Charged as an adult: Forrest Day, 19. Suicide.

UPDATED 2/2/2012:  

The answers to those of my questions below which can be derived from criminal and court records are in this new article by the Arizona Republic. I'm choosing not to re-print it here because the article positions Forrest's behavior problems in a way that seems to justify her being sent to prison in the first place...like she was just a "bad girl". I don't accept that premise. She acted out the way children do when troubled...and troubled children, in my book, do not belong in adult prison.

So, if you plan to contact either the judge or prosecutor in this case, do check out the AZ Republic article linked to above to see just the surface of what they were looking at, through the eyes of the criminal justice system. Before you make up your mind what to write, though, read the note below from this friend of Forrest's family as well...

    

  Forrest Day, at 16.

UPDATED 9/31/12: 

At the age of 16, despite being too young to be trusted to drink, drive, smoke, vote, or even get away with skipping school, Forrest Day was prosecuted as an adult for the death of her 8 month old baby. As recounted in the article below, she put her son in the bathtub then got distracted elsewhere in the house by writing poetry - behavior characteristic of a child. It's not even as if she went out partying and left him home alone, beat or shook him, or even filled up the tub.

It doesn't appear that Forrest was even accused of intending to hurt her child. You don't have to will a person harm in order to be charged with negligent homicide, of course, though I suspect they hit her so hard to begin with in order to coerce her into a plea deal on the felony child abuse charge - which I also think was a stretch in this circumstance. 

This case may not be entirely a matter of Andrew Thomas' office overreaching again, though. It looks like the state law requires prosecutors to file charges in adult court when certain felonies and violent crimes are involved - when that happens, though, it appears as if that court then has discretion over where the case is heard.

In any event, Forrest's prosecutor was Suzanne E. Cohen. Her office with the Maricopa County Attorney is at: 301 W. Jefferson St., Phoenix, AZ 85003. She's just applied to be nominated as a judge, so this would be a good time to write to her about her take on charging children like Forrest as adults (according to the DOJ's research, it doesn't reduce juvenile crime). Cohen just helped prosecute the Baseline Killer and got a few death sentences, so there's a good chance she could end up on the Superior Court bench in the next couple of years. 


Forrest was sentenced to probation, and then to prison, by Michael Kemp, a judge from Juvenile Court. I can't tell from the records who actually made the decision to let the state prosecute her as an adult, though. If you have questions about why he did what he did and what he thinks about charging children like her as adults - kids with no criminal record or intent - direct them to him. He can be reached at:
 

Northwest Regional Center (NW)

14264 W. Tierra Buena Lane
Surprise, AZ. 85374

(602) 372-9400

Within less than 6 months of being charged, facing decades in prison if convicted on both counts, Forrest pled guilty to class 3 felony child abuse. Here's the news article on her plea. In return, the state dropped the homicide charges and she was sentenced to 7 years of probation; upon entering her plea she was sent home with her parents and essentially ordered, ironically, to resume the life of a "normal" teenager. 

For those of you who have never been on probation or parole, it's not as easy as you may think to abide by. Forrest violated hers within a year, just before her 18th birthday. I don't know what she did to get into trouble with the court - she apparently wasn't charged with a new crime. She did get pregnant again, though, and wanted to keep her unborn daughter - forbidden by the judge. She was only allowed to see her at the hospital once she was born.

Forrest was committed to the custody of the AZ Department of Corrections on November 10, 2010, soon after having her second child. For breaking her probation, Kemp gave her 3 1/2 years in state prison on the original child abuse conviction. For neglecting her child at the age of 16, the rest of us condemned her to live - and die - with the guilt and stigma of killing her son as if she had intended to. We just can't seem to dole out enough punishment in Arizona to satisfy the electorate here, and it looks like we're letting the legislature get away with refusing to address sentencing reform again this session, so we do share some responsibility here...


Sadly, Forrest committed suicide on January 27, 2012 at Perryville Prison on the maximum security yard, Lumley. She was only 19 years old. Hers was one of three prison suicides last week, in fact; she was the youngest. Our condolences go out to Forrest's parents and other loved ones. I can't think of anything more devastating than surviving the loss of one's child.

This weekend a friend of Forrest's family left a comment at the bottom of another post, speaking to the beautiful soul she knew her to be, that is better placed here: 

-------------from Arizona Prison Watch--------------

Tina Schwindt has left a new comment on your post "Criminal Damage and Deaths in Custody: Letter to t...":

"I am a close personal friend of the Day family and I want to thank you for trying to bring this tragedy to the people's attention. Forrest wasn't a bad person, she had a lapse in judgement, just like millions of other 16 year old kids do every day. She was funny, kind, loving, artistic and so much more. I believe that the state wanted to use her as an example to other young mothers and it backfired horribly. This young girl never should have been put behind bars in an adult prison with the women who actually committed murder freely and willingly. She did not take her babies life intentionally, it was just a horrible accident. 

Accidents happen every day to a multitude of people, for instance the mother whose 2 year old baby got out of the house 4 years ago and tumble onto Thomas road and was hit and killed by a car. The mother had several children and didn't notice the baby gone until it was too late, but she never got charged for any crime. 

I want people everywhere to know that Forrest was an amazing young woman who wanted to go to culinary school to make her life better, but she will never get that opportunity now. I also wanted to say that Forrest gave birth to a beautiful baby girl right before she was incarcerated and the baby is the spitting image of her mommy. The family has custody of the baby, and I can only imagine that they feel very blessed by this wonder born from tragedy. Thank you so much for letting me speak my mind. You are doing a wonderful thing here!"

 

----------from the Arizona Republic archives (2009)--------

 

Police: Teen mom was writing poem when baby drowned

Jackee Coe

May. 6, 2009 

The Arizona Republic

A 16-year-old Avondale girl facing felony child abuse and negligent homicide charges was distracted by writing poetry while her 8-month-old son drowned in the bathtub, according to a police report.

Forrest Day, pleaded not guilty at her arraignment Wednesday, following her indictment on April 23. Day will be tried as an adult and is due back in court June 18.

 

Day's son, Elijah James Day, drowned about 3:30 p.m. Feb. 21 after she set him down in the bathtub, turned the water on with the drain unplugged and left the room, according to the Avondale police report.

Day told investigators she was looking for a towel but got sidetracked with poems she was writing, the report states. After checking on Elijah after about five minutes, she said she went into her bedroom, saw her poetry book and started reading some old poems. She said she was gone for about 20 minutes this time.

Day said she went from her room to the living room, to her sister's room, and then outside on the back porch trying to find a quiet place to write. She eventually went into her parents' bedroom and closed the door behind her, according to police documents.

Day's 9-year-old brother and his friend were playing video games in the living room when the friend heard the water running in the bathroom and told her brother. Her brother went to the bathroom and found Elijah floating face down in the water.

He pulled him out of the water and yelled for his sister, the report says. Day tried CPR but when it didn't work, she took him across the street to a neighbor's house. The neighbor called police and administered CPR until police arrived.

Elijah was unresponsive to attempts to revive him, according to the report. He was airlifted to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, where he was pronounced dead at 4:36 p.m.

Day was "hysterical and crying," the report states. She told police she gave Elijah a bath almost daily but this was the first time she left him alone in the bathtub.

She faces one count of Class 2 felony child abuse, a dangerous crime against children; and one count of negligent homicide, a Class 4 felony.

New AZ Juvenile Corrections Director: Charles Flanagan

For those receiving this via email: this is not new or revised - I had just taken it down to work on, but don't have time, so it's back up. Will post a new, separate piece on Flanagan's appointment once I can chat with him and take the time to write it up.

Peg

I seldom ever re-write blog posts, but sometimes new information or insight calls for a re-evaluation of my positions or strategies. In this case, time and reflection has compelled me to re-evaluate both. This is therefore a rewrite - the older version is gone.

Last week, Governor Jan Brewer announced the retirement of the current director of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, Michael Branham. This alone concerned me, as I knew he'd been resisting her desire to privatize the whole department. What concerned me more, however, is the naming of his replacement: current Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Charles Flanagan - the one man for whom I've had more animosity towards than his boss, Chuck Ryan.

My feelings about Deputy Director Flanagan are rooted in experiences I've had or been privy to behind the scenes that aren't necessary to detail here. What matters is that under his watch the homicide and suicide rates in the state prisons have skyrocketed. The ACLU is investigating the ADC's abuse and neglect of seriously mentally ill prisoners - all too often managed with solitary confinement, which has been shown to be especially harmful to the mental health of prisoners with pre-existing psychiatric disorders.


As an example of both the effects of solitary and the cruel mentality of the state: one young man I know of, Mark, set himself on fire in desperation after begging for a year to have a cellie or be re-classified to a different yard (out of SMU-I, which is where he was when he set himself on fire), the experience of exile and isolation was so tortuous for him. Characteristic of this administration, despite being burned over 80% of his body - arguably punishment enough for an apparent suicide attempt - the state prosecuted him for arson and gave him more time. Is it any wonder that the level of despair and violence has risen so high in there, when the most vulnerable and impaired prisoners are so brutally treated by the ADC as a matter of course?






Such responses to mentally ill prisoners already traumatized by the conditions of their confinement not only shows an institutional culture void of compassion, but also a lack of competency and creativity. Charles Flanagan may have only been in his current position for the past 2 1/2 years, but one of the cases made for his appointment as the new ADJC director is that he's been helping build the ADC into what it is all this time - he's a career soldier there. If he wants credit for that - as if it's something worth claiming - then he needs to take responsibility for where things have gone awry, too - the pattern of abuse and neglect emerging at the state prisons under this administration has been festering for decades under bureaucrats like Chuck Ryan and his mentor, Terry Stewart.


The degree to which Charles Flanagan is part of the same good old boys network at the ADC or part of the resistance to it has yet to be seen. Former ASPC-Eyman Deputy Warden Carl Toersbijns - who I respect immensely, for an officer of the law in this state - keeps trying to convince me that Flanagan is one of the "good guys". My own verdict came in on him long ago - but with new testimony and a look at the old evidence, I'm willing to give his case another look. I want the judiciary in this state to do the same more often for our prisoners with wrongful conviction claims, so I'll try to lead by example.

Still, a good many people have died while Deputy Director Flanagan has helped whitewash the festering conditions inside his prisons over the past couple of years. That's not for me to forgive - that's for those victims and survivors of prison violence and neglect to wrestle with. My job, as I see it, is to amplify their voices, their protest, their resistance to what's happened and continues to happen to Arizona's state prisoners under the current regime, not to give those already in power even more by giving them "equal" space or consideration in my blogs. They already have the benefit of the doubt from everyone else - I'm often the only one to present the other side.

So, while I'm open to Carl's version of the deputy director's role in things under Chuck Ryan, I'm not cutting Flanagan a break. He's responsible by his own claim to leadership there for where the ADC is now at this point in history. I just recognize that I'm not in a position myself to judge accurately what he's done behind the scenes on behalf of prisoners to counter the damage his boss' leadership through the years has done - that is, I'm not absolutely sure if he's part of the problem or part of the solution.

In either case, Charles Flanagan's going to be part of this whole system injustice for some time to come, since the ADJC feeds so many of its kids to the ADC when they're done "correcting" them. In light of that, I invited him to have a dialogue with me; that, after a year or so of having ADC General Counsel Karyn Klausner run interference between us because I simmered with rage at the thought of him (I can only imagine how he feels about me). He promptly and graciously accepted. We'll talk after he settles into his new job - assuming I'm not sidelined over my graffiti by then.

In the meantime, those of you who have questions for him about his term in the adult system or his vision for criminalized youth, please shoot them to me between now and July 1. I can't promise that they'll be answered, but I'll make sure that they're publicly asked. Let your friends and loved ones inside know the invitation extends to them as well, and have them write to me at:

Arizona Prison Watch
PO Box 20494
Phoenix, AZ 85036

I'd love to get some prisoner feedback to share with the community out here about this new appointment; put the word out that it would mean a lot to me what the guys who have seen Flanagan rise through the ranks have to say about his integrity and competency as a CO and administrator.

Anyone interested in following juvenile justice issues in Arizona and helping to maintain a new blog, Arizona Juvenile Prison Watch, please contact me as well.

Thanks.

EXILE: Incarcerated LGBT Youth.

Another decent post from the folks at Solitary Watch - the embedded articles/reports are worth reading, too.

---------------------------

LGBT Kids in Prison Face Rape, Beatings, and Isolation
Solitary Watch / July 13, 2010
by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

CHILDREN IN LOCKDOWN

“Across the United States, the brutal and dysfunctional juvenile justice system sends queer youth to prison in disproportionate numbers, fails to protect them from violence and discrimination while they’re inside and to this day condones attempts to turn them straight,” writes Daniel Redman in a powerful article on LGBT youth behind bars, which appeared last month in The Nation.

LGBT youth reportedly make up 15 percent of the juvenile prison population, and report 12 times as many sexual assaults as straight youth do. In addition to being raped, beaten up, bullied, and shunned, these kids often end up in solitary confinement. Redman writes:

Sending LGBT victims of violence into isolation, instead of punishing their attackers, is common practice across the country, even though a federal court has held the practice to be unconstitutional and the American Psychological Association opposes it. And once the youth are put on lockdown—whether to punish or to protect—they miss out on crucial educational opportunities. In 2006, a bisexual youth in California petitioned the court to be removed from his facility because staff members had kept him in isolation for twenty-three hours a day. At 20 years old, he had missed so much schooling that he was only halfway to his high school diploma.

Besides using isolation to purportedly protect queer youth, guards also use lockdown as punishment. “We had one kid who wouldn’t go to school because he was afraid” of the other youth in the facility, says Wesley Ware [of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana]. And because he was on the mental health unit, a certain amount of social interaction was required as part of his rehabilitation program. For refusing to leave his cell, he was put on lockdown for noncompliance, and his chances for release diminished yet again.

Often, queer youth face as much hostility from prison guards as they do from peers. When a youth faces bullying or violence from another kid, staff can be reluctant to intervene. “The staff views it as [the kid] deserves it, or he’s asking for it—so they don’t intervene or they’ll egg it on,” Ware says. They view it as “good for the kid—gotta teach him and have it beat out of him. Then when the gay kid finally breaks, then he faces the disciplinary consequences.”

Guards are often bullies themselves. Krystal [a transgender teen in Louisiana] reports that staff called her “a disgrace to mankind,” a “punk” or “fucking faggot” on a daily basis and threatened her, saying, “I’ll beat your fucking ass.” When staff called Krystal “faggot” or other names, sometimes she talked back. “Sometimes I would even say, I’m proud to be that,” Krystal says. She would receive more tickets for talking back.

Redman talked to several teens in Louisiana, where the Juvenile Justice Project has just released a comprehensive–and disturbing–report, Locked Up and Out: Youth in Louisiana’s Juvenile Justice System. But as he clearly states, “Antigay policies aren’t just a problem in the Deep South or rural regions.” Nor do prison abuse, rape, and solitary confinement happen only to LGBT kids. As Matt Kelley pointed out yesterday in a post on the subject at Change.org, “The problem of abused LGBT youth in prison forces us to think not only about broader issues of sexual assault in prison, but also on alternatives to locking up juveniles.”

Meanwhile, as the Sentencing Project noted last week, ”Three major juvenile justice initiatives remained stalled in the Congress.” One of these is the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which “promotes the use of effective community-based alternatives to detention, keeps youth out of adult facilities, reduces the disproportionate involvement of youth of color in the system, and promotes other research-driven best practices in the juvenile justice system.” Sounds like a good thing, right? Too bad it’s currently three years overdue for reauthorization.

The restoration of Jerry Kulp.

NOTE: I'm cross-posting this from AZ Prison Watch (originally posted 9/23/10) because Jerry was a child tried as an adult, who promptly suicided upon his arrival at the AZ State Prison minors unit in Tucson. This is terribly heartbreaking. I've since heard from his mom, who confirmed my suspicions about his psychiatric disability. - Peggy Plews
----------------------

I looked and looked this week for memories in the ether from Jerry Kulp's short life. All I could find were his court and ADC papers. Jerry was a 17-year old prisoner on the Minors Unit at ASPC-Tucson last May when he committed suicide.


Jerry hadn't even been in prison a week; he must have just been terrified. How could anyone on the Minors Unit miss all the signs he must have been broadcasting that he wasn't going to last long inside?


Jerry wasn't a gang member, from what I can tell. He was a seriously mentally ill child. He was given ten years upon pleading guilty to sexual assault, a crime I can't find the details of now. He was up on a number of other charges - armed robbery, kidnapping, etc. He committed them all on one occasion when he was 15.


At the time he was initially charged as an adult, Jerry was so mentally impaired that he required a guardian to make his legal decisions for him, and had to undergo several rounds of competency exams and "restoration treatment" in Joe's Jail over the course of 6-9 months to be fit for trial.


Does anyone else out there find that troubling? There seems to be a pattern here with mentally ill people being inappropriately prosecuted - kept in jail the whole time their trials are being postponed - (as if they already know that they're guilty and doing the time anyway) - while they medicate them into health. Once so restored, they promptly plead guilty and get sent to prison where they end up neglected or assaulted and killed.


I can't believe we prosecuted a mentally incompetent child as an adult, and then threw him into prison, but I guess we do that all the time. That can't possibly be legal. Why was this kid sent to prison instead of to a hospital, anyway? To teach him some kind of lesson? He seems to have suffered plenty enough. To scare the rest of us at his expense? No wonder we're so soul sick.


I'd like to speak to Jerry's friends and family, if you're out there. Some of us are organizing to make sure this doesn't keep happening to people like Jerry and me in Arizona's state prisons. My phone number is 480-580-6807. My email is prisonabolitionist@gmail.com. Peggy Plews.

"Trickle-down homophobia" and teen suicide.

-------------good post from change.org-------------

Anti-Gay Bullying Suicides: Who's Really To Blame?

by David Badash October 09, 2010


The media has been awash in news of recent teen suicides, teens literally bullied to death. Much of the mainstream press is reporting there were five or six teen suicides in the back-to-school month of September, all the result of anti-gay bullying. Sadly, that number is much higher. After reports from my readers, and after much research on local news sites, it is clear there were at least ten male teen suicides across the country in the month of September alone. There are reports that almost all of these teens -- many who had either come out as gay or were perceived as gay -- were bullied, and most if not all of the bullying was anti-gay bullying.

But let's be honest. What enables and maintains this culture of hate are groups like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) which exists to tell America that gays and lesbians aren't good enough for marriage. Or groups like Focus on the Family (FOF) which exists to tell America that gays and lesbians aren't good enough for anything, and even has a "pro-bullying" website, "True Tolerance," dedicated to teaching parents how to rid their schools of anti-bullying programs.

These are but two hate groups, groups whose real missions are neither to "protect" marriage, nor to "focus" on the family.

The Southern Poverty Law Center five years ago listed "a dozen of today's most influential anti-gay groups," including several they today classify as hate groups: American Vision, Family Research Institute, and the Traditional Values Coalition. Others, like the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Minnesota Family Council, and the Alliance Defense Fund should qualify as well.

Anti-gay groups, from the National Organization for Marriage and Focus on the Family, to the Family Research Institute, and the Traditional Values Coalition, to local churches and other houses of worship which preach intolerance and hatred against the LGBTQ community, regularly inject hatred, oppression, and fear into America's families.

It's no wonder, as comedian and activist Sarah Silverman says, "Dear America, when you tell gay Americans they can't serve their country openly, or marry the person they love, you're telling that to kids." She says we shouldn't be "shocked wondering where all these bullies are coming from," because "they learned it from watching you."

America's children are under attack. But what difference is there between the schoolyard tormentor who literally bullies to death a gay or questioning youth, and their adult counterparts -- like the National Organization for Marriage, or Focus on the Family -- shrouded in Orwellian nomenclature, who provide them with the ammunition?

Kathy Griffin calls this "trickle-down homophobia." And she's right.

A sixteen-year-old lesbian who says she just came out to her family recently wrote on my website, "I wish my family will stop treating me like im a freak and love me the way they use to again. Iv been screamed at, emotionaly abused, called names like faggot , bitch , whore. Iv been told i have aids because i had sex with a female. Im trying to stay strong but sometimes you need help from others who been through the same."

Her words, the depiction of her treatment by her own family is exactly what children fear most when they even think about coming out to their families. For many, coming out can be a growing experience for the entire family. For other children, coming out can lead to homelessness and a path to suicide.

Gay and lesbian children and teens, even those who are merely "questioning," are between three and six times as likely to attempt or to die by suicide than their heterosexual peers. The radical and religious right, and groups like the Minnesota Family Council (MFC) would have you believe that is because these youngsters have made poor choices or are defective, that "they’ve embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle." In point of fact, the pain that drives these young people to suicide is not caused by being different, it is caused by others who tell them they are "different," and treat them as different.

These ten teens who succumbed to suicide are the ones we know about. Some had full support from their families. But there are countless others every year, hidden from the public by shamed families, too embarrassed to acknowledge either their own failure to see or address the problem, too consumed with guilt for having been unable or unwilling to prevent the bullying, or, sadly, for some, too embarrassed to even acknowledge that their child was "different."

Reading the messages written about these teens on Facebook pages and funeral home websites is heartbreaking. So is reading some of the "code" in the obituaries. No doubt, there are many of this nation's teenagers who love going to church with their girlfriends, but no doubt there are many teens who succumb to suicide because, much to their parents' distress, they love neither church nor a girlfriend.

This "trickle-down homophobia" has to come from somewhere. The torment and bullying doesn't start with parents, or even with the school-yard bully.

So, who are the real tormentors? Who is really to blame? It's time for America to start making the connection. It is unimaginably tragic that so many teens had to succumb to hopeless desperation and suicide for there to be an awakening in America. But I think the tide may be turning. I think America is starting to realize who the real bullies, the real tormentors are. They are the ones with a non-profit tax license, who are using it as a license to kill.