Beyond Scared Straight -Juvenile Justice Reform: Charles D. Porter Jr., who killed his father at age 15, believes he should have an opportunity to prove he could be a lawful citizen
Via Scoop.it – Juvenile Justice
He still imagined it was possible to become a professional baseball player and spent time running with his dog in the fields.
He had never been a criminal.
He was a kid, and he says didn’t understand.
“I deserve to be punished. I won’t ever deny that,” Charles D. Porter Jr. said in September at the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater. “Do I deserve to be punished as much as someone who is in complete control of their faculties?”
Porter shot and killed his father on June 19, 1984, three months after his 15th birthday and before he says could rationalize or comprehend consequences. He and a 16-year-old friend then took the elder Porter’s 1978 Suburban and fled to a Florida campground, where they were arrested June 23, 1984.
The only subsequent trips he took were from one incarceration facility to another.
A jury convicted him of first-degree murder and a judge sentenced him, as mandated by law, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Twenty-seven years later, Porter, 42, believes he should have an opportunity to prove he could be a lawful, independent citizen, and that he is not the killer he once was.
Via juveniledefendants.blogspot.com
advocatesforabandonedadolescents
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