NEWSVICTIMS

On February 8th, 2012, please join parents, clergy, and medical professionals at 7am in front of the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, Florida (330 East Bay Street), in a peaceful protest against the handling of Cristian Fernandez in the adult justice system. Cristian was barely 12 years old when he was charged as an adult in the death of his brother. If he is convicted on February 27th he faces life without parole.

The case of Cristian Fernandez has attracted local, state, national and even international attention through a Change.org petition created by Melissa Higgins, a mother concerned about the treatment of children in America's criminal justice system. Almost 180,000 people and organizations have signed Melissa's petition asking Florida State Attorney Angela Corey to reverse the decision to try Cristian as an adult.

If you have questions about the rally or would like to confirm you participation, you can send and email to savecristian@yahoo.com and you can find additional information at savecristian.org.

The rally was set to coincide with a 9am hearing at the courthouse where the judge would rule on motions filed by the defense, but that hearing has since been canceled. Cristian's supporters will still convene and display support for him.

EVENT DETAILS:
When: Wednesday, February 8, starting at 7am
Where: Duval County Courthouse, 330 East Bay Street (Google Map)
What: A peaceful rally/protest against the handling of Cristian in adult court
How: Participants will be given signs to hold and/or other visuals
Who: The rally is being organized by Melissa Higgins, Alicia Torres

Here is a flyer you may print and distribute advertising this event:
http://justice4juveniles.com/cristianfernandezfiles/pdfs/feb8flyer3.pdf

For years, Glenda Crosley lived in constant fear of her abusive husband.

“I always felt that he was going to kill me,” she says. “ I never thought I'd get out of there alive. He told me from the earliest days that the only solution was for both of us to die.”

As her daughter Stacy told The Bakersfield Californian, the abuse was constant -- relentless. "It wasn't just once a week,” she said. “It was every single day.”

"The first time I remember him hitting me, I was probably 6 years old," Stacy recalled. "When I was 11 or 12, I remember plotting ways to kill my dad.”

Her mom beat her to it.

Sara Kruzan has spent more than half her life behind bars for killing the man who raped her, got her addicted to drugs and pimped her out on the street -- all before she turned 17. Today activists are working the phones and all the social networks you can think of to convince outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to release the 32-year-old Kruzan with time served.

As Amanda Kloer notes on the Human Trafficking blog, the social media blitz on Kruzan's behalf was organized by two California anti-trafficking activists and Change.org members, Nikki Junker and Barbie Magoffin. Like the more than 50,000 people who have signed petitions calling for Kruzan's release, they were shocked when they heard that 16-year-old young woman, who met her rapist at just 13, had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole -- without the possibility of redemption -- for killing her oppressor.

When Martin Erzinger, a Denver wealth manager for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, struck and nearly killed a bike rider with his new Mercedes Benz over the summer, he did what any other reasonable, humane person would do in the situation: he picked up the phone and called for assistance ... for his car. The man he hit? Left to die on the side of the street -- bleeding from the brain -- wishing he could be treated as well as a German-engineered luxury sedan.

But Erzinger isn’t facing felony hit-and-run charges like other, less well-off Coloradans might. No, he just makes too much damn money, you see, as Eagle County District Attorney Mark Hurlbert himself explained. “Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession," he said. "When you're talking about restitution, you don't want to take away his ability to pay." Translation: Erzinger's "ultra high net worth" clients find felony convictions terribly uncouth. And prison time is for poor people, not the wealthy elite.

Of course, under Colorado law Erzinger could have -- and should have -- been charged with a class 4 felony for leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in serious bodily harm, which is punishable by 1 to 3 years in prison. Instead, the DA struck a plea deal with him whereby he would only face lesser misdemeanor charges -- that despite the fact he’s been unwilling to accept full responsibility for his actions; his lawyer claims he was “sleepy” and unaware he'd hit anybody, while an expert witness for the defense maintains that the Mercedes Benz “new car smell” may have been a contributing factor.

Unlike the DA, though, the man Erzinger hit, Dr. Steven Milo, isn’t interested in money, though the severity of his injuries may prevent his working as a surgeon ever again. Instead, he’s interested in equal justice before the law, as are the more than 13,000 Change.org members who have called on the district attorney to reinstate the felony charges.

There are over two million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails. Most people never think about these men and women. Some of us do, often considering their plights and advocating for a more humane and equitable criminal justice system. But even the most impassioned activists often forget the other lives involved in prisoners' stories -- that the effects of incarceration reach far beyond the razor wire. In fact, some of those most impacted are the children who wait for the return of their imprisoned parent. According to a study by The Sentencing Project, in 2007 more than 1.7 million children in the U.S. had a parent in prison or jail.

Judy Dworin and a team of teaching artists at the Hartford, CT-based Judy Dworin Performance Project, Inc. (JDPP) are utilizing the arts to provide members of this oft-ignored group with a forum for self-expression, trust-building and restored family connection. While providing collaborative arts residencies for women incarcerated at York Correctional Institution (YCI), Dworin began to understand how traumatic the forced separation of parent and child is for all involved.

Wanting to create a space for incarcerated parents and their children to explore their feelings and nurture their relationships, JDPP collaborated with Families in Crisis (FIC) and the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central CT State University (IMRP) to lead a pilot project consisting of a series of eight simultaneous workshops in which mothers at YCI and their children in Hartford communicated through dance, song, poetry and visual arts.

Should alleged rapists be allowed to cross-examine their purported victim, or should they in some cases be required to use a surrogate attorney -- or closed-circuit TV -- to question their accuser? That’s the question raised by a story I wrote about last week, involving a woman who threatened to jump off the roof of a court house rather than face direct questioning from the man she claimed raped her as a child.

In the piece, I suggested that in some cases where defendants are representing themselves, a judge should be entitled to use their discretion and require the use of a surrogate attorney, or to require the questions be asked via closed-circuit TV. That suggestion has attracted some, uh, heated push back -- some of it over the top, some of it, well, completely justified.

Starting with the former, take criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield, who nearly popped a blood vessel as he bravely slew an army of straw men in response to my piece:

Outrageous! Imagine letting a rapist cross-examine his own victim! What? Oh. You mean that he's allowed to be tried before he's a "rapist"? You mean he gets to cross-examine witnesses against him because of the right to confrontation? You mean he gets to represent himself, especially in these times when people can't afford to retain private counsel and indigent defense is horribly overwhelmed?

Now, I of course understand it’s easier and loads more fun to debate a caricature, so I don’t begrudge Mr. Greenfield for his literary flourishes. But a simpleton though I may be, my stance was a bit more nuanced: at no point did I suggest those accused of rape aren’t entitled to a fair trial or that they not be allowed to confront the witnesses against them. What I did suggest was that requiring the use of closed-circuit TV or a surrogate attorney in certain limited cases appeared to protect defendants’ rights -- the same questions could be asked and could continue to act as their own attorney rather than relying on indigent defense -- while addressing serious concerns actual victims could be intimidated or further traumatized in the course of a trial.

Rapists, take note: Want to beat the rap and inflict even more psychological damage on your victim while you're at it? Be your own attorney!

While that might not sound like the best recommendation, what with representing one's self in court typically associated with psychopaths whose defenses tend to go down in flames, it unfortunately seems to be sage advice for sexual assailants, as Alex Dibranco reports on the Women Rights blog.

Why? Consider a recent case out of Washington. As The Seattle Times reported last week, a man accused of child rape had charges against him thrown out after the alleged victim in the case, now 21, refused to let him cross-examine her on the stand; rather than testify, she spent three hours threatening to jump off the roof of the King County Courthouse. (The man still faces charges with respect to other alleged victims.)

Her own parents addicted to drugs and barely ever around, Sara Kruzan looked up to G.G. as a role model. He would “take me or my little friends to roller skating and to the mall and stuff, everything,” she recounts. “He was like a father figure.”

At 13, G.G. raped her and began pimping her out on the street. “G.G.’s hours were from 6:00 in the evening to about 5:30 or 5:00 in the morning,” she says. Seven days a week, “The girls would bring their money and give it to him. He was like married to all of us, I guess.”

Herself addicted to drugs and seeing no way out of the life of prostitution she had been forced into, Kruzan shot and killed her tormenter when she was 16. Now 32, she sits in a California prison, sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. “That means I’m going to die here.”

Watch too much television and you’d be convinced the U.S. is facing an unprecedented wave of murders and kidnappings, particularly affecting blonde-haired, blue-eyed -- and photogenic! -- white women. And then there's that whole surge in drug-related violence along the border with Mexico they keep mentioning on talk radio, right? Calm down: you’re safer than you think.

In fact, figures released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics show the average American is safer than they have been in years, with violent crime dropping by 39 percent over the last decade and by more than 11 percent between 2008 and 2009 alone. Property crime likewise fell by 29 percent, according to the bureau, which based its findings on interviews with more than 68,000 Americans as part of its yearly National Crime Victimization Survey.

And contrary to what the likes of CNN's Nancy Grace might have you believe, rates of sexual assault and rape experienced similar major declines: by 19 percent and 57 percent, respectively, over the last decade. One was also roughly 40 percent less likely to be a victim of firearm violence in 2009 as in 2000, with just 8 percent of violent crimes last year involving a gun.

But the survey also contains some disturbing data on which groups are most likely to be victimized in America.

Good storytelling can make the difference between an acquittal and a life sentence.

If a jury (or judge) can connect with the suffering of a victim, if jurors can feel the fear that a violent crime left behind, a conviction and a longer sentence become more likely. In fact, a study published this summer by researchers at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management set out to test these assertions and found convincing evidence that punishments tend to be more severe in cases involving fewer victims.

The study asked participants to compare cases where a financial advisor had defrauded just a few people while another set of participants looked at a case where he had defrauded dozens. The crime affecting just a few people was judged more harshly. They followed this with an experiment sharing personal details of one victim vs. a basic description of the victims. The personal details led to harsher punishment.

The study also looked to the real world, examining 133 jury cases focused on exposure to toxic chemicals. Sure enough, as the number of victims increased, the total amount of damages dropped.