young age, demonstrate that they may be very dangerous, perhaps for most of their lives?

There is no denying – even by the advocates for juvenile justice reform – that the answer is YES. There are a few (thankfully a very small number) of people who -for whatever reason – even when they are younger – show clearly that they are dangerous and cannot be allowed to walk among us.

NOVJL supports the availability of a wide range of sentencing options for the courts to use when looking at the individual facts of each offense and determining the best punishment and the best outcome for public safety. Offenses and offenders vary widely, and the criminal justice system needs to make complex decisions about the facts of each case. We believe the vast majority of teen criminals are rehabilitatable and should continue to be treated in the juvenile justice system, as is now the case.

But Criminal Justice is a delicate balancing process. In our lives one issue is key: If the offender appears to be an unrepentant sociopath, for example, who shows little liklihood of ever being deemed safe to be free among us, why would any caring society sentence the VICTIMS’ family to the “life sentence” of unending legal battles, unending and open-ended hearings, trials, parole hearings, and constant re-engagement with the offender that so devastated their lives?

We support legal finality for murder victims families, after appropriate due process for each offender. We urge legislatures and courts to allow victims families an END to their legal process with the offender at some point. This could mean a life sentence if warranted, or a term of years. But murder victims families will always suffer horribly at the regular and protracted endless on-going proceedings that accompany frequent parole hearings, which many states offer inmates. We have seen victims families literally tortured by this unending re-engagement with their loved ones’ killer.

NOVJL does support Victims Rights to be notified of, and heard in, matters pertaining to their case. We believe that retroactive legislation to undo the completely work of courts that have duly processed a case is a violation of victims rights and due process. We believe that the existence of appeals and clemency allows generally for the system to correct mistakes. And we believe that ALL victims families must be notified of any effort to retroactively undo a life sentence – prior to any such consideration, while they can still have a say in the policy being discussed.

We oppose the anti-victim tactics of some advocates for juvenile offender sentencing reform. Some of them have behaved very badly towards us in this public policy debate. We support truth telling about these cases. We request that the propaganda campaign that lies about the facts of the crimes, the facts of the sentencing, and the fact about the killers STOP. It is hurtful and harmful.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.teenkillers.org/index.php/about-us/

We are an organization made up of murder victims’ families of those killed by teenage offenders.

We formed in 2006 in response to an effort to overturn the sentences of those who murdered our loved ones. We have many members in many states, and our deeply grateful also for our strong allies in the law enforcement, prosecutor, public safety, and victims’ rights communities. 

Our first international chapter formed in 2011. 

Anyone who is a loved one of a murder victim killed by a teenager, or supportive of victims’ rights, is welcome to join us!

We understand that a robust national dialogue is taking place on the issue of sentencing of violent offenders, especially younger ones. We insist that the victims and their families are key stakeholders in that discussion. And that they must be found, notified, and invited to participate in that debate, as it is their right in all 50 states and federally, by Constitution or by statute.

We know that murder victims families, the crimes, the situations, the offenders, and our responses to it all vary widely. Such diversity demands that we stand not for one point of view but for each other as fellow murder victims’ families.  We embrace anyone who has had a loved one killed by someone under age 18 – no matter the other details.

For example we fully support these victims families who have chosen to advocate for freeing their loved ones’ killers.

We ask for your support. Join us by simply getting on our email distribution list. Ask your friends who care about public safety and victims of crime to spread the word.

We are an all volunteer organization with no funding. Advocates for those who have murdered our loved ones have millions in foundation funding to advocate for the release of the murderers. 

Donations to NOVJL to help us support victims of teen killers are most welcome.

We Offer Ourselves

Victims families in NOVJL offer themselves as go-betweens and conduits of information between parties in a case. We believe the most important role we can play nationally is to provide all the information victims families would need to decide how they want to handle the individual circumstances of the murders in their families.

We sometimes get calls from offender representatives, which we respond to with kindness and respect. Sometimes they want to correct a published report on the defendant. Sometimes they want help in their cases, and then we refer them to offender advocates we know that have budget and staff to help.

But we want to also proactively offer this: If a defendant would like to get a message to a victim’s family that is appropriately sensitive, respectful, and is information the victim’s family might want to have, we are happy to assist. We can be the victim-sensitive conduit of information to a victim’s family when we evaluate the information as something the family might want to have. It is then THEIR decision what to do.

JLWOP

Some of NOVJL’s members have unsolved cases, some have cases where the offenders were given minimal sentences, and others were given maximum sentences. Between a thousand and fifteen hundred murderers have been sentenced in the USA to Life Without the Possibility of Parole for crimes they committed before age 18. (Higher estimates of the number of these cases published by offender advocates have been disproven.) The acronym often used for that sentence is JLWOP – Juvenile Life Without Parole.

JLWOP is a rare and serious sentence reserved for some of the nation’s most violent offenders. Most JLWOP offenders have been incarcerated for committing unimaginably horrific and aggravated murders or multiple murders, as it is generally not possible for any age offender in the United States to receive a life sentence for a single homicide without certain aggravating factors. Most offenders serving JLWOP committed the actual murder. A smaller percentage of the cases are accomplices sentenced as equally culpable for the crimes.  The Supreme Court outlawed JLWOP in 2009 for non-murder for a handful of cases, mostly in Florida.

We founded NOVJL because we believe:

1. Murder is the worst of all crimes.

2. Murder victims families and friends are traumatized, and damaged for life. They need to be supported and embraced by the community in their long journey post-homicide. All of their victims’ rights must be respected and enforced for the duration. This means for a lifetime. In these cases they have a right to be notified of all matters pertaining to their legal case in advance of action taken, and they have a right to be heard, and to consult about the disposition of their case. They have a right to be protected from the offender, and to full restitution for the crimes.

3. Punishment for such serious crimes should be based on the culpability of the offender – their knowledge, premeditation, their intent, their disregard for human life, their individual circumstances, their consent, their choices, their actions, and the harm that they cause. Exterior factors such as their chronological age should not be the sole consideration.

4. We recognize that throughout the criminal justice system there are some that are unjustly and inappropriately sentenced. The system provides means such as defense, appeals, clemency, etc., to try to prevent this from happening, and to correct it when it does.

However, to release hardened criminals who are likely to kill, rape, harm again is not necessary in order to help those few unfairly imprisoned. To torture victims’ families with repeated re-opening of these cases is continued painful violence against those suffering the most. Most of these offenders committed truly indescribably awful crimes, ending the lives of wonderful and innocent people, devastating their families and friends. Most of them demonstrated a high degree of culpability, enough to earn them a life sentence as an adult. The facts of these cases must not be forgotten. They should be primary in any public policy discussion about this issue.
Most murder cases in this nation don’t even receive long or life sentences. The average term served nationally for murder is far less than 20 years. The numbers of offenders serving life is a very small percentage of all those incarcerated. The number of offenders serving life for crimes committed as teens is extremely small. JLWOP is rare, as it should be. There are less than 1500 cases nationally, in an actual count done by states’ Attorneys General. Offender advocates, who have published repeatedly a larger number up to 2,800, have made estimates whose accuracy is in question and did not actually count the cases. (See actual count done of cases by Attorneys General in Adult Time for Adult Crimes.)

5. Advocates for the offenders must acknowledge that underlying the incarceration of these younger offenders are horrific crimes for which they are responsible. Advocates for the offenders must treat with sensitivity and respect the full heinousness of these crimes and ALL their victims.

6. The prison system does not work to rehabilitate as it should, so it is difficult to generalize that inmates get less violent over time. Many paroled violent offenders can and do kill and kill again. We strongly support better prison programming, even for those that are serving life sentences. Programs are vital so that any offender that is to be released can be reasonably guaranteed not to violently re-offend. Recognizing that over 98% of all inmates do return to society at some point, we strongly support better prison programming. And even for those who serve life sentences, prisons should be flexible in being able to offer rewards for better behavior with education, programs and opportunities within the prison system.

7. We do not “give up” on any human being when we recognize the fact that a certain number of people are deeply and permanently dysfunctional, even from a younger age. There is no “cure” for being a sociopath and many JLWOP offenders are sociopaths.

8. We are permanently attached to this issue. Unwillingly, our fates have been linked forever to the fates of the offenders who took the lives of our loved ones. We will always be part of the public debate about what happens to those offenders. The offenders’ actions made it so.

9. Some parole boards are notoriously ineffective in segregating out those who are sociopathic but clever. It is very easy to behave well while in the controlled environment of a prison. Parole supervision is woefully underfunded and therefore we cannot always expect meaningful supervision. Worst of all, the parole process for victims is quite literally torture and it can substantially interfere with their being able to move forward in their lives. Surviving victims of such serious crimes have a right to legal finality. Victims have a right not to have to spend the rest of their lives re-engaging with that which will significantly re-traumatize them. Many states have done away with parole because of it is wildly discriminatory and ineffective. These states have shifted to a system of determinate sentencing where the offender serves a set period of time and receive good time credit based on their behavior in prison. Many states have no parole and truth in sentencing rules for the most serious crimes such as aggravated murder.

10. Some convicted at a young age are themselves indeed “victims” of unfortunate circumstance, and through little to no fault of their own end up in trouble with the law. But on the flip side, some who kill at such a young age are evidencing the fact that they are genuinely violent or capable of violence for any number of reasons. Many people have sadness and dysfunction in their upbringing who do not then turn around and hurt other people. In fact, most of us do not.

11. Any reforms to JLWOP sentences should distinguish between relief for the wrongfully convicted and over-sentenced, and the truly guilty whose crimes merited the sentence.

12. Funding youth programs, increasing protections in the transfer mechanisms between juvenile and adult courts, supporting clemency decisions where appropriate, and ensuring enough money for good representation at the trial level are more effective mechanisms for reducing the population of offenders who serve JLWOP than parole hearings.

13. Retroactive proposals for reform must not violate victims’ rights to full participation in advance of any decision to change the sentence, as is required by law. Victims must be found and notified and supported to participate in any proposed legislation that would retroactively change a sentence.

14. Victims’ families of any LWOP-sentenced offender often walk away from their trials believing the sentence to be permanent as promised. Evidence and records that would otherwise be saved, if it were known from the start that parole hearings for this family were in their future, are often not retained or even available. Witnesses may be dead or unable to be found. Retroactive injection of a parole process into a sentence of natural life puts victims’ families at a severe disadvantage.

What We Ask

We ask that victims families of these cases be fully included in the public policy debate surrounding teen killers.  We ask for justice for the offenders in our loved ones’ murder cases. Beyond that, it is hard to make broad and specific stands on what NOVJL thinks is the best policy for the sentencing of teen killers, as cases and states’ laws differ widely.

Victims views are also diverse. Most of us support the availability of the widest range possible of sentencing options for extremely violent teens, depending on the facts of the cases. Courts, judges and juries need to have options when handling the individual facts of the cases before them. Many of us support reforming juvenile offender sentencing in this nation. Many of us support restorative justice. Some of us believe the Supreme Court should not have abolished the juvenile death penalty for the most serious of these offenders. Many of us simply want to grieve in private and never have to interact with the offender who so brutally ruined our lives again. Many of us are only concerned with public safety. Many of us are traumatized deeply by what has happened to our loved ones. Many of us are also committed to preventing future homicides, something we have experienced the horror of first hand. No one should ever have to go through what we have been through.

But ALL victims’ families, regardless of their position on JLWOP, must be included (consulted with and heard in) in the decisions about the sentences of the offenders in their cases.
And retroactive legislation that reduces offender sentences simply cannot be done constitutionally or fairly. Those who wish to change teen killer sentencing options in the USA need to do so prospectively only and rely on other “checks and balances” in the system to address other concerns they may have in offender sentencing.

Victims’ Rights

Crime victims in the United States have rights. Among these rights are the right to be notified of, and meaningfully heard in, the proceedings that determine the fate of the offender.  NOVJL was created to help protect those victims’ rights in the wake of an effort to free our loved ones’ killers. After 2005 when the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for under age 18 murderers in 2005 an effort began to end all long prison sentences for these offenders as well.

Posting Comments

We invite you to comment on our Blog. At the individual Victims memorial pages, you are invited to post thoughts for the victims families. Some other individual pages in the site allow for comment.

Crime Victims

The term “victim” is not a term of disempowerment; it is a legal description of a person against whom a crime has been committed. There are primary and secondary victims. The primary victim in our situations are those murdered. We are the secondary victims, and fully victims under the law. 

Some people use the word victim as perjorative. We are not asking for sympathy, we are asking for fairness.

We are working to honor the memory of our murdered loved ones. Many of us work hard by focusing on crime prevention to make sure that no one else ever has to go through what we have had to go through.

Help us remind everyone what the word “victim” means.

I am not what happens to me. I am what I do with what happens to me.

Download a Handout distributed to the American Bar Association during their national conference gathering in Chicago, 2009, at their workshop on sentencing of teen killers.
James Q. Wilson, a Harvard professor who has served on crime and drug commissions, makes an important statement about the general problem of crime in closing his book, Thinking About Crime:

“. . . some persons will shun crime even if we do nothing to deter them, while others will seek it out even if we do everything to reform them. Wicked people exist. Nothing avails except to set them apart from innocent people. And many people, neither wicked nor innocent, but watchful, dissembling, and calculating of their opportunities, ponder our reaction to wickedness as a cue to what they might profitably do. We have trifled with the wicked, made sport of the innocent, and encouraged the calculators. Justice suffers, and so do we all.”


Disclaimer
We have strived hard to make sure that the information on this website is verified in media and legal sources. If, however, any information is incomplete or inaccurate, please contact us immediately with correction verification. 

INTERNET SOURCE: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/25/13992401-for-families-of-victims-of-juvenile-murderers-ruling-reopens-traumatic-wounds#.UGIdPFNmYsA.email

For families of victims of juvenile murderers, ruling reopens 'traumatic wounds'

By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News

Nineteen years ago, Bobbi Jamriska's younger sister was found murdered in a Pennsylvania schoolyard. As Jamriska grieved, one thing brought her solace: When a court found her sister's 16-year-old ex-boyfriend guilty and sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

"When you get up every day, you think about what happened, but at least you know that there was that one constant, that life-without-parole was going to make sure that you never had to relive that part of it," said Jamriska, 40, who lives in Pittsburgh.

But three months ago, the Supreme Court struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles as cruel and unusual punishment. While the June 25 ruling wasn't necessarily designed to be applied retroactively, some youth advocates are trying to use it to free so-called "juvenile lifers," setting off a series of battles over what to do with the approximately 2,100 convicted murderers who were handed mandatory life-without-parole sentences for acts committed as youths.

For victims' families, the decision has had huge emotional, and in some cases, legal implications.

"After the [Supreme Court] ruling, everyone felt like they were reliving the trial phase and their loved ones' murder," said Jamriska, who traveled to Washington, D.C., with other victims' families to protest the ruling.

She is part of a support group called the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers.

"There were a lot of families who didn't have any idea that this was even possible," she said. "For them, it was literally one day business as usual, and then the next day, on the news, their whole world got turned upside down."

Pennsylvania, where Jamriska lives, has the biggest concentration of juveniles serving mandatory life sentences -- about 480 of them, the oldest of whom was convicted almost 60 years ago and is now in his 70s, according to the Juvenile Law Center. Earlier this month, the state Supreme Court in Pennsylvania began hearing arguments for why some of the lifers there should be paroled, including the ex-boyfriend who killed Jamriska's sister in 1993.

No one in the legal system told Jamriska that the parole arguments involved her sister's killer. She found out from a reporter's voicemail about three weeks after the Supreme Court ruling that lawyers were trying to get parole for him.

Jamriska was stunned, but she said a lack of communication is somewhat understandable.

"There never was a contingency for if this person who was sent to life in prison with no parole is suddenly able to get out," she said. "The DA's office isn't really staffed to manage that influx of appeals and those victims who are trying to get information -- I don't blame them."

The state Supreme Court has put the arguments on hold and didn't give a timeline for a ruling. The Pennsylvania legislature still needs to come up with an appropriate alternative punishment for minors going forward. 

"The sentencing scheme in Pennsylvania currently provides that for any individual, juvenile or adult, convicted of first or second-degree homicide must either receive a sentence of death or a sentence of life without parole. For juveniles, that mandatory sentence of life without parole has been declared unconstitutional," Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel at the Juvenile Law Center, said. "We think the courts should look to the next most severe sentence that is statutorily available in the state. Here, that means a sentence for third-degree murder, where you have a maximum sentence of 40 years."

Levick suspects lawyers in other states will argue for that too. Since the Supreme Court ruling, North Carolina has passed a law replacing the mandatory life without prison sentence with a 25 years to life sentence; California's governor is currently evaluating a law that sets up two different schemes where parole eligibility comes in at either 15 or 25 years to life, Levick said. In all, 28 states still allow mandatory life-without-parole sentences for minors, a situation that will have to change.

"States can still impose life without parole," she said. "They just can't make it the only sentence available."

As some juvenile advocates try to undo sentences that have already been imposed, Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, 54, president of the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers, worries about the families of their victims.

"Whenever you reopen traumatic wounds or you're triggering a retraumatization, you're talking about something that is going to affect people's work, their sleep, their health, their marriages -- everything," she said.

Victims can only rely on each other for support, Jenkins said.

14 years old: Too young for life in prison?

"They don't register for victim notification and they don't monitor what's happening, and then you get these reactions like what we've been getting in our organization," Bishop-Jenkins said. "We've been trying very hard to find people to let them know that this multi-billion dollar campaign to free their loved ones' killers is going on and they're just shocked."

There are potential legal issues too: Bishop-Jenkins' pregnant sister and brother-in-law were murdered in their home in Winnetka, Ill., 22 years ago. It was Bishop-Jenkins' father who found their bodies; his testimony served as crucial evidence in the initial trial. Eight years ago, her father died of cancer. She says the judge from the first trial has also died.

"My father was the best eyewitness to the carnage of the crime scene. We didn't videotape him talking about the crime," Bishop-Jenkins said. "We didn't get the transcript of what the judge said at the sentencing hearing where he gave this speech about if anybody deserved life without parole, he did."

She now fears she and her mom, 83, could have to face her sister's killer in sentencing hearings in court. And while she doubts he will be granted parole, she said she worries lawyers may try again every couple of years.