Young Alabama inmates tried as adults, sentenced as adults

Aug. 12--Davon Hunt scrawled a letter last March to court officials in Anniston from somewhere inside a state prison in Elmore.

"I was trying to get in school, but they said I won't be able to cause my age cause they don't have much man power down here," he wrote in careful print that nonetheless wandered across the unlined page.

Hunt is 17, and is an inmate at Draper Correctional Facility, a prison built for adults. He was writing to Calhoun County Circuit Clerk Kim McCarson and Circuit Judge Brian Howell, hoping for help changing the terms of his sentence.

Hunt was one of eight children serving time in Alabama's adult prisons as of April, the last date for which the Department of Corrections has statistics. Those kids are among the 22,000 inmates now held in aging prisons built for 13,000 -- prisons that state officials have acknowledged are overcrowded and inadequate. Two of the children, both 15, are now the youngest of the state's inmates in adult facilities.

Advocates for juveniles say children are at risk in adult prison and should not be placed in them, though advocates for victims say some crimes warrant incarceration in adult prison.

Hunt has been in prison since he was 16, having accepted a deal to plead guilty to a charge of first-degree robbery. He was sentenced to just less than three years behind bars, with the rest of his 20-year sentence to be served on probation. He got credit for the more than 10 months he'd already spent in the Calhoun County Jail. He'd been there since he was 15, again, in a facility intended for adults.

"I been trying to do better in here," Hunt wrote, but he'd been reprimanded by prison officials several times. He hoped to have his sentence adjusted so he could leave Draper earlier and begin probation sooner. Closing his letter, he thanked McCarson and Howell and wrote, "can ya'll please help me."

A few weeks later Howell denied Hunt's request to be released early.

'Does it work? Is it safe? Is it fair?'

Alabama, like all states, operates a separate criminal justice system for juveniles, on the theory that crimes committed in youth should be punished differently than those by adults. Children, the theory goes, should get a chance to learn from their criminal mistakes and build productive adult lives. So juvenile court proceedings are kept confidential, and the state operates separate, if also flawed, facilities for minors.

But some teenagers find themselves treated as adults, facing trial in open court and incarceration among adult prisoners. Prosecutors can try children as adults when they're as young as 14.

There were 993 children 17 years and younger in state and federal prisons nationwide in 2015, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Florida had the largest number of incarcerated youth with 131 children incarcerated in 2015.

Marc Schindler is executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes criminal justice reform. He said he has three criteria when testing policies on juvenile justice.

"Does it work? Is it safe? Is it fair?" Schindler said.

Schindler said incarcerating children in adult prisons does nothing to prevent crime. Children incarcerated in adult facilities have a higher recidivism rate than their peers sent to juvenile facilities, he said. A 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that teens transferred to adult prisons were 34 percent more likely to be re-arrested for felony crimes than their peers who remained in the juvenile system.

"Is it safe for the young people?" Schindler said. "The research is very solid and conclusive the answer is no."

Congress, in the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, agreed that juveniles in adult prisons are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted than their peers in juvenile detention facilities. According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, 11 inmates 17 or younger nationwide committed suicide from 2001 to 2014, the most recent years for which figures are available.

Schindler said African American and Latino youth are sent to adult prisons and jails more often than their white counterparts. In 2007, the last year the Department of Corrections reported juvenile inmates by race, there were 32 children received in adult facilities -- 28 African American boys and four white boys.

"The research shows in this respect the policy of having kids tried as adults and adult prison disproportionately impacts kids of color," Schindler said.

Janette Grantham, state director of the Montgomery-based crime-victims' group Victims of Crime and Leniency, said there are circumstances where juveniles should be in adult prisons.

"If they commit violent crimes they should get adult time," Grantham said.

While robbery is considered a violent offense, Grantham's group focuses on crimes such as rape, murder, manslaughter, child abuse and sex crimes.

"These juveniles are the worst of the worst," Grantham said.

Asked about Hunt's case, she said he should be held accountable for his actions, but that his sentence seemed stiff based on what she'd heard.

'I can still hear his voice'

Anniston resident Deborah Hendrix said she was taught in security training to never look an assailant in the face when being robbed. She never did look into the face of the boy holding the gun in her face before he stole her car.

"I can still hear his voice as clear as day," Hendrix said in a July interview.

Hendrix had been driving home in the rain from work at Marco's Pizza in Saks after midnight on Nov. 2, 2015. When she was about to turn into her neighborhood on Glade Road, she saw five boys walking in the rain.

The boys, Hunt among them, had walked out of the Robert E. Lewis Residential Treatment Academy at Coosa Valley Youth Services, according Executive Director Mike Rollins. The academy is a non-secure residential facility -- the doors aren't locked -- for juvenile delinquents with nonviolent offenses, not far from Hendrix's home. Hunt had been sent there after an incident at his school in Gadsden earlier that fall.

The boys walked a mile north to a Walmart parking lot where they broke into two cars. That's where they found guns, Rollins said. Then they walked through the rain toward Hendrix's neighborhood.

"I saw they had an umbrella and one of them hit my car with it," Hendrix said. "I stopped because I thought I hit one of them. One of the boys came up on me fast and put the gun to my head. Not on my head, but close and told me to get out of the car."

Hendrix said the oldest boy held the gun on her.

Hunt was 15 at the time. Cody Hawkins and Tierek Dennis were also charged with first-degree robbery in adult criminal court. Hawkins, 17 years old at the time, pleaded guilty in 2016, receiving a split sentence of two to four years in prison and 16 years of probation. Tierek Dennis was 18 at the time of the crime, and is now in Calhoun County Jail on a charge of failure to appear connected to the first-degree robbery case against him.

The other two boys were charged in juvenile court, so their cases are confidential.

Hendrix said she was forced out of the car by the oldest boy and held at gunpoint while he ordered another of the boys to search her for money and her cell phone.

"I told him my phone was in the car. One of the boys checked my pockets and took my wallet," Hendrix said. "The guy wanted me to get in the car. I told him he had my wallet and I wasn't getting in the car."

The boy with the gun then ordered the other boys to get in the car twice, she said.

"They were all hesitant about getting in the car. One with the gun was pushing everything along."

Separate accommodations

Draper, built in 1939, is the oldest of Alabama's correctional facilities. Hunt is being held, according to court records, in Draper's Dorm G, designated for inmates younger than 18.

According to a July 2016 audit of the state's prisons required by federal standards, Alabama prisons officials chose Draper to house its youngest inmates. Auditors toured the the dorm and interviewed the teens. Officers must supervise the teens 24 hours a day, according to the report.

Prior to 2012 juvenile inmates were incarcerated in prisons' general population. The 2012 Youthful Inmate Standard mandated all juveniles must be housed separate from adults while in adult prison.

The report lists 18 officers on each shift for a population of 1,173 inmates at Draper in July 2016.

DOC Public Information Specialist Samantha Banks wrote in an email to The Star that youthful offenders "are prevented from engaging with older inmates."

Banks wrote that youthful offenders are offered GED classes. She said that offering those courses fulfills the state's requirement that all children ages 6 to 17 attend school.

Schindler said he believes children like Hunt should be placed in juvenile facilities.

"The juvenile system, while not perfect, is intended to rehabilitate kids and help them transition into successful adults," Schindler said.

'He's been gone since then'

It was Davon Hunt's father, Deric Hunt, who turned him in.

The elder Hunt got a call from police at his Gadsden home when the boys left Lewis Academy, and another after the theft of Hendrix's car. Later, Davon showed up in the neighborhood

"I got a call from the police because they had stolen some guns and I went and found him," the elder Hunt said. "He's been gone since then."

Trial as an adult may seem like an option for the worst of the worst, but it can be hard to discover why some of the youngest inmates are in prison. Because they're juveniles, state officials say they can't divulge information about those inmates, even though the details of their court proceedings are public record.

Prosecutors charged Hunt, 15 at the time of his arrest, with armed robbery -- an offense that comes with a minimum 10-year sentence, and a maximum of life. His bond was set at $100,000, and he spent the next 310 days in the Calhoun County Jail, where he turned 16.

Under Alabama law, 16-year-olds charged with Class-A felonies cannot be housed in juvenile detention.

In September 2016, Hunt pleaded guilty. The earliest date he can be released is September 2018, according to court documents.

"The courts didn't tell me what was going on," Hunt's father said. "I wasn't in the room when he signed the plea agreement."

Hunt's lawyer, Dustin Merritt, declined to discuss the case.

Calhoun County Assistant District Attorney Tim Burgess said he offered the same plea agreement to all three boys charged in adult criminal court.

"He was the tag-along and got a better sentence from the judge," Burgess said of Davon Hunt. "I don't think he was holding a gun."

Asked if his son was kept in a separate dorm away from adult inmates, Hunt's father said his son has not been kept away from adults in Draper.

"I know people on the inside and they are looking out for him," the elder Hunt said.

Hendrix, the victim of the robbery, was surprised to learn from a reporter that Hunt was in an adult prison. She thinks it's not right.

Hunt owes Hendrix more than $6,000 in restitution imposed on him by the court, according to records. Hendrix said prosecutors didn't tell her about Hunt's prison sentence.

"I was never asked about the plea. I had to call about the restitution," Hendrix said. "That's when I found out about the plea deals."

Hendrix she doesn't agree with the sentences.

"They shouldn't be with grown men. They should be in the juvenile system," Hendrix said. "I hate that for them."

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