The Roanoke Times

File February In February, Melanie Elaine Engleman was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in the stabbing death of William Christopher Linn. Judge Charlie Dorsey sentenced Engleman on July 1 to serve five years of a 30-year sentence. He sent her to adult prison but told her he wanted to give her a chance to realize her potential, thus the relatively short time to serve.

When a teenager accused of a serious crime gets tried as an adult, the results are anything but predictable.

A 14-year-old convicted in a robbery in which a man was brutally strangled gets sent to a juvenile facility.

A 15-year-old convicted of robbing another teen at gunpoint heads straight to adult prison, though he caused no physical harm.

More than a decade ago, with the intent of being tough on crime, Virginia lawmakers made it relatively easy to try a juvenile as an adult. In many instances, prosecutors can take a teen's case to adult court even if a juvenile judge rules that the case doesn't belong there.

But as report after report have concluded that trying teens as adults does nothing to deter crime -- and that sending teens to adult prison makes them more likely to become repeat offenders -- a state commission is evaluating whether Virginia's approach needs to change.

Roanoke lawyer Chris Kowalczuk, who has defended teenagers in high-profile murder cases, said the problem with putting teens in adult prison is obvious: "All you've succeeded in doing is permanently and irrevocably scarring them for life."

It's difficult to judge how effective Virginia's system is when it comes to juveniles punished as adults, because no state agency keeps track of how these cases turn out.

The Virginia State Crime Commission is trying to fill that knowledge gap. In its preliminary study, the commission found that most teenagers sent to adult prison in Virginia end up there because of robbery convictions. An earlier study conducted by an advocacy group asserts that a disproportionate number of those teens are black.

One Virginia teenager who served adult time for a carjacking in which no one was injured -- and who spent most of his sentence in the Red Onion supermax prison in Wise County -- bucked the trend documented in the studies. Instead of reverting back to crime after getting out of prison, he graduated from college and became a published author.

Dwayne Betts leaves no doubt how he feels about being sentenced as an adult: "I see no reason to send a 15-year-old to prison to be with grown men who have learned to live and breathe violence." He contends his life after prison "has been a testament to the fact that I could have been rehabilitated other ways."

'Young thugs'

Starting in the early 1990s, in reaction to a perceived surge in crimes committed by teenagers, most states crafted laws making it easier to try and punish teens as adults.

Virginia was no exception. In 1996, urged on by Gov. George Allen's rhetoric about "young thugs" going unpunished in the juvenile system, state legislators crafted the laws that the crime commission will re-examine this year.

Those laws set the minimum age at which a juvenile can be tried as an adult at 14 and declared that any teen 14 or older charged with murder or aggravated malicious wounding will automatically face trial in adult court.

In addition, the laws allow commonwealth's attorneys to bring into adult court teenagers charged with certain violent crimes -- including abduction, carjacking, malicious wounding, rape and robbery -- whether or not a juvenile court judge approves. Virginia is one of 17 states to give prosecutors that power.

In sentencing a teen convicted as an adult, circuit court judges can send the youth straight to an adult penitentiary, but a judge also can suspend some or all of the adult time and instead place the teen in a program run by the Department of Juvenile Justice. This is called a "hybrid" or "blended" sentence.

Senior Assistant Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch, who oversees Roanoke cases involving juveniles, noted that the blended sentence option takes some of the sting out of the process of trying teens as adults. Virginia and 16 other states allow blended sentences.

Advocacy groups such as JustChildren, a program of the Charleslottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center, argue that juvenile offenders belong in the juvenile system. They contend that placing a teen with adult criminals just means he'll be victimized and taught even worse behaviors.

Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention have released reports summarizing the few studies that have been done nationwide on teenagers sent to adult prison. The reports conclude that sending youths to penitentiaries makes them more likely to commit other crimes when they come out.

'With the big boys'

In at least some high-profile cases, circuit court judges in the region have wrestled with difficult questions when deciding the fate of a teenager convicted of a serious crime -- and sometimes made decisions that outraged the families of the victims.

When they elect to give a teen a second chance, judges often take great pains to explain why they're going out on a limb for a convicted felon.

The most recent example came July 1, when a Roanoke judge sentenced Melanie Elaine Engleman to serve five years of a 30-year sentence for second-degree murder. Engleman was 16 in June 2008, when she stabbed 19-year-old William Christopher Linn in the heart.

Judge Charlie Dorsey sent Engleman to adult prison but told her he wanted to give her a chance to realize her potential, thus the relatively short time to serve.

Kowalczuk, Engleman's attorney, handled a similar case years before. In October 2001, he argued in Franklin County Circuit Court that his client, 15-year-old Alex Hudson, didn't belong in prison: "He'll be ruined. That'll be the end of this kid. He'll just sit in a cage and rot away."

Hudson was 14 in December 2000 when he and two older cousins traveled from Albemarle County to Rocky Mount with a plan to rob a man. Ralph English died a gruesome death, strangled with one of his own boot laces. The cousins, who each received lengthy prison terms, claimed that Hudson took part in the killing. A Franklin County jury acquitted the teenager of capital murder but found him guilty of robbery.

Judge William Alexander sentenced Hudson to 35 years in prison, but in a decision unlike any seen in Franklin County at the time, suspended the adult sentence and placed Hudson in the Department of Juvenile Justice's serious offender program. Alexander warned him then: "If you mess it up, you will be with the big boys. Mr. Hudson, you don't want to see me again."

Hudson, now 23, told Alexander at a January hearing that he's engaged to be married, working full time and attending community college.

He said he sees the chance the judge gave him as the event that turned his life around. "I would never have gotten my high school diploma," he said. "I would never have gotten where I am today."

"Once he was put in a structured environment with rules and guidance and supervision he really thrived," Kowalczuk said. "I'm very proud of Alex."

'A child on this side'

The Bedford County case of Joshua Lovell, who was 14 when he was charged in 2007 with molesting a 2-year-old girl and a 3-year-old girl, ended up with a similar result.

After hearing testimony that Lovell was immature for his age and unlikely to re-offend, Judge James Updike convicted him as a juvenile, telling the victims' families, "I have a child on this side as well."

He suspended a juvenile sentence and placed Lovell on probation until he turns 18. Lovell's attorney, David Steidle, said Updike took Lovell off supervised probation in April.

Steidle remains adamant that Lovell should never have been tried as an adult, since doing so assumed that his mind worked like an adult's.

Assistant Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance said the egregiousness of the crime justified the decision to try Lovell as an adult. But he also said that Lovell's behavior afterward has shown that the judge made the right decision. "I'm glad to see that this young man has taken advantage of that opportunity and made the best of it," he said.

Andrew Block, director of JustChildren, said cases like Hudson's and Lovell's that end essentially in juvenile sentences raise the question of whether they should ever have faced trial as adults in the first place.

He and other advocates say that at the very least the decision should be in the hands of juvenile court judges, not decided by prosecutors or mandated by law. They argue that prosecutors look at only the crime, not the juvenile offender's background.

Ekirch challenged that notion, saying she believes that the percentage of eligible juveniles who are sent to adult court is fairly small.

"I don't believe in Roanoke that we indiscriminately request transfer for juveniles," she said.

The crime commission's preliminary findings don't have the data to make that comparison.

Nance said prosecutors don't ignore age and maturity level in deciding how to try teenagers. "You have to take a broad perspective" and take into account all the aspects of the case: the crime, the victim and the defendant.

Proponents of keeping teens in the juvenile justice system may have science on their side.

Vincent Culotta, a Maryland neuropsychologist who specializes in brain development disorders, says research indicates that the human brain continues to develop until at least age 25, as opposed to a previous belief that brain development stops at 16. In some teens, especially those who have experienced severe abuse or malnutrition, this process can be slower than normal.

He told the crime commission at a June 25 meeting that the justice system should take brain biology and psychology into account in deciding to what degree a teen can be held responsible for a crime.

State legislators who sit on the commission were skeptical. Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, called Culotta's idea "a little extreme."

Ekirch said she's aware of arguments like Culotta's. "I can't sit here and just dismiss outright what the scientific community is saying," she said. "I do feel there are certain circumstances where a juvenile should be tried and treated as an adult."

'I didn't choose'

At Engleman's sentencing, Dorsey asserted that no standard exists for how to punish a teen convicted of second-degree murder, since the cases are so rare.

In fact, according to the crime commission, more than a quarter of the 4,591 teenagers convicted as adults in Virginia were found guilty of robbery, the largest plurality by far.

In 1998, when he was 15, Melvin Fitzgerald Douglas Jr. pleaded guilty in Roanoke Circuit Court to robbing another teenager at gunpoint. No one was hurt, and despite his plea, Douglas maintains that he did not have a gun.

He was the only one of the five teens involved in the robbery to receive an adult sentence. Douglas, who had a troubled history in the juvenile system, went straight to an adult penitentiary for two years, with eight more years hanging over his head.

"I saw guys get stabbed, robbed, beaten with locks," he wrote in a letter. "A tear is a sign of weakness and the pedophiles will prey on you."

In letters, Douglas describes growing up in poverty, surrounded by drug use, his only male role models his friends on the street. His natural response to authority was anger and mistrust, he wrote.

Released on parole at age 16, an adult felony conviction on his record, Douglas violated his probation by failing to keep a job. His attorney told a judge how Douglas was the only teenager enrolled in an adult GED class from which he was expelled.

Douglas argued with his probation officer and stayed at home, staring at the walls, depressed. Judge Jonathan Apgar sent him back to prison for three more years, telling him he hoped the additional time would "get his attention."

Soon after Douglas was released again, he was arrested on a malicious wounding charge. He eventually wound up serving his full 10-year sentence, though his attorney argued it would only set him up for further failure.

In May 2006, Douglas took part in a deadly shootout inside a Melrose Avenue house in which two groups of young men pulled guns on each other and opened fire, leaving one man dead and seven partygoers wounded.

Douglas was shot five times. When he healed, he took a plea deal and went back to prison for the fourth time.

"I am a product of my environment," the 27-year-old wrote in May. "I didn't choose this life, it chose me."

Two years ago an organization called Campaign for Youth Justice released the results of its attempt to tackle Virginia's juvenile transfer laws despite the absence of data.

Its study found that although black teenagers account for almost 50 percent of juvenile arrests, they constitute more than 70 percent of the teens sent directly to adult penitentiaries in Virginia.

The state crime commission's reports so far do not address that issue.

'You go to prison'

Former Virginia resident Dwayne Betts, sent to a penitentiary at 16, managed to avoid Douglas' fate, though he considers himself a rare exception.

Betts is now a published poet and author. His book, "A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival and Coming of Age in Prison," recounts his experiences in the Virginia penal system.

At 16, Betts committed a carjacking at gunpoint. No one was injured. Though he made good grades and had not been in trouble before, once he was in the Fairfax County court system, he learned that juvenile punishment wasn't on the table. "It was assumed from the get-go," Betts said. "You go to prison."

At 17, he was sent to Red Onion State Prison because there were beds there that needed filling, he said.

He counts himself lucky that he never had to fight his cellmates. At Red Onion, he taught himself to become a law clerk. He ran book clubs and was a GED tutor.

When he got out after eight years, he got lucky, he said. A warehouse job he applied for asked if he had been convicted of a felony in the past seven years. Because he could truthfully answer "No," he was able to land the job and get on his feet. Straight A's in community college courses and national recognition for a book club he founded followed.

Without that first stroke of luck, his adult felony conviction at 16 would certainly still be holding him back, he said.

"I was damaged by being in prison," he said.

It's an environment where inmates routinely use violence to solve problems.

"It takes a long time to get out of that thinking," he said.

Advocacy groups want to prevent what happened to Betts from happening to other teens like him. "As it stands now, too many young people who are not the worst of the worst are being tried and treated as adults," Block said.

Those groups are gearing up for December, when the crime commission will review its final report and weigh whether to recommend changing the law.