Girl, 15, is puzzler for justice system
ST. MARTINS, MO. On her Twitter page, Alyssa Bustamante lists her location as "somewhere I don't want to be."
When she wrote that, the 15-year-old girl lived in this tiny burg of about 1,000 folks just west of Jefferson City. Now, Bustamante is somewhere else in a jail cell as she awaits trial on the most heinous of charges.
On Oct. 21, authorities say, Bustamante strangled, stabbed and cut the throat of her 9-year-old neighbor, Elizabeth Kay Olten.
The murder traumatized this working-class, mostly Catholic community. But it also shocked a justice system now struggling to figure out what to do with a troubled teenage girl with nowhere to go.
Does she go to the juvenile system, where she can get treatment for her mental health problems?
Or does she go to adult prison, an environment that her attorney argues she won't survive?
The decision rests with a prosecutor and judge pressured to be tough on crime, and a juvenile system asked to determine whether Bustamante is a candidate to escape the demons dancing in her head.
The fate of a 15-year-old murder suspect may hinge at least partly on a fact revealed in court on Wednesday, to the disappointment of Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem:
Missouri's nationally respected juvenile justice system has no secure place to put a 15-year-old girl accused of a violent murder.
It's a system that was built for boys.
"This is real different for all of us," said Bill Heberle, deputy director of the Division of Youth Services. At Bustamante's certification hearing, Heberle testified that the state doesn't have a secure facility meaning one with fences and locked gates for girls.
The judge in the case said he was disappointed in the state juvenile system's inability to house Bustamante. But the reality is, the state hasn't faced many cases such as hers.
"We simply don't receive that many young girls that are committed to us for a heinous crime," Heberle said. "Our girls tend to be more violent toward themselves."
In that regard, Bustamante fits the stereotype.
She was hospitalized two years ago at a mental hospital in mid-Missouri after a suicide attempt in which she tried to cut herself with her fingernails. It was a difficult moment in what has been a troubled upbringing.
Bustamante's father is in a Missouri prison on an assault conviction. Several years ago, Bustamante's grandmother, Karen Brooke, was awarded custody of the girl and her two younger brothers, and she moved them from California to Missouri to get a fresh start.
According to authorities, Bustamante continues to battle depression, though she has been in therapy and was prescribed the antidepressant Prozac. And despite dabbling in the dark Goth culture, school officials say, she was a good student who didn't get in trouble.
But Bustamante left an Internet trail that shows a fascination with death and pain.
On her now defunct YouTube page, she talked of hobbies such as "killing people" and "cutting." One video Bustamante made shows her and her brothers touching an electric fence to see what it felt like.
Indeed, that's why Bustamante dug two graves in the woods near her home and killed her 9-year-old neighbor, an investigator testified in court.
"She wanted to know what it felt like," said Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. David Rice.
THE 'MISSOURI MODEL'
Such gruesome details led Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Richardson to say he would seek the most serious punishment possible for Bustamante: life in prison without parole.
But even if Richardson succeeds in convicting Bustamante of first-degree murder, it's still possible she will end up in the care of the state Division of Youth Services.
That's because Missouri is one of 22 states to have what is called a "dual jurisdiction" system. Under state law, if Bustamante was found guilty, a judge could consider keeping her under the care of the juvenile system which is heavy on rehabilitation until she is 21. At that point, another hearing would be held to determine if she was ready to be released, or sent to adult prison for the remainder of her sentence.
The "Missouri Model" is praised around the nation because its emphasis on community-based rehabilitation has produced very low recidivism rates, even among the violent criminals most of them boys sentenced through the juvenile system.
It's a system that works, says Harvard University professor Julie Boatright Wilson, because it balances therapy with the rights of victims and concerns about keeping the community safe.
Wilson, who last year was part of a review of Missouri's juvenile justice system that earned the prestigious Annie E. Casey Innovations Award, said that programs that focus on rehabilitation for juveniles work because those who make it through the program don't repeat their crimes.
Of the 46 juveniles who have completed the state's rehabilitation program as part of a dual jurisdiction sentence, only 10 have ended up going back to prison, said Heberle. That's nearly an 80 percent success rate, which is much higher than traditional corrections programs.
But only five girls have ever been sentenced through the program, which has been around since 1996. Three of them have completed the program and not reoffended. One, who is 17, is still in the juvenile system.
None of those girls, Heberle said, was accused of first-degree murder.
It's not that the state's program doesn't have secure facilities, it's just that they are all set up for boys. The state has seven juvenile facilities that Heberle considers "hardware secure," with fences, locked gates, alarms and metal detectors. Just below that there are facilities that are called "staff secure," such as Hogan Street in St. Louis. Such facilities sometimes house violent offenders and are staffed 24 hours a day, but they aren't necessarily fenced. There have been escapes.
Finally, there are the minimum security facilities, basically group homes, that are still staffed 24 hours a day but don't have the traditional security associated with prisons.
Heberle said the Division of Youth Services would have no choice but to take Bustamante if that's what a judge ordered.
"If it's the wishes of the court to commit this girl to us, we would make whatever modifications necessary," Heberle said. "It's a very difficult and stressful case. If I could have magically said in court that I had a 10-bed secure facility for girls, I still don't know whether he would have committed her to us."
MORE FEMALE KILLERS
Wilson said the problem of girls' being accused more frequently of increasingly violent crimes is something the nation had better prepare for.
Missouri has only one girl under the age of 18 in its adult prison population, a point that Bustamante's court-appointed attorney, Kurt Valentine, made in arguing that she belongs in the juvenile system.
But among all murders committed nationally by people 13 to 16, the percentage of cases in which the murderer was female has risen for three years straight. It's still a small number 48 in 2008, or 10 percent of the total number of murders committed by people in that age group. But it's up from 9 percent the year before and 8 percent in 2006.
One challenge for the justice system is balancing the desire for punishment in such cases with the realities of rehabilitation.
Missouri's system works for both boys and girls, said both Wilson and Heberle. But judges and prosecutors facing pressure to be tough on crime don't always see it that way.
Take the case of Sherman Burnett. When he was 13, he grabbed a 6-year-old girl near her home in Spanish Lake and sodomized her and beat her. The judge declined dual sentencing, and Burnett is now the only boy under the age of 16 in the Missouri adult prison population.
And there is Jonathan McClard. As a 16-year-old, he shot and killed another teen in what the prosecutor called a cold-blooded ambush. The judge in the case was urged to sentence McClard under the dual jurisdiction program, giving him a shot at rehabilitation. The judge declined. McClard killed himself shortly after being sent to prison.
A HOLE IN THE SYSTEM
Bustamante has already tried to kill herself twice, once a couple of years ago and once since her arrest, according to court testimony. That's where the real hole in the system is, Wilson said.
Long before judges and prosecutors weigh issues of crime and punishment, young people often leave a trail of warning signs that the system misses.
In Bustamante's case, the trail is a long one, from her parents' legal troubles to her cries for help on social networking sites to her dabbling in the Goth subculture.
On Thursday, Bustamante's public defender filed a motion seeking to transfer her to a mental hospital.
Bustamante's next court date is Dec. 7. The people of St. Martins will be watching carefully. Not surprisingly, they want to see her punished.
The crime brought together hundreds of townsfolk for two days of searching when Elizabeth first went missing. On Wednesday, when the judge ruled that Bustamante would be tried as an adult, many residents were pleased.
"I think everybody would have been really upset if that hadn't happened," said Richard Bertels, owner of Stacy's Market and Grill, the town's convenience store and unofficial gathering spot.
It's a conservative, law-and-order town, Bertels said. But it's also a town of faith.
In St. Martins, Bustamante's grandmother had the support of her Mormon congregation, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Jefferson City. Church members helped finish building her house on the property and offered support when Bustamante struggled.
Church members refused to comment on the case, other than to say that they are praying for both the Olten family and Bustamante.
Helen Penfield, a spokeswoman for the congregation, called the situation tragic. "Our hope is all will find comfort and peace from our loving, heavenly father during this difficult time," she said.
Prayer is a common theme among people in St. Martins when they consider the murder.
Like so many of the small towns circling the capital city, the town is rooted in its Catholic heritage. St. Martins Catholic Church and its accompanying elementary school is the focal point of the town, along with a VFW lodge and the Knights of Columbus hall that bears the name of the church's pastor, the Rev. Ed Schmidt.
"It's a very sad thing for this town," said Schmidt. "It's a painful experience for all involved. It's so deep-seated, the whole community feels it."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/laworder/story/418FCF884BEA06B1862576750015EFC9?OpenDocument#tp_newCommentAnchor