by Eric T. Muhammad
and Stacey L. Muhammad

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com)�A century ago in Cook County, Ill., a group of women known as The Child Savers forced the beginnings of the United States Juvenile Justice System, then known as the Illinois Juvenile Court Act of 1899. Based on the Latin term "parens patriae," a philosophy meaning "state acting in the best interest of the child," it was mandated that "the juvenile court treats the child as a kind, loving father."

It appears one hundred years later that the "kind, loving father" has turned vicious. Forty-four states before the turn of the new century have passed laws that allow youths to be tried as adults. Tougher sentencing laws have been enacted in most of the United States, and Black youth now comprise nearly 50 percent of all juveniles on Death Row.

In addition to this glaring disproportionate statistic, the Black mentally retarded is another growing community in the juvenile justice system and a prominent number among those executed on Death Row.

"It�s a war on Black children, plain and simple," declared H. Bill Maxey of the Pontiac Team for Justice of Michigan, a Pontiac-based advocacy group demanding fair treatment of Black youth in the juvenile justice system. "But until we come together, starting with our churches, civil rights organizations, activist groups, not-for-profit organizations, etc., and come to the table for the purpose of decision-making, we will never be in the position to save these children and help ourselves."

According to the latest statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), currently there are 74 inmates on Death Row sentenced as juveniles. They represent roughly two percent of the total Death Row population. Thirty five percent of those sentenced are in Texas and 17 men nationwide have been executed for crimes committed as juveniles since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. Since 1976, 35 persons with mental retardation have been executed. Twenty of them have been Black males with an I.Q. range between 55-70.

Many prosecutors defend charging juveniles as adults. They also contend that there are legal merits in place that consider the mental state of a prisoner before sentencing that prisoner to Death Row.

"The intent of the juvenile justice system remains focused upon rehabilitation, as opposed to punishment, in an effort to maximize the chances of the juvenile becoming a well-adjusted and contributing member of our society," said prosecutor Steven D. Stewart of Clark County, Ind. "Young people should not be expected to have the same values and judgment as adults. This is especially true if they have been the victims of poverty, neglect, and abuse.

"Nevertheless, the 1990s have seen a tremendous increase in juvenile crime, particularly crimes of violence. To the victim, it matters very little that the person who pulled the trigger on the gun is 16- or 17-years-old instead of 18. Mere treatment, counseling, community service, and probation can never be the appropriate solution to violent crime," he said.

Mr. Stewart told The Final Call that two of the strongest mitigating circumstances available are "the age of the defendant�the younger the more mitigating�and the mental status." Indiana has a statute that prohibits the execution of anyone who is mentally retarded and there is a procedure for determining that mental retardation before trial, he said.

On Oct. 27-29, the Juvenile Law Center (JLC) hosted its fourth annual Juvenile Defender Leadership Summit at the University of Houston Law School in Houston, Tex. Attended by nearly 1,000 lawyers, the Summit�s stated intention was to build leadership and give defense lawyers the tools necessary to perform well on behalf of their clients.

JLC executive director Bob Schwartz told The Final Call that one problem is that defense attorneys have not developed the political clout that prosecutors and judges have because they are better organized in lobbying the public for tougher laws and more money. "Public officials don�t usually worry a whole lot about how they can spend more money to give poor people better representation. I don�t think that is something that they lose sleep over," he said. "Everybody knows that racism exists in this system. But we also have to fight bias among many of the attorneys, too, which, sadly, is part of the problem."

"What you do as a child is based on your level of understanding, but what you do as a man is based on your level of understanding and experience," Min. Robert Muhammad, National of Islam Southwest regional minister told the conference. "If given an opportunity to grow and an opportunity to live, you can change and become what God intended you to become, and that is why we must eliminate the death penalty for juveniles because they are never given a chance to become what God intended for them to be."

In many of the cases, defense attorneys "have laid down and greased the wheels for their clients to be executed" rather than get information about their backgrounds before a jury that would save their lives, according to lecturer Steve. Drizin.

"Juvenile offenders and the mentally retarded represent another kind of innocence. It may not be legally innocent in the sense that in many cases these offenders have committed the crime. In the case of the mentally retarded � they lack the capacity to fully understand the consequence of their actions. In the case of juveniles, they lack the maturity in judgment to be held fully responsible for their conduct," he said.

Opponents of juvenile death sentences argue that in many instances, where defense attorneys rely on judges to appoint them to capital cases, there may exist incentives for them not to fight for their clients "because they fear they won�t get additional appointments." However, in other cases "it�s about a complete lack of resources given to them to adequately investigate these cases that are presented for trial," they say.

Pontiac, Mich., activist Ken E. Corr told The Final Call that if a Black child commits a crime, he is forced to submit to a different system of judgment. "There are cases here in Oakland County, where white kids have killed whole families and have been released before they were 21 years of age with no media attention and Black children, like Nathaniel Abraham, are made poster children for an American get- tough-on-crime law that makes the world believe that Black children are the dominant threat in society and if they are locked away, the world is safe," he said.

"I used to be a prosecutor and I watched these cases carefully. Now, I look at the statistics," said Douglas Besharov, resident scholar at Washington, D.C.�s American Enterprise Institute. The disproportionate ratio of Black juveniles on death row versus white, he said, is largely caused by income.

"I grew up in New York City and I don�t think I ever saw a white criminal as a prosecutor. But then, I moved to Buffalo, N.Y., and it was filled with white criminals. When the system tries to sentence someone, it looks to all of the support that person has in the family and in society. If the person has had a job, has a spouse or parents, then that person is likely to get a lesser sentence. When you apply those rules to a society that is only middle-class and white then those rules work out fine. When you apply those rules to a society with a tremendously large Black underclass, you wind up with a lot of Black guys spending long lengths of time in jail," he said.

Another factor, said Mr. Maxey, involves the financial incentive, namely the prison industrial complex. "Fueled by the for-profit private sectors that lobby for legislation to drive our people into incarceration so that the private owners of these prisons and those businesses tied to them can continue to make money. For every child the state puts away, it gets money from the federal government to give to the detention centers. Oakland County�s Juvenile Division receives $15,000 for each child incarcerated. It houses 500 youth and 450 of them are Black," he said.

According to Amnesty International, the United States confines more people than any industrialized nation in the world and has executed more juveniles than any nation in the last decade.