LIFE ,NO PAROLE..

Introduction

In
the early morning of October 21, 2002, a 16-year old, continuation
school student, quietly walked through his Santa Paula, California
neighborhood wearing a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a black, aluminum
baseball bat with gold lettering. While this may not seem out of place
in many suburban neighborhoods throughout California, Adam Sarabia was
not simply out for a morning walk or headed to an early team practice.
For reasons that we may never understand, he instead went to the home of
John Ramirez and Joann Wotkyn, a happy couple in their 50’s who worked
at a local data storage company. Finding an unlocked garage door he
entered the home, moved up the stairs to the bedroom and brutally beat
and stabbed the sleeping couple to death. When he was finished he went
downstairs, took the couple’s car keys and cell phone and drove off, joy
riding with his friends for a few hours.

At the time of his
conviction, the judge in Adam Sarabia’s case was quoted as saying that
the "level of violence was just mind-boggling."^[1]
Unfortunately, horrific details of this type are not unique in many of
the juvenile murder cases where the defendant, like Sarabia, is
ultimately sentenced to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) in
California. However, the special interest groups that oppose this
particular punishment for juveniles would have you believe otherwise,
citing a mix of private research, anecdotes and questionable statistics.