At first glance, it seems obvious what should happen to kids like Tommy Poindexter, Nathan Walker Jr. and Jakaris Taylor. What they did in the housing projects of West Palm Beach’s Dunbar Village in 2007 goes beyond inhumane.
But on Tuesday, the law offered an ignorant remedy to their crime when Circuit Judge Krista Marx handed them life sentences for the acts they committed when they were as young as 14, 16 and 18.
Two years ago, then 35-year-old Haitian immigrant, only called Marie, got a knock at her door by the three boys and up to seven others. When she opened the door, the group forced themselves inside to start a burglary. At first they demanded money, but when they found nothing, they forced Marie into a bedroom and started raping, sodomizing and beating her. They forced her then 12-year-old son to watch and took turns beating him during the three-hour rape.
The walls in the one bedroom apartments are so thin that residents say they can hear their neighbors’ living room conversations. Yet, somehow none of Marie’s crime-immune neighbors heard her screams.
They then brought the two into the bathtub to wash off evidence, but first forced the mother to perform oral sex on her son at gunpoint. The boys doused the two in chemicals and only left the house when they couldn’t find a match to set them on fire. Marie walked to a hospital with her son that night, which led to an investigation and conviction of the boys.
Marie said up to 10 young men took turns raping her that night, but only Poindexter, Walker, Taylor and one other juvenile were convicted by DNA later found at the scene.
In Judge Marx’s Palm Beach courtroom Tuesday, she made the same decision that will be debated by the U.S. Supreme Court next month – if life sentences for juveniles that commit any crime less than murder is unconstitutional.
Not only is it unconstitutional, it’s ignorant to think there are standard guidelines that can apply to anyone without looking at their lives. Wouldn’t these kids have had to be severely cognitively, socially and emotionally broken to have the capacity to commit such a horrific crime? Well, they were.
The Palm Beach Post reported that Poindexter was the first cocaine baby to be born in Palm Beach County. He was passed around between grandparents as a child, beaten daily and never felt loved. He attempted suicide in 2005 and today has an IQ that’s borderline mentally retarded.
Walker now reads at a 3rd grade level, and dropped out of school after failing the 7th grade three times. His mother is addicted to drugs, has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and at times lived in abandoned cars and houses with her kids.
Taylor is said to have average intelligence, earning decent grades in order to play sports. His case shows that even kids that were driven get caught up when they grow up in a place like Dunbar Village, surrounded daily by crime and poverty.
With all their broken lives, there’s no way these kids can be held to the standards of healthy people. It’s easy to say they shouldn’t have to be taught that brutally gang raping a woman is wrong. It is, but what if that was their model of behavior from birth along with gang violence, drugs and poverty? They grew up in an environment where they never thought about the future because they didn’t think they had one.
These “Get Tough” laws that hold troubled teens to the standards of adults, let alone healthy people, are completely hypocritical to the role of incarceration, which should be punishment, reform and deterrence.
Juveniles incarcerated in adult prisons are proven through countless studies to have higher recidivism rates and higher tendencies to commit violent crime. Why? Because when a child goes to prison, they have to adapt to prison culture – where there are gangs, violence, and rape by guards and fellow prisoners.
It does nothing for reform. Before prison, the Dunbar rapists were impoverished, violent kids. Now the justice system is perpetuating that life by giving them no opportunity for change. Before prison they never felt self-worth, respect or respect for others, and now they never will.
The Dunbar rapists’ crimes were horribly sadistic, and yes they must be punished. But it’s not fair that the justice system has no consideration for their upbringing or mentality.
It just shows the absence of alternatives for juveniles like them in our justice system. Why aren’t there programs that can make kids pay their debt to society while also teaching them how to be socially correct people for the first time in their lives?
Simply punishing these juveniles is not serving any purpose to society. Because of the crime’s uniqueness, the life sentence is not deterring others. The justice system should not be looking at if they did the crime, because yes, they are guilty, but they should be looking at “why?”
As I sit and think about the Dunbar rape case, I think about Marie and the pain she and her son will feel forever. But now I also think about the boys – and how the justice system failed them by ignorantly focusing on punishment without looking at their lives.
