Gratitude

On behalf of the CCJRC family, we hope you and yours are well.  This holiday brings no greater pleasure than the opportunity to express to you our gratitude for your support. 

We are deeply thankful and extend the wish that the good things of life be yours in abundance not only at Thanksgiving but throughout the coming year.
As always, thank you for your continued support of CCJRC.
Graciously,
Christie, Ellen, John, and Pam
www.ccjrc.org

Amendment 64 Opponents speak out.

The Huffington Post

Last night, Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use, forever altering the course of the war on drugs. To put the passage of these groundbreaking measures into perspective, Tom Angell, spokesperson for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said it best in a report by The Huffington Post's Matt Sledge:
"To put this into historical context, there is no historical context. It's the first time any state has ever voted to legalize marijuana -- and two of them did it."
Sledge reported:

The votes marked a significant shift from decades of tough-on-crime policies that burned through $1 trillion in tax dollars over 40 years, led to the arrest of 850,000 Americans for marijuana law violations in 2010 alone, and fueled the rise of deadly drug cartels abroad. But even as pot reformers celebrated their long-sought victories, the threat of a confrontation with the federal government loomed. Both ballot measures would legalize recreational marijuana use only for adults, and cannabis would remain a controlled substance under federal law.

Colorado's Amendment 64 -- which won with 54 percent of the vote in favor, 46 percent opposed -- had vocal opponents during the run up to the election and many of those are sounding off in the wake of the unprecedented passage of the marijuana legalization measure. One of those opponents is Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who reacted in a statement:

The voters have spoken and we have to respect their will. This will be a complicated process, but we intend to follow through. That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug so don’t break out the Cheetos or gold fish too quickly.

Cheetos and gold fish? LEAP's Tom Angell, for one, didn't appreciate the apparent joke the governor was making about marijuana users. "What an insult to the majority of voters who did not follow your recommendation, governor," responded Angell. "I wouldn't be surprised to see that comment bite him in the ass."
Back in September, Hickenlooper came out in opposition to the amendment saying, “Colorado is known for many great things –- marijuana should not be one of them." Hickenlooper added, "Amendment 64 has the potential to increase the number of children using drugs and would detract from efforts to make Colorado the healthiest state in the nation. It sends the wrong message to kids that drugs are OK."
Mason Tvert, co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol -- the organization behind Amendment 64 -- had strong words for the governor: "Governor Hickenlooper's statement today ranks as one of the most hypocritical statements in the history of politics," Tvert said. "After building a personal fortune by selling alcohol to Coloradans, he is now basing his opposition to this measure on concerns about the health of his citizens and the message being sent to children. We certainly hope he is aware that alcohol actually kills people. Marijuana use does not. The public health costs of alcohol use overall are approximately eight times greater per person than those associated with marijuana. And alcohol use is associated with violent crime. Marijuana use is not."

Attempt fails to repeal death penalty in California

Star Tribune

Attempt fails to repeal death penalty in California despite concerns about cost

LOS ANGELES - California voters rejected the latest attempt to repeal California's death penalty, dealing a blow to activists who saw the election as their best chance in 35 years to end capital punishment in the state.
Officials were still counting ballots, but it was apparent Wednesday that voters rejected Proposition 34 by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent. The defeat came even though recent polling showed concern growing over the cost of capital punishment and its paltry results in California.
The state has executed just 13 convicts, and its death row has ballooned to 726 inmates since 71 percent of the electorate voted to reinstate capital punishment in 1978. No executions have taken place since 2006 because of federal and state lawsuits filed by death row inmates.
The Legislative Analyst has said ending the death penalty would save the state $130 million annually.
Still, it appears a majority of California voters still support capital punishment in California as the best way to deal with the state's most heinous killers, but would like to see reforms.

California Votes to Reform Three Strikes Law

Huffington Post
After nearly 20 years and over $20 billion spent, California voters have voted overwhelmingly to reform our state's draconian "three strikes" law. The statewide ballot measure, Proposition 36, delivered a two-to-one mandate (68.6%-31.4%) to close a controversial loophole in the law so that life sentences can only be imposed when the new felony conviction is "serious or violent."
Three strikes laws, often known as habitual offender laws, grew out of the "tough on crime" era of the 1980s and 90s. Between 1993 and 1995, 24 states passed some kind of three strikes law, but California's 1994 three strikes ballot measure was especially harsh.
While the 1994 law required the first and second strike to be either violent or serious, any infraction could trigger a third strike and the life sentence that went with it. Therefore, petty offenses - such as stealing a piece of pizza - have led to life imprisonment for thousands of people.
Although 25 other states have passed three-strikes laws, only California punishes minor crimes with a life sentence. In fact, 3,700 prisoners (more than 40 percent of the total third-strike population of about 8,500) in the state are serving life for a third strike that was neither violent nor serious. Because of its unique stringency, California's habitual offender law has generated numerous legal challenges based on the 8^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring cruel and unusual punishment.
Yesterday, voters in California put an end to one of the harshest and least effective sentencing laws in the country. Proposition 36 ensures that no more people are sentenced to life in prison for minor and nonviolent drug law violations. In fact, implementation of the new law will not only bring relief to petty offenders moving forward, but inmates currently serving life sentences for non-serious, non-violent crimes can apply for a new sentence. In these retroactive cases the sentence can only be reduced if a judge determines that the individual is no longer an unreasonable threat to public safety.

"Californians finally appear to be coming to their senses on the basic question of who deserves to spend the rest of his or her life behind bars," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "Locking up people for life whose only recent offense was a minor violation of the state's drug laws never made sense in terms of public safety, finance or morality. California at last is rejoining the civilized world."
As California set the trend for the passage of 3-strikes laws across the country in the 1990s, we are optimistic that the passage of Proposition 36 will also set the trend for rethinking these reactionary and costly laws in other states. California incarcerates more people than any other state in a country that imprisons more people than in any other country, with 25% of the world's prisoners, but only 5% of the world's population. There is still a long way to go to dismantle the mass incarceration industrial complex we have built in the U.S. since Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971.

CO Attorney General sounds off on legalizing marijuana | koaa.com | Colorado Springs | Pueblo |

CO Attorney General sounds off on legalizing marijuana | koaa.com | Colorado Springs | Pueblo |

Colorado Spending $208 million on empty prison

The Denver Post

(It has recently come to our (CCJRC's)  attention that the service we use (Feedblitz) to send out our blog

"Think Outside the Cage" has been embedding political ads in their communications.   

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Three days ago, Colorado shut down a brand-new prison it didn't need.
Unless the state government finds someone else who can use it, Colorado taxpayers can expect to spend $208 million for an empty building.
Finding someone else may not be easy. Colorado State Penitentiary II, also known as Centennial South, consists of 948 solitary-confinement cells. It has no dining room, no gym, no rooms where a group of prisoners could take classes or go to therapy or get vocational training. It's row after identical row of empty cells.
From the beginning, critics of this project objected, correctly, that Colorado was putting people in solitary confinement at a rate that dwarfed the national

(Click on image to enlarge)

average.Yet it was built.
It was built even though most legislators opposed the prison in 2003, according to a key player. Another bit of legislative ingenuity overcame that problem. The sponsors lumped the prison with a new University of Colorado medical campus and gained bipartisan support for two projects financed without a vote of the people.
Separately, neither project would have passed, according to Republican Norma Anderson, the Senate majority leader and bill sponsor in 2003.
"You couldn't get the votes for either one of them," said Anderson, now a former legislator living in Lakewood.
Republicans wanted the prison, Democrats the hospitals, and "that's the only reason they were put together," she said. "It's very simple."
The other key players in the project were Republican co-sponsor Lola Spradley, House speaker in 2003 and resident of Beulah — prison country; Ari Zavaras, corrections chief for two Democratic governors; and Joe Ortiz, the corrections chief for a Republican governor.
And the statisticians who predicted prison populations played a part. The Division of Criminal Justice, for one, foresaw numbers of Colorado prisoners going up and up. Instead

the prison population declined along with the crime rate, while judges sentenced fewer people to prison. Today, Colorado holds about 7,500 fewer prisoners than forecast six years ago.Opened over objectionsColorado State Penitentiary II was built without a vote of the people, a requirement for Colorado projects that increase state debt, and in spite of a warning from the state treasurer that the voters should decide.
The legislature resorted instead to a financing method called "certificates of participation." Rather than borrow money to build its own prison, the state sold certificates to investors, becoming the operator of a prison owned by a multitude of lenders.
The prison was built despite a 2005 Colorado Department of Corrections report from its own staff confirming that Colorado held three times as many people in solitary confinement as the average state prison system.
It finally opened in 2010, over renewed objections that Colorado didn't need it. The corrections department, in turn, won the fight to open it with a misleading claim that most states actually held more prisoners in what the department calls "administrative segregation."
Now it's empty.
Kent Lambert, a Republican state senator from Colorado Springs, agreed to

Ari Zavaras, corrections chief for two Democratic governors, said, "I err on the side of inmate safety and officer safety." (The Denver Post | Craig F. Walker)

open the prison in 2010 as a Joint Budget Committee member. This year, after voting to close it, he said he and other legislators feel deceived.Corrections officials lobbied vigorously to open it, citing "a growing population of violent prisoners," inadequate facilities and a trend toward more dangerous offenders, Lambert said. Now, some legislators "felt they were being lied to."
Actually, "those numbers were driven by bad policy, the excess of administrative segregation and the lack of adequate review" for inmates, Lambert said. "If you put people in administrative segregation for years, in some cases even decades without adequate review, we have some potentially serious human-rights violations."
Ari Zavaras, the department's executive director in 2010, said he never meant to deceive anyone.At the time, he said, administrative segregation beds were full, leaving no place to put offenders if there was a murder, riot or violent fight.
"I really felt we had a need," he said. If in doubt, "I err on the side of inmate safety and officer safety."
The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, a group that opposed the prison from the start, now questions whether the state will be able to sublet 948 solitary confinement cells.
"The bottom line is we never needed that prison to begin with," said the coalition's Christie Donner, "so it's lose-lose."
None of the repeated objections to building a new solitary confinement prison was heeded until last year, when Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper took office and appointed a new corrections chief, Tom Clements.
Within months, Clements brought in consultants from the National Institute of Corrections to take an independent look at Colorado's solitary confinement system.
Here's what they reported:
• About 7 percent of Colorado prisoners are kept in "administrative segregation," compared to a national average of 1 to 2 percent.
• The average length of stay in solitary cells is about two years.
• Most in solitary confinement "are not being disruptive and have not been disruptive for some time."
• The solitary confinement population in Colorado kept growing even as its overall prison population declined.
• About four of 10 offenders in the system ultimately go straight from cells where they were confined 23 hours a day to the streets.
• The proportion of prisoners with known mental health problems had grown from 22 percent to 40 percent in 11 years.
Clements said he was particularly disturbed by how often "we were taking inmates in restraints to the bus station" and removing the handcuffs there.
"That was a very compelling factor for us," he said.
This year, state legislators unanimously agreed to close the prison
Challenge to "re-purpose"As corrections department spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti walks down a barren hallway of Colorado State Penitentiary II, her heels click audibly. It's that quiet.
The last inmates were moved out in October, along with correctional officers, teachers, medical staff and counselors. Except for the kitchen and laundry, which will serve inmates elsewhere in a six-prison complex, the prison closed Nov. 1.
Sanguinetti outlined the challenges of "re-purposing" this place.
"There is no classroom space. There is no program space, no outdoor recreation, no dining hall," she said.
From one hallway to another, the prison consists of rows of empty cells, identical but for their door colors.

Read more: Colorado spending $208 million on empty solitary confinement prison - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21924289/colorado-spending-208-million-empty-solitary-confinement-prison#ixzz2BIuHeVeD
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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!

It has recently come to our (CCJRC's)  attention that the service we use (Feedblitz) to send out our blog

"Think Outside the Cage" has been embedding political ads in their

communications.   

This was done without our knowledge or consent. 

CCJRC is a non-profit organization that does not oppose or support candidates for

any political office.  We apologize for any misinterpretation this may have caused and we will

make sure that we have solved that problem before we send out any further

blog information.

Robert Dewey Rides Into a New Future

The Denver Post

GRAND JUNCTION — When Robert Dewey's cellphone jangles in his pocket, Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" is the ringtone.
Dewey said it's just one way he has to remind himself that he really is free after spending 16 years in prison proclaiming his innocence for a gruesome rape and murder that put him there.
"It was like being in a roomful of people, like, I am here and I'm yelling and you can't hear me," Dewey told a classroom of criminal justice students Monday evening at Colorado Mesa University.
His visit marked the first time Dewey, 51, has spoken publicly about his ordeal in the town where he was convicted in 1996 and exonerated in April.
Dewey told the students — many of whom were still in diapers when he went to prison — that his main message is that they should "look beyond the cover of any book and read a few chapters."
Dewey is heavily tattooed. His hair hangs below his waist. He is back to wearing the biker leathers that were the costume of his preprison existence. And he hasn't toned down the tough-guy talk.
"Robert's the same. He hasn't changed a bit," said Steve Laiche, one of the attorneys who originally represented Dewey and who continued to work on Dewey's defense while he was in prison.
Laiche also teaches the criminal justice class where Dewey spoke in a rambling, profanity- and humor-laced question-and-answer session that ended with one student handing him $20, others giving him hugs and handshakes, and some posing for cellphone photos with him.
"How does it feel to be a celebrity," one student asked and got only a chuckle in response.
Dewey was anything but a celebrity in 1994 when 19-year-old Jacie Taylor was murdered. Her body was found in her Palisade apartment in a neighborhood that was the epicenter of a growing methamphetamine subculture.
Dewey was identified as a suspect based on the changing stories of other meth users and on his suspicious and furtive behavior. Blood on the Texaco shirt he often wore at the time was identified as possibly being Taylor's based on early DNA tests.
Dewey candidly told the students Monday that the blood on the shirt was his — a result of shooting up drugs.
That was proven to be true, and Dewey was exonerated after much more sophisticated blood testing also showed DNA samples in Taylor's apartment belonged to a man now serving a 40-year sentence for the murder of another woman in Fort Collins. Douglas Thames, who also lived near Taylor, is going to be tried for her murder.
Since shortly after he was released, Dewey has been living in Colorado Springs with a girlfriend he knew before he went to prison and her 8-year-old son. He had back surgery a month ago to remove pins and screws that a prison surgeon used to treat injured discs. A still ruddy scar slices through a dragon tattoo on his back. He lives on $698 a month in disability payments.
His focus has been on rebuilding an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle because it was imaginary motorcycles that got him through prison. He spent much of his time behind bars fantasizing about riding.
"I would picture myself walking down a sidewalk lined with bikes, and I'd pick one and ride away," he said.
Dewey said he's not sure what he wants to do with his life now. Decisions come hard because he had few opportunities in prison to make choices. He "blows circuits" on something as simple as picking food from a menu, much less choosing a career after he received no training in prison because of his "lifer" status.
Dewey may be telling his story next to the Colorado legislature. Several legislators are working on a measure that would give compensation to the wrongly convicted who are exonerated based on new DNA testing. There are 23 states that offer such compensation.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm

---

How to help

Private donations have been helping Robert Dewey — who was exonerated of a rape and murder conviction after 16 years in prison — to live and to finish building his dream motorcycle. Contributions can be sent in care of his Denver attorney: Danyel Joffe, 1626 Washington St., Denver, CO, 80203.

The New Go Guide!

	October 2012
	NEWLY RELEASED!!  Getting On After Getting Out:  A re-entry guide for Colorado--third edition    A lot has changed since the 2nd edition of the GO Guide was released in January 2011. GET THE LATEST INFORMATION about legislative changes in 2011 and 2012. The 3rd edition includes details on changes to earned time (SB 11-176 and HB12-1223), the two new presumptions of parole and the redesign of special needs parole (SB11-241 and HB11-1064), revisions to record sealing (HB11-1167), sex offender registration changes for people who are homeless (HB12-1346) and state employment and licensing opportunities for people with criminal records (HB12-1263). GET THE LATEST INFORMATION about new initiatives by the DOC. The 3rd edition includes details about "date-earned" parole and the Community Corrections Technical Regression Pilot Program.  You can also learn more about revisions to DOC policy on  parole revocations, driving while on parole, just to name a few. THE 3rd EDITION IS ALSO A MUST READ if you want to have updated information on organizations and agencies in the community that can help people be successful after release in finding housing, employment, and medical or substance abuse treatment. You can purchase a copy for yourself or for someone in need at www.ccjrc.org   The price is $10 plus 3.00 for shipping and handling. CCJRC also offers a quantity discount and a non profit discount for organizations that work directly with people involved with the criminal justice system. You can contact us at 303-825-0122 or email Pam (pam@ccjrc.org) or Ellen (ellen@ccjrc.org) if you have any questions or additional information. Whatever the reason you support CCJRC, we thank you. Your involvement gives CCJRC the ability to fight for change and enables us to bring a message of hope to the tens of thousands of people affected by Colorado’s current criminal justice policies and practices.  Thank you again for your support! ______________________________ Christie Donner, Executive Director Pamela Clifton, Communications Coordinator\ Ellen Toomey-Hale, Finance and Development Coordinator John Riley, Coalition Coordinator		"I am paroling home.  I leave in 6 days. This book is awesome!  It is jam packed with  a tremendous amount of useful info...thank you so much for caring enough to produce and publish this book." -- Frank V. "This guide provides real help for people transitioning  from prison to the community.  I urge every offender and those who work with them to use this tool to help overcome obstacles to successful re-entry--to achieve real success in life." --Tom Clements, Executive Director Colorado Department of Corrections.
	©2012 CCJRC 1212 Mariposa St. #6, Denver, CO 80204 Unsubscribe from this email list. Privacy Policy.  Did you receive this newsletter from a friend?  Subscribe here.

Fourm Focuses on Colorado's high rate of incarceration

The Coloradoan

Colorado’s incarceration rate is the 18th highest in the nation. And the United States imprisons more people than any other in the world, including Russia, China and Iran. How did we get here?
Christie Donner, executive director and founder of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, with 15 years of experience in criminal justice advocacy, will examine some of the significant policies that have driven the growth of prison population and the parallel growth in Colorado’s Department of Correction’s budget, which in fiscal year 2012-13 has climbed to $737 million. Her talk is open to the public, and there is no admission charge.
The program, sponsored by the Northern Colorado Chapter of the ACLU of Colorado, will be from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 24 in the meeting room of The Coloradoan, 1300 Riverside Ave., Fort Collins.
Are there more effective and better uses of our tax dollars than prisons, especially for nonviolent offenders? Is it time to re-think “get tough” sentencing? Are private prisons run by the for-profit prison industry an answer?
We invite members of the public to join us in learning more about the critical issue of high rate of incarceration in Colorado and in discussing the various less costly, more effective alternatives now available.

Private Prison in Violation of Ohio State Law

The Huffington Post
The nation’s first privately owned prison could be under fire after an audit report released last week by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODFC), revealed the prison has failed to meet state standards.
The Ohio Correctional facility, formerly a state prison, bought by the Corrections Corporation of America, (COC) was cited for 47 violations according to the audit report. The nature of the violations included quality of food, hygiene and sanitation among many others.
City Beat described the sub-standard conditions of the prison in a recent article.
The report says “there has been a big staff turnover,” and only one staff person was properly trained to meet Ohio Risk Assessment System standards. The audit found that a workplace violence liaison wasn’t appointed or trained. Inmates complained they felt unsafe and that staff “had their hands tied’” and “had little control over some situations.” The local fire plan had no specific steps to release inmates from locked areas in case of emergency, and local employees said “they had no idea what they should do” in case of a fire emergency.
The report described overcrowding in the prison, as inmates in double bunked cells had an additional inmate sleeping on the floor. Additionally, the sizes of the inmate cells are smaller than the required measurements and some single inmate cells housed two inmates. The Associated Press also reported "auditors found mildew in showers and an unmarked urine specimen on a desk. It says inmates operated a meat slicer with no safety guards."
What was perhaps the most disturbing violation, were inmate claims that laundry and cell cleaning services were not provided, recreation time was not consistent as required, food quality and sanitation standards were sub par. According to City Beat, CCA could not provide documentation to prove otherwise.
States like Ohio, who are strapped for cash have in recent years embraced the extra income that comes with peddling prisons to companies like CCA. Although it may take the financial burden off the state budget, reports show that it actually costs more to run a private prison than a state run facility.

Juvenile Killers and Life Terms--A case in point

New York Times

LA BELLE, Pa. — To this day, Maurice Bailey goes to sleep trying to understand what happened on Nov. 6, 1993, when as a 15-year-old high school student he killed his 15-year-old girlfriend, Kristina Grill, a classmate who was pregnant with his child.

“I go over it pretty much every night,” said Mr. Bailey, now 34, sitting in his brown jumpsuit here at the Fayette State Correctional Institution in western Pennsylvania, where he is serving a sentence of life without parole for first-degree murder. “I don’t want to make excuses. It’s a horrible act I committed. But as you get older, your conscience and insight develop. I’m not the same person.”

Every night, Bobbi Jamriska tries to avoid going over that same event. Ms. Jamriska, Kristina’s sister, was a 22-year-old out for a drink with friends when she got the news. Ten months later, their inconsolable mother died of complications from pneumonia. Weeks later, their grandmother died.

“During that year, I buried four generations of my family,” Ms. Jamriska said at the dining room table of her Pittsburgh house, taking note of her sister’s unborn child. “This wrecked my whole life. It completely changed the person I was.”

When the Supreme Court in June banned life sentences without parole for those under age 18 convicted of murder, it offered rare hope to more than 2,000 juvenile offenders like Mr. Bailey. But it threw Ms. Jamriska and thousands like her into anguished turmoil at the prospect that the killers of their loved ones might walk the streets again.

The ruling did not specify whether it applied retroactively to those in prison or to future juvenile felons. As state legislatures and courts struggle for answers, the clash of the two perspectives represented by Mr. Bailey and Ms. Jamriska is shaping the debate.

Resentencing hearings have begun in a few places, but very slowly.

The governor of Iowa commuted the mandatory life sentences of his state’s juvenile offenders but said they had to stay in jail for 60 years before seeking parole, which critics said amounted to life in prison. Some Iowa resentencing is starting in courts despite that proclamation.

In Florida, a few hearings are in early stages even though an intermediate court ruled that juveniles serving mandatory life terms did not have the right to be resentenced. In North Carolina, life without parole has been changed from a requirement to an option, with a 25-year minimum sentence for those seeking parole.

Here in Pennsylvania, which has the most juvenile offenders serving life terms — about 480 — the State Supreme Court is examining retroactivity while the legislature works on a bill that would put felons like Mr. Bailey behind bars for a minimum of 35 years.

The United States Supreme Court decision said that sentences of life without parole for juveniles failed to take account of the role of the offender in the crime (killer or accomplice), the family background (stable or abusive) and the incomplete brain development of the young. Recent research has found that youths are prone to miscalculate risks and consequences, and that their moral compasses are not fully developed. They can change as they get older.

Mr. Bailey was a good student with no criminal record. He is black and Ms. Grill was white, and many classmates thought of them as a chic couple.

“Reese was someone everyone wanted to be friends with, and so was Krissy,” said Shavera Maxwell, a former classmate, using the couple’s nicknames. “They were deeply in love, and she wanted to keep the baby. He didn’t.”

Kristina’s father, who did not live at home, was known for a bigoted attitude, so Kristina kept her relationship with Maurice secret from him.

Maurice’s father, an electrical engineer who had tensions with white co-workers, also disapproved of the interracial romance. One day when he came home early, he caught the couple in bed. He threw her out and beat Maurice, knocking his head into a wall.

Maurice’s mother, Debra Bailey, felt differently. She welcomed Kristina into her home. “Krissy’s 15th birthday was celebrated with a barbecue in our backyard,” said Ms. Bailey, a database coordinator at Carnegie Mellon University, who is now divorced from Maurice’s father. “Her family didn’t come. Those two were too young to be doing what they were doing, but I told her that if she got pregnant, we would deal with it.”

Kristina told a friend, Pamela Cheeks, the night before she was killed that she was about to tell her family about her pregnancy and that she was meeting Maurice the next day to discuss their future, Ms. Cheeks said in an interview. In her diary, Kristina wrote that Maurice “better show up” at their agreed time and place.

Maurice did meet Kristina that Saturday afternoon at an elementary school playground. He came with a knife, stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and upper body and left her on the ground. Before leaving, he told the police at the time, he zipped up her jacket in a vain effort to stem the bleeding.

He hid the knife in the woods and went home. In the prison interview, he said he remembered very little of the event except that right after stabbing Kristina, her mother, whom he had never met, suddenly came into his mind. When he returned home, the first person he saw was his father. He said he felt an odd sense of relief that the source of tension between them was gone.

Neighborhood youngsters came upon Kristina’s body. Police officers went to her home, where they found her diary with detailed entries of her relationship with Maurice. When the police went to the Bailey home in the middle of that night and woke up Maurice, his mother recalls that he said to them, “I figured you’d come.”

Maurice’s legal defense was built around the pressures he had faced. His father testified in court that he had told Maurice that if Kristina got pregnant, he would kill him. Maurice’s grades were declining as he spent more time with Kristina; he was trying unsuccessfully to break up with her, losing control, growing afraid.

His petition for a new hearing will argue that the pressures he felt as a 15-year-old — a violent father, a pregnant girlfriend — are unique to youth and therefore covered by the Supreme Court ruling. An adult, his lawyers will argue, would have reacted differently.

Prescription for Addiction

Wall Street Journal

Ann and Bruce Kinkade discovered a network of doctors and pharmacies that fueled the addiction that killed their daughter. More Americans now die each year from prescription drug overdoses than from cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs. Weekend Review editor Gary Rosen discusses the problem with WSJ staff writer Thomas Catan.

Jaclyn Kinkade, a 23-year-old doctor's-office receptionist and occasional model, was a casualty of America's No. 1 drug menace when she overdosed and died, alone, in a tumbledown clapboard house in Dunnellon, Fla.
The drugs that killed her didn't come from the Colombian jungles or an Afghan poppy field. Two of the three drugs found in her system were sold to Ms. Kinkade, legally, at Walgreen Co. WAG -0.35% and CVS Caremark CVS -0.20% shops, the two biggest U.S. pharmacies. Both prescription drugs found in her body were made in the U.S.—the oxycodone in Elizabeth, N.J., by a company being acquired by generic-drug giant Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., WPI -0.51% and the methadone in Hobart, N.Y., by Covidien Ltd., COV -0.96% another major manufacturer. Every stage of their distribution was government-regulated. In addition, Ms. Kinkade had small amounts of methamphetamine in her system when she died.

The U.S. spends about $15 billion a year fighting illegal drugs, often on foreign soil. But America's deadliest drug epidemic begins and ends at home. More than 15,000 Americans now die annually after overdosing on prescription painkillers called opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—more than from heroin, cocaine and all other illegal drugs combined.
Rising opioid abuse means that drug overdoses are now the single largest cause of accidental death in America. They surpassed traffic accidents in 2009, the most recent CDC data available.
Paradoxically, the legality of prescription painkillers makes their abuse harder to tackle. There is no Pablo Escobar to capture or kill. Authorities must contend with an influential lobby of industry representatives and doctors who argue against more restrictions, saying they would harm legitimate patients. And lawmakers have been reluctant to have the federal government track Americans' prescriptions, leaving states to piece together a patchy, fragmented response.
Ms. Kinkade's final days, and the path of the drugs that killed her, were reconstructed from medical and prescription records, police files and interviews. Many records were assembled by Ms. Kinkade's father and stepmother.
Shuffling through the documents at their living-room table, Bruce Kinkade, a garage-door salesman, and his wife, Ann, said they don't wish to absolve their daughter of responsibility. "We're not naive and want to say she was a perfect angel," said Ann Kinkade, Jaclyn's stepmother.

Addicted to opiates: An in-depth look at heroin in Denver

A life of panhandling on the streets of Denver is brutal, boring and soul-crushing.
Many of those who do it are long-time substance abusers, caught in a vicious cycle: You wouldn't stand out there 12 hours a day unless you desperately needed heroin, and then only another dose of heroin would get you through another 12 hours.
Angel Gamboeck was one of those stuck in that terrible, seemingly endless circle, for much of the past two years in Denver. A young, once-promising girl from the Wisconsin heartland, she ended up here after a failed move West to seek a new life with her boyfriend.
On Denver's streets, Angel lived her life in a series of $15 increments. She'd "fly a sign" for money along the city's busiest
streets, and buy more dope as soon as she'd made enough for the next dose. Most overnights were inside or next to a trash bin near 11th and Osage; dawn meant a "wakeup" shot of heroin and a long trudge back to a begging corner. Beginning Sunday, the Denver Post begins a three-day series based on Angel's trials on the streets. For six months a reporter and photographer followed her, documenting the harsh life and the everyday failures of addicts in the thrall of a dangerous drug.

Read more: Addicted to opiates: An in-depth look at heroin in Denver - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21707805/heroin-denver-angels-life-streets#ixzz28SXflwhr
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Dorothy Rupert on The Prison Industry and Being a Game Changer

Westword
There was a time in the mid-1990s when Dorothy Rupert, then a state senator from Boulder, made a point out of touring every prison in Colorado. No easy feat, since at the time the state had the fastest-growing corrections system in the country. "I was just appalled at the rapid growth," Rupert recalls. "It took a hundred years to lock up a thousand people in Colorado. By the mid-1980s, we'd tripled that. People said that it was just keeping up with the overall population, but that wasn't true."
By the end of the 1990s, thanks largely to harsher sentencing schemes and the war on drugs, Colorado's prison population had doubled again and was approaching 20,000 inmates. And Rupert had become one of the staunchest critics of the lock-'em-up mentality down at the statehouse. Rupert left the legislature in 2000, but this week, she and former state representative Penfield Tate will receive the inaugural Rupert-Tate Game Changer Award at a fundraiser benefit for the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition -- an organization launched in response to the two lawmakers' pioneering efforts to put the brakes on the burgeoning prison-industrial complex in their back yard.
In 1999, Tate and Rupert sponsored an audacious bill calling for a three-year moratorium on prison expansion and the creation of a task force to explore alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders. "It was something that needed to be talked about," says Rupert, a Democrat who taught in public schools for 35 years. "The war on drugs was just a heartbreaking experience for me, for some of my students, for our country."
The bill didn't pass. "The prison industry has the same kind of relationship with state legislators that the Pentagon has with Congress," Rupert says. "There are all these heavy lobbyists, and the fear factor is immense. A lot of people said they would love to support me, but they just couldn't."
Yet the battle prompted some of the bill's supporters to build a statewide, grassroots reform organization -- the CCJRC, which has gone on to successfully push for major revisions in drug sentencing laws, parole conditions, and related issues.
The state's escalating prison population has leveled off in recent years and even diminished slightly, leaving corrections officials puzzling over what to do with a spare supermax and closing other costly facilities.
"The only good thing about being in a recession is that it has made us pull back on locking people up in crazy ways," Rupert notes.
Rupert is 86 now. She no longer tours public and private lock-ups with any regularity, but she teaches a class in democracy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. And she's full of praise for CCJRC and its executive director, Christie Donner: "I'm just so grateful for their voices."
Donner's group feels the same way about Rupert and Tate, who will be the first recipients of their eponymous award at the organization's annual fundraiser on Thursday, September 20, from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Mile High Station, 2027 West Colfax Avenue. The event features dinner, guest speakers -- including two former inmates now active in assisting others in re-entry programs -- and a silent auction of trips, concert tickets, cooking classes and other goodies, including a Scarabeo scooter.
For more information or to purchase tickets, check out the CCJRC website or call 303-825-0122.