Murder Victims Families of Teen Killers
We are murder victims families of those killed by teens. 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.
Victims Rights and Sound Public Policy Regarding Teens Who Kill
NOVJL is devoted to victims rights and sound public policy regarding teens who kill. This website tells the true stories of those murdered by teens. We advocate for the best possible policies to prevent such tragedies from ever happening again. We exist to inform and involve victims families who have been largely left out of the public policy debate regarding teens who kill. These crimes have been horrible beyond imagining for us, as loved ones of those who were killed. We want our loved ones to be remembered. We want only justice for their murderers.
Tragedy and Truth
There are no winners in this conversation – we know this issue is infused with tragedy. Nothing but tragedy. Tragedy for the victims. Tragedy for their families and loved ones. Tragedy for the taxpayers and the public so endangered. Tragedy for all those who work so self-sacrifically to protect us. Tragedy for the families of the killers. Tragedy for the killers themselves.
Photo: Officer Larry Lasater of Pittsburgh, California, Killed in the Line of Duty by a Teenager Sentenced to Life
We are troubled, therefore, even more by the inaccurate and incomplete information that has shaped much of the public discussion of this issue of juveniles who kill. Some have, for example, repeatedly stated that USA is alone in sentencing these “children” to “die in prison”, but this characterization is disingenuous and factually inaccurate. Unfortunately, inaccuracies are sometimes repeated in the media without verification.
We find it tragic that sometimes teenagers in our nation are capable of such brutal crimes. We find it tragic anyone is capable of them. We are completely devoted to PREVENTION of these crimes, and especially recommend the earliest possible intervention with those who display all the warning signs that society and science now have a pretty good idea about in troubled youth. We must invest in turning around youthful first time offenders for the fullest possible opportunity for rehabilitation, and for all our public safety.
The United States separated the juvenile and criminal justice system in our nation for over a century. What offender advocates claim is sentencing “children” as adults is largely a debate of semantics. Legislatures and courts are the bodies we have empowered in our democracy to define what “Adult” and “Child” is, in different arenas. There are gray areas around every bright line in the law. There is a middle ground age range in all states and federally between puberty, defined differently in each state, and the age of 16-18 where states will find teens to be adults if their individual culpability and seriously heinous actions so qualify them. Most countries follow this model.
Some juvenile advocates have cited brain research in support of their positions that has been widely interpreted in different ways. Their advocacy publications have featured photos of child models well under the age of 10 who are being represented as sentenced to life. The advocacy been hurtful to many victims because these victims feel that the publications have minimized the culpability of the offenders and not understood or embraced the harm caused to their murdered loved ones. Their metholodology often involves interviewing only offenders but not the victims families or the law enforcement.
We do not “sentence children to die” in the United States. The juvenile death penalty was abolished years ago. Teen killers sentenced to a long or life sentence get to live long, full and, from behind bars, productive life if they so choose, unlike their victims.
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.
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.
More information is available at the “About Us” tab above.
Help Find and Support Victims Families
There are thousands of murder victims’ family members in this nation who have no idea that there is a movement that seeks to end long term and life sentences for teen killers. If you know any murder victims’ family members in cases where the offender was a teen, please encourage them to contact us for support and information.
Finally, we would 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. Donations to NOVJL to help us support victims of teen killers are most welcome – see the PayPal link on the right sidebar.
Welcome to www.teenkillers.org (also www.jlwopvictims.org).
“Victims don’t want vengeance, they want healing: but there is no healing until justice is done. And justice is never ‘done’ as long as the sentence can be undone.” ~NOVJL member
Dawn Romig Testifies at the Pennsylvania State Capitol
NOVJL member, Dawn Romig of Pennsylvania
Dawn’s precious daughter Danni Reese was brutally raped and murdered. Dawn gave testimony September 2008 in Harrisburg about the life sentence in prison being served by the 17 year old killer. Dawn is one of the few victims’ family members in the United States fortunate enough to know about the political battle being waged against “juvenile life without parole” (JLWOP) sentences. Most victims in Pennsylvania have not been told that juvenile advocates are working to potentially free these convicted murderers, and that victims view as a sentence to a lifetime of re-traumatizing parole hearings. Many families achieved at least legal finality with natural life sentences for those who murdered their loved ones.
“Those under 18 years old may as a general matter have diminished culpability relative to adults who commit the same crimes, but that DOES NOT mean their culpability is always insufficient to justify a life sentence.”
~Chief Justice John Roberts, Concurring Opinion, Graham v. Florida, 2010
“Our society tends to treat the average juvenile as less culpable than the average adult. But the question here does not involve the average juvenile.”
~Justice Clarence Thomas, Dissenting Opinion, Graham v. Florida, 2010
“Daniels and several members of his family begged officials to lock up Markus Evans for an extended time . . . [but after Evans only served 14 months in juvenile custody for shooting and almost murdering Daniels, his 7th violent felony by age 15] Evans was released at age 17 with no supervision . . . Evans reported to police he was so angry that he robbed a liquor store and shot the clerk . . .17 year old Jonoshia Alexander . . .was found dead in the alley, shot in the back of her head.”
~Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 29, 2011
Sacramento Bee VIEWPOINT – August 2011 – Recommending a NO Vote on the “Flawed” SB 9 that was defeated:
“…(T)his legislation as written opens up a tangle of issues that makes its potential impact disturbing. First, a justice system that changes the rules in the middle of the game is not just. Prosecutors and judges already have discretion in seeking and imposing life-without-parole sentences and have reserved it for the ‘worst of the worst.’ . . . All states allow juveniles to be tried as adults in criminal court under certain circumstances, according to the U.S. Justice Department. . . .In all these cases, trials have been conducted, witnesses and victims’ families have testified, everyone has played by the rules. SB 9, however, is retroactive – raising serious constitutional and due-process questions. It does a legislative end run around the intent of the voters who in 2008 passed Marsy’s Law, which strengthened victims’ rights and due process. . . [giving] victims the right to ‘a speedy trial and a prompt and final conclusion of the case and any related post-judgment proceedings.’ SB 9 violates this provision by taking a final conclusion of a case and reopening it . . . retroactively introducing parole reviews for early release after a life-without-parole sentence had been imposed. Because murder victims’ families believed their case was over, they often did not retain the records and contacts they would need to be prepared for new parole hearings – an unfair violation of due process, they say. Importantly, appeals and clemency are already available for sentences deemed too harsh. Last January, for example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger granted clemency to Sara Kruzan, who had been sentenced to life without parole for killing her 37-year-old pimp. ”
