No Matter How Loud I Shout (30 page)

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When Elias finally accepts the deal a few weeks later—alone in court, head bowed—and returns for sentencing, Sister Janet and several volunteers from the hall go to the hearing to speak for him before the judge, pleading that he at least be housed at the Youth Authority for the first portion of his sentence. But Janet is up against the mother of the victim, Colleen Mansbridge, who has become a forceful and understandably bitter zealot demanding an all-out war on street gangs, and the harshest possible punishments for Elias and his friends.

“Gangs, like animals, travel in packs and are basically cowards,” the grieving mother says in court, a compact woman in her sixties with light brown permed hair and a posture that seems to render her entire body into a balled fist. She shakes slightly as she speaks, not with an infirmity, but with rage. While she speaks, Elias sits in shackles in the empty jury box with one of the other convicted killers, head bowed, unable to look at the woman, his eyes tightly closed. Later, he says he didn't know if he should be angry, or if he should agree with this woman and her hatred.

“Our son's life was cut right out of him by these cowardly killers. . . . They are all culpable,” Mrs. Mansbridge says. “They are all cold-blooded murderers.
Elizondo won't get the sentence he deserves, but he will deserve the sentence he gets. . . . His juvenile status should no longer apply.”

Later, out in the hallway, she confronts and denounces Janet for taking the side of a killer. “How can you do this, a Sister of God?” she asks, her face a mask of rage. She spits out one more sentence, then staggers off before Janet can speak. “I hope God can forgive you. I can't.”

Mrs. Mansbridge is the living, breathing personification of the toll juvenile violence has wrought on society, and it is a chorus of similar emotion-laden voices, small in number but compelling in their fervor, that has come to dominate the debate on the juvenile justice system. Janet knows that no judge faced with such an awful scene is going to favor a convicted killer over a woman so blistered by anguish. Elias's lawyer seems to agree. He asks that the rest of the hearing be postponed, and the judge agrees.

Janet has time to write more letters, to make more phone calls. She asks the Youth Authority to reconsider its initial position on Elias—that he should be housed with adults, not children. She implores the judge to be generous. Most of this is futile, she knows, and yet, there is a benefit, something she looks for in all her “hopeless” cases. Even if her letters leave little imprint on the judges who receive them, they can hold huge significance for the kids, providing a more hopeful vision of themselves than they are used to hearing, a mental life preserver a few of them cling to for years. These letters, read in court, are often the only notes of compassion during sentencing hearings that otherwise paint kids as monsters. So it is with Elias. Janet has provided him a moral life raft. Still awaiting his sentence, he thanks her profusely for her efforts. If she believes in him, he says, maybe he can believe, too.

“I'm going to make it somehow,” he promises. “Please pray for me.”

N
ONE
of us want to see this place become a growth industry,” the man campaigning for another term as California's governor intones, glancing around the acrid confines of Central Juvenile Hall with obvious distaste. With both hands, he grips the simulated wood podium plunked down on the uneven ground outside the lockup's modest chapel, then raises his voice. “These young punks need to be held accountable.”

Pete Wilson, San Diego's mayor turned U.S. senator turned governor
turned populist government “outsider,” is locked in what started out as an uphill election battle this year with California State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, daughter and sister of two previous governors, the closest thing California has to a royal family. Recently, Wilson has soared in the polls, having goaded his once dominant opponent into shifting the campaign's emphasis from a discussion of jobs and education and the economy—her strong suit—to the need to crack down on crime, an issue the Republican incumbent figures he owns better than the NRA likes bullets. In keeping with this unrelenting anticrime agenda (and notwithstanding the fact that governors have relatively little to do with law enforcement), Wilson has arrived at Central Juvenile Hall today, taking over a slice of the lockup's barren grounds to hold a press conference to blast laws that treat juvenile criminals differently from adults.

With the media corps in attendance on a blistering hot, drizzly day, Wilson introduces two mothers of children killed by juvenile gang members, and a third woman whose son was seriously wounded in a drive-by attack—living, grieving testimony to the terrible human cost of the rising tide of youth violence. One by one, the mothers hesitantly approach the microphone and air their anguish, understandably eager to see maximum punishments for juvenile offenders put into place. The impression is left that, somehow, intolerably, the little monsters who shot their children got off with hand slaps because of their age. Enter Wilson, ready to fix this outrage.

“When we punish cold-blooded killers, their age shouldn't matter,” he declares, as the probation officers and teachers who run Juvenile Hall—and whose livelihood depends upon the fact that the age of offenders
does
matter—shift from foot to foot in uncomfortable silence. “If you commit an adult crime, you'll do adult time.”

It is a message that resonates, one that few citizens and even fewer politicians would care to challenge. This is why the Ronald Duncan case arouses such fury—there is no logic in treating fifteen-year-old cold-blooded killers differently from sixteen-year-old ones. Wilson has picked an issue on which he cannot lose. But the governor conveniently neglects to mention a few facts that seriously undermine his pitch: namely, that the grieving mothers present today were victimized by juveniles who were
over
sixteen. All of them got shipped to adult court and life prison sentences under existing, supposedly lax laws.

Nor does Wilson mention that the new law he is pushing—which would lower the fitness age so fourteen year-olds could be considered adults—would not stop with murderers, but would wipe out whole swaths
of Juvenile Court jurisdiction, allowing even some burglars to be transferred to adult court at age fourteen. Nor is it made clear that the two most outspoken of the three moms on hand—imported to this LA affair from conservative (and soon to be bankrupt) Orange County to the south—are angry not because killers are getting away with murder, but because some child murderers tried as adults get to spend the first part of their sentences in the California Youth Authority, away from older, predatory inmates in adult prison, until they are old enough or tough enough to avoid being assaulted and raped by older inmates.

Never mind that the importance assigned to juvenile murderers in the debate over the future of Juvenile Court is wildly out of proportion to their numbers. Murders make up less than 1 percent of all juvenile cases—and as many as 94 percent of those teen killers are
over
sixteen, which means the vast majority of juvenile murderers and other violent delinquents can be (and usually are) dispatched to adult court with no trouble under existing laws.
²
Sending fourteen- and fifteen-year-old murderers to adult court would address isolated outrages like Ronald Duncan, but it is not the big fix Wilson represents it to be. Statistically, it would have exactly no impact on crime, which is why the proposed legislation has quietly been expanded to include far less popular provisions, such as sending fourteen-year-old burglars to adult prison. It is also why Wilson brought with him mothers whose children were shot by sixteen-year-olds—that's all he could find. Wilson has stacked the guest list in his favor to avoid any dissent or disharmony, and such bothersome details never come up.

The moment provides some terrifically emotive film clips to add to the governor's television campaign spots—and to file away for the disastrous presidential bid Wilson has brazenly promised not to pursue (and which he would wholeheartedly pursue six months later, a lifelong politician selling himself unsuccessfully as an angry Republican outsider). On the muddy quadrangle of grass not far from the U-shaped, two-story brick buildings that house Geri, Elias, Scrappy, Carla, and all the other boys and girls who call this lockup home, Wilson's entourage of campaign aides scramble to check camera angles and bark into cellular phones, sweating profusely in their suits and ties and dark business dresses as Wilson exhorts the media to carry forth his message about the need to crack down on “young predators,” a message he repeats time and again a year later during his presidential bid.

Across the field and safely out of the way, locked down in their rooms during the governor's visit, the kids he is speaking about peer through the scratchy portals of unbreakable acrylic in their rooms, windows etched by
layer upon layer of initials and gang logos, noses and hands pressed against the panes as they try to make sense of the spectacle below. They know only too well that, though this is a party in their honor, they are not welcome to attend. Even the outspoken director of Juvenile Hall, who opposes Wilson's legislative proposals, is off the guest list at his own facility. There is only one thing the governor didn't count on.

Somehow, Sister Janet Harris got herself an invitation.

“What in the way of prevention programs are you proposing in all this legislation?” she asks during what was billed as a roundtable discussion, though none of the participants were actually expected to ask Wilson anything remotely controversial. Janet has the kind of voice that is both firm and soft, making you strain just a little to hear, which has the curious effect of giving her words more, not less, power. “And why are young people charged with burglary included in this law?”

Wilson looks uncomfortable, but only for a moment. Prevention is an important part of dealing with juvenile crime, of course, he says. And the best form of prevention is to get the message across that “adult crimes carry adult price tags.” He has managed to get back on point, the consummate politician.

But one of the mothers—the only one from Los Angeles—will not let Wilson evade Janet's question so easily. To everyone's surprise, she says, “I think prevention and rehabilitation is crucial, not just cracking down on these kids. And I don't think burglary belongs in there, either. I think that's going too far.”

“Well, I believe burglary belongs in the bill. But that's certainly something that will be debated,” Wilson says lamely, knowing that the legislation is on the fast track in Sacramento, and that legislators are falling over one another to see who can out-tough the others in cracking down on juvenile crime. It is an unplanned and uncomfortable moment, and the entourage reacts quickly with much glancing at watches. There's another campaign speech in an hour, the aides announce that it is time to go, and the discussion abruptly ends.

But before Wilson and his people stride off to their waiting limousines, while he is still circulating among the guests and bidding them farewell, Sister Janet materializes by the governor's arm. His hand shoots out reflexively to grip hers, warm and firm, a smile fixed on his face as Janet leans close and whispers that she is praying for him and the other leaders of California to find ways to improve the juvenile justice system with compassion and wisdom. Many boys and girls who languish behind bars could
be saved, she tells him, if only the people in power wanted it that way. He looks uncomfortable again, but he still nods and smiles, then thanks her. “I think we're going to accomplish that with these new, tougher laws,” he says automatically, then turns briskly away. The newspaper and TV people immediately begin packing up for the next stop on the campaign trail as the governor and his staff race off, accidentally abandoning one of their grieving mothers in the process.

A television reporter sidles up to Janet then and says quietly out of the corner of her mouth, “What a dog and pony show.”

“Put that down for the record,” Janet replies. “Please.”

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There is a story about Sister Janet Harris. It dates back to the seventies, when Los Angeles County received a small federal grant to start a program to reform gang kids, and someone decided to put Sister Janet in charge. (Her guidance in this task: “Here's a desk, Sister, and a phone. Get to work.”) She wanted to set up jobs and mentors and school programs for current and would-be gang members, but she needed support from the city of Los Angeles, which meant seeking out then-mayor Tom Bradley's help. She thought a former cop turned politician with humble roots, one of the first black mayors of a major U.S. city, would be happy to throw his support toward a program designed to keep poor and underprivileged kids from joining gangs and turning to crime. But Bradley—or at least his staff—rebuffed Sister Janet for months.