A Prison Lifer Comes Home

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/juvenile-lifer-comes-home-prison/596845/

by johnny313 • 7 years ago

59 82 7 years ago

rayiner6• 7 years ago

The article leaves out some facts. While Fennell’s participation in the attack (at the age of 17) was sufficient to convict him for murder, regardless of who ultimately delivered the killing blow, the jury may not have convicted him for murder (or a judge may have later commuted his sentence) had he testified against the man who directly killed the victim: https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=19706704&fcfTo.... He refused to testify even though he provided a statement to the police at the time of his arrest stating who had performed the stabbing.

My beef with articles like this one is not that I think a 17 year old should get life in prison for a stabbing. I think nobody should. Our murder laws produce sentences vastly longer than Europe, where 15-20 years is a typical maximum sentence for murder, and longer sentences are reserved for people who are active threats.

Rather, my problem is the attempt to draw lines between more or less egregious conduct that don’t make any sense. Someone who along with three other young men tries to rob and ends up killing a man is among the most dangerous and culpable of criminals. Such premeditated group violence is the greatest threat to social order. Being 17 or acting as part of a group don’t make you less culpable.

coldtea12• 7 years ago

And when you refuse to testify that someone else did the murder, you become the murderer in that system?

alexis_fr• 7 years ago

Maybe it was false and he stood on the side of only saying what is true and/or not condemning the wrong person for the crime.

DenisM2• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule

when an offender kills (regardless of intent to kill) in the commission of a [felony], the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.

Which is to say, he was guilty from the get-go.

bluedino• 7 years ago

Should you get less of a sentence because you testify?

craigsmansion• 7 years ago

Being 17 or acting as part of a group don’t make you less culpable.

Yes it does. Boys do strange things, boys in groups do stranger things, like not testifying against each other, especially if they feel society has abandoned them and the world is against them.

Normal societies are set up to deal with that or prevent it.

Fix your bloody society.

pmiller22• 7 years ago

Sorry, but a 17 year old knows what it means to rob and murder someone and knows the difference between right and wrong. That’s the basic criterion for culpability.

ljm2• 7 years ago

I would agree more if this didn’t sound like a ‘boys will be boys’ defence.

If you want to fix society you also have to leave that kind of belief in the past.

In this case, the guy is also black. The article avoids the racial aspect and focusses on other circumstances, but American society has never been favourable to black folk.

mieseratte3• 7 years ago

You’re making an awfully large assumption, that “society failed them” as if that is the reason.

Society has failed me in more ways than I care to count, I don’t go about killing.

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

What about the victim?

In recent news, gangs of youths have attacked people and killed some.

Sad to say, but locking these people up until they're old may be the best answer. (Maybe the death penalty would be better?) The wrong thing to do is to turn them loose back into society when they have a decent chance of hurting someone else.

candiodari• 7 years ago

Rather, my problem is the attempt to draw lines between more or less egregious conduct that don’t make any sense. Someone who along with three other young men tries to rob and ends up killing a man is among the most dangerous and culpable of criminals. Such premeditated group violence is the greatest threat to social order. Being 17 or acting as part of a group don’t make you less culpable.

Welcome to moral systems, like the law. None of them make much sense at all (even though they're necessary), but laws are particularly bad. Laws + governments saving money are a recipe for total disaster.

But mostly the poor and socially weak are victimized so nobody cares. And of course, whether it's a third world dictatorship or a modern "european democracy" as if that's an ideal: the state protects it's own enforcers. Even when they shoot a slowly moving van that refused to stop for border patrol, then refuse to bring a 2 year old they shot that was dying to the hospital for 20 minutes, their parents in chains (totally not to avoid responsibility, not at all), and then when the child went unresponsive, tried to free everyone they arrested (again, this had totally nothing to do with attempting to avoid responsibility) ...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/may/25/b...

eternalny1• 7 years ago

I agree with everything you said, but I am amazed I've never seen "newspapers.com" before today.

That is a great idea. Archive old newspapers and let people link to clips. Brilliant.

gumby• 7 years ago

This I corollary to the plea bargaining system in the US (make a confession in exchange for a lighter sentence than you'd get if you went to trial) which is illegal and considered a human rights violation in most other countries.

parthdesai• 7 years ago

You conveniently glance over a key paragraph as well.

According to later testimony from one of those officers, Fennell sat with him, and no lawyer, for about an hour that morning before agreeing to make a statement about the night in question. Fennell later testified that the officer told him that if he made a statement, he would not get more than a year in jail. He felt pressured and scared. “Nobody there was my color, nobody my age—all cops,” he said later. “They took advantage of my ignorance, of my family’s ignorance of the legal system.”

nate_meurer3• 7 years ago

Why is this a key paragraph? What the cop told him was bullshit, but that's not illegal.

All I see here is that Mr. Fennell was briefly questioned by police, and gave a statement that appears to have been largely or entirely accurate. It seems he hasn't significantly recanted any of it to this day, except possibly to add some uncertainty to his recollection of a murder weapon.

When he laments that "They took advantage of my ignorance, of my family’s ignorance of the legal system", is he saying that if only he'd lawyered up then maybe he could have beaten the felony murder rap? Even though he plainly admits to assaulting the man and watching while someone else possibly stabbed him to death? We're supposed to be sympathetic to that?

intenex• 7 years ago

The article directly addresses the idea that "Being 17...doesn't make you less culpable."

"Of just over 200 released, six have faced new charges, but only one has been convicted of a new crime, contempt. That’s less than a 3 percent recidivism rate. “When you’re looking at the percentages of the guys who’ve come back in court, and compare that to our overall, which is around 40 percent, you really know you’ve done a good job,” Johnson said.

That outcome supports a theory the U.S. Supreme Court first advanced in 2005, when it outlawed the death penalty for juveniles. The Court took stock of “evolving standards of decency,” as well as a growing body of neuroscience suggesting kids’ immaturity makes them less culpable than adults. It also emphasized that kids, more than adults, are amenable to change. The low recidivism rates likely also reflect the reality that criminal behavior declines dramatically as people age out of their teens and early 20s."

There are a million things incredibly unwise things I would have been far more likely to do at 17 than 27 now - I imagine this is a trend that will continue to likely progress for me individually, and I also imagine this isn't a phenomenon singular to myself.

The shockingly low recidivism rate seems to empirically support this notion as well, particularly when contrasted with the general recidivism rate. If these juvenile offenders were just as culpable as anyone else when they had committed their life sentence crimes, presumably their recidivism rate should be similar. 40 percent for the general population and 3 percent for this cohort so far suggests otherwise.

BurningCycles2• 7 years ago

There are a million things incredibly unwise things I would have been far more likely to do at 17 than 27 now

Yes, I too made very stupid choices in my younger days, which could have killed me many times over. I have not however, done things that could have hurt/killed others. That doesn't make me a saint, it just means I understand the value of human life and that I have no right to jeopardize the lives of others.

These 'kids' took it upon themselves to rob a person while armed, and stab him to death. This person, named Joseph Hayes, had his life forfeit for no doing of his own, his family and friends having him removed from their lives in a most brutal way.

I think the penalty should fit the crime, if you attack and kill someone unprovoked, I don't care if you are 17 years old, or if you were in a group. Your lack of regard for other human life means you should be locked away, both in order to keep people safe from you as well as a strong deterrent. Haywood Fennell is not a victim, the person he and a group of his friends decided to rob and kill is the victim.

coldtea12• 7 years ago

Imprisoned for decades for a crime he committed as a juvenile

So, for a single, first time, first degree murder, Pennsylvania gives "a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole, including for juveniles"?

What kind of medieval backwater has such laws?

And how is that working out for them? [1]

Compared to e.g. countries which have much smaller sentences for the same type of crimes (especially for juveniles), in much more humane prisons, and achieve much lower crime rates...

For comparison, the guy who methodically mass shoot and killed 77 people in Norway, only got 21 years in prison (and in a vastly more humane prison, more like a Motel 8 than the hell-holes in the US, at that). Perhaps that's another extreme, and I'd be OK if he went in for life, but the Pennsylvania extreme is medieval, inhumane, and depraved too. Too much Old-Testament inspired morals...

[1] Rhetorical question, I've checked the Pennsylvania homicide rate: https://patch.com/pennsylvania/abington/crime-falls-u-s-here...

throwawaysea• 7 years ago

I can’t tell if your post was being sarcastic or sincere.

It’s a first degree murder. Putting him away for life is what he deserves and others (law-abiding free citizens) should not have to bear the risk that he would commit more extreme crimes given the extreme nature of the crime here. That’s not medieval or inhumane, it’s appropriate and common sense.

The relation you imply between laws, sentencing, and crime rates between different locations and demographics is not causal and doesn’t account for various other factors, and is therefore irrelevant.

rayiner6• 7 years ago

Right. Homicide rate in the UK went up significantly after hangings were abolished: https://fullfact.org/news/has-murder-rate-doubled-hanging-wa....

Europe had much lower homicide rates before criminal justice reforms. Arguably, the causation runs the other way. Europeans were willing to have more lenient sentences because homicides were less of a pervasive problem.

DenisM2• 7 years ago

You are assuming that having killed once he is more likely to kill again. Depending on the person this may not be true. A psychopath will likely kill again and so should be locked for good. OTOH someone who was not a psychopath and took this chance to rethink his life choices might be about as harmless as the next guy.

Before you say "we can't tell one form the other" let me say this: we cannot tell if we never look. Northern European countries have gathered a lot of expertise in this area, the least we can do is look at it, then maybe look to expend our own understanding of psychology.

coldtea12• 7 years ago

It’s a first degree murder. Putting him away for life is what he deserves and others (law-abiding free citizens) should not have to bear the risk that he would commit more extreme crimes given the extreme nature of the crime here

Well, not all cultures on Earth, especially western ones, share the above revenge-motivated old-testament-style viewpoint on the law. Perhaps that's why they manage to have less crime, less recidivism, less mass shootings, and far lower murder rates, with far-far lower incarceration rates and no death penalty.

In the end, a society gets what they deserve, and those revengeful reap what they sow. Like those clinging to guns for "protection", and dying from gun crime (or from their own gun-owning family members).

The relation you imply between laws, sentencing, and crime rates between different locations and demographics is not causal and doesn’t account for various other factors, and is therefore irrelevant.

Well, it's not the only factor, but it's a telling part of the belief systems, structures, and overall culture a society operates. It's not just lost in the noise of other factors, as it's irrelevant. Culturally, and in terms of recidivism etc, it's very relevant (like the long history of racism inspired incarceration is). Besides, the proof in the pudding is in the eating.

As they say, "so, how does that work out for you"?

awillen• 7 years ago

The Norway example is misleading for people who are primarily familiar with US sentencing. Twenty one years is the maximum sentence one can be given initially, but it can be extended five years at a time at the end of the sentence. There are no limits on the number of five year extensions, so a twenty one year sentence can effectively be a life sentence.

It's basically equivalent to a US sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 21 years, though the default is that you're released after 21 years, as opposed to the US default of you continuing to stay in prison unless you can convince a parole board to release you.

Tomte2• 7 years ago

I'd expect Norway to let the judiciary decide whether someone is a still a threat and needs to stay in prison.

In America, it's governors who ultimately decide, and a politician has vastly skewed incentives.

coldtea12• 7 years ago

Yes, but it will also be far more common to be actually released at the default (or close). Heck, "real" life sentences in the US are handed out as peanuts...

Also no death penalty.

Plus much much nicer prison terms (very human hotel-like prisons, permission to study, no solitary crap as punishment, very low recidivism rates, prisoners can take leaves -like "vacations" and come back, etc).

e12e• 7 years ago

Recent changes means the new max is 30, with a possible mandatory 20 years served. The 5 year indefinite extension remains (but as far as I understand extensions are not intended as punishment - rather as a way to protect society in the face of a real risk of the prisoner committing new, serious crimes on release).

As I recall there is some newfangled stuff about "terrorism" on the books - but the change was apparently mostly motivated by the NOKAS-robbers possibly being released earlier under the new "forvaring" (containment?) system than under the previous 21 year "life sentencing". (they'd be given a max of 10 year mandatory imprisonment even with a 21 year sentence).

wespiser_2018• 7 years ago

For the Norway example, that offender is being held in solitary confinement in very harsh conditions, and it's very likely his sentence will be extended indefinitely. It's not a good example of a more human criminal justice outcome, considering how harmful we know the effects of solitary confinement to be on mental health of those held.

hdfbdtbcdg3• 7 years ago

Harsh conditions?

He is kept away from other prisoners because they would kill him. The state even pays people to keep him company.

Yes it looks like his sentence will be extended indefinitely - but that is up to him last I heard he still wants a race war.

bsanr25• 7 years ago

Every seemingly irrational law or socioeconomic convention that you may find in the US can ultimately be tied causally to the bleeding of contempt for people of color into the design process. It short circuits our logical faculties and results in policy that is as cruel as possible, limited only by the extent to which it is perceived that such policy may affect white Americans and the mandate that said policies be at least nominally race-neutral (though this is only a recent development, itself only predicated on the obvious and embarrassing effects its absence has had on our economic well-being, both internally and globally).

bsanr25• 7 years ago

I understand that HN's demographic is likely to be skeptical of this, but I submit as proof the changes to these laws and conventions that happen when they begin to effect white communities. The most infamous of late is, of course, the War on Drugs and the response following the onset of the crack and opioid epidemics, respectively. Cruelty, in the name of deterrence, was 100% the name of the game, until the face of the crisis changed, and suddenly compassion was a more efficacious strategy.

Likewise, gun control is now a serious topic, where for much of the past two decades it was not, even for the left. This change is due mostly to an increased perception of susceptibility to gun violence, which was largely isolated to the black community for years.

PhantomGremlin• 7 years ago

Okay, as they used to say on slashdot when I frequented it (and maybe they still say it), "I know I'll be downvoted for this ...". But I'll say it anyway:

Mr Fennell was a good candidate for parole. I'm not opposed to parole for him. He didn't need to be in jail any longer.

But ...

Why oh why can 5 un-elected people be allowed to decide that his incarceration was "cruel and unusual punishment". As one of the dissenters on the court noted, mandatory life sentences "could not plausibly be described" as unusual when a majority of states endorse them.

Giving the Supreme Court the power to do this is IMO very bad. People simply love love love it when the result is something they agree with, but what about all the other decisions?

I really don't like this court decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._Alabama

superflit2• 7 years ago

I think they should do as the laws in Brazil.

In Brazil, It is not allowed to give sentences for more than 30 years, and if the prisoner has good behavior, he is out in 1/6 of his sentence.

And still, if he is not caught in 24h, was his first murder and has a job he may wait for the final judgment outside prison (after all appeals).

Brazil is big, multi-diverse and is very nice.

The Brazilian penal code is the most human and modern criminal code. And it brought great success as [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil)

Nowadays we have a "repressive", "gun-loving" president that wants the revert our success. [2](https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/22/brazils-murder-rate-fin...)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Brazil

[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/22/brazils-murder-rate-fin...

echelon• 7 years ago

Brazil has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

I'm not an expert, but at face value I'm not sure their system is effective. I'd like to see data on reoffenders and deterrence.

brazilman123• 7 years ago

Brazil has a big crime problem, a huge murder rate.

There are people who simply aren't fit to be in society. There are people who get out of prison after their 5 years of good behavior, and immediately a week later are raping someone again. Why do the victims have less value than the violent murderer/rapist criminals?

It is simply shocking to me you think it's ok for murderers to be out of jail if they have a job.

What do you propose to do about this, besides blaming Bolsonaro - btw the criminals already all have guns, it's only the lawful citizens who have a hard time getting them. There's a reason everyone in brazil has to hide behind electric fences, security systems, etc.

epx• 7 years ago

You are being ironic, right?

superflit2• 7 years ago

Sure I was!!

But we always have some "activists" that take some "edge" case and try to stretch it to all cases.

We have to focus on the real victims not on people that ganged and killed someone cold blood.

timlod• 7 years ago

If you read your second reference, you will find that it states that the decline in homicides is not due to Bolsonaro (it started before he got into office) - in fact, it states that certain types of murder have had increased rates.

hogFeast• 7 years ago

I don't understand how these people are supposed to re-integrate.

You commit a crime...cool, we are going to send you to a boarding school for criminals, where you are subjected to a ton of violent behaviour, that is heavily structured and limiting on your freedom...and in twenty years (or whatever), you are going to come out and be expected to be like everyone else...okay...

It would be interesting to ask how the behaviour of those who work in these institutions is effected by this environment...if this is the case then it is clearly non-rational to believe that people in that environment 24/7 are going to be fine after they come out.

(I don't have a solution to this either...just a chimp throwing peanuts from the gallery).

Stratoscope• 7 years ago

His $830 a month included a few hundred in Supplemental Security, but he mostly relied on close to $600 in Social Security spousal benefits, thanks to Bernadette’s years in the workforce. He said he’s offered to refund her a portion of that, but she declined.

It's generous of him to offer to give her part of his spousal benefits, but the word "refund" makes me wonder if there is some confusion over how spousal benefits work. They aren't taken from the other spouse; their benefit remains unchanged.

A somewhat simplified explanation: if one spouse (or ex-spouse in some cases) is receiving more than twice the Social Security benefit of the other, the one with a smaller benefit gets theirs "topped off" to be half of the other's benefit.

It this case Bernadette may be receiving $1660/month in benefits. Haywood's benefit of several hundred dollars is increased to half of that, or $830. Bernadette still gets her full $1660.

There are various requirements and conditions that may change this amount; I'm assuming both spouses are of full retirement age.

Anyone receiving or about to receive Social Security benefits where one spouse earned significantly more than the other would do well to look into this.

https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/applying6.html

A Prison Lifer Comes Home

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