The Center for Public Integrity

In 2004, the National Rifle Association honored Republican Florida state legislator Dennis Baxley with a plum endorsement: Its Defender of Freedom award.

The following year, Baxley, a state representative, worked closely with the NRA to push through Florida’s unprecedented “stand your ground” law, which allows citizens to use deadly force if they “reasonably believe” their safety is threatened in a public setting, like a park or a street.

People would no longer be restrained by a “duty to retreat” from a threat while out in public, and would be free from prosecution or civil liability if they acted in self-defense.

Florida’s law is now under a cloud as a result of the controversial February shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, in Sanford, Fla. The 28-year-old shooter, George Zimmerman, who was licensed to carry a gun — and once had a brush with police — claims he acted in self-defense after a confrontation with Martin, and some legal experts say Florida’s law could protect Zimmerman, who has not been charged. The case has inflamed passions nationwide in part because Zimmerman is Hispanic and Martin was African-American. Baxley, whose state party has benefited from large NRA donations, contends his law shouldn’t shield Zimmerman at all because he pursued Martin.

The NRA has been curiously quiet on the matter since the shooting as the nation takes stock — in light of the Martin case and other similar examples — of whether “stand-your-ground” laws are more dangerous than useful to enhance public safety. The gun-rights organization did not respond to requests for comment. But the group’s silence contrasts sharply with its history of unabashed activism on stand-your-ground legislation. Since the Florida measure passed, the NRA has flexed its considerable muscle and played a crucial role in the passage of more than 20 similar laws nationwide.

It’s any parent’s nightmare: Getting a call with the news that your child has been killed. So it’s not hard to imagine the anguish being experienced by the parents of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.   

Deeply disturbing information is emerging about the course of events leading up to a man’s Feb. 26 shooting of Trayvon, a Florida high school student, after the man called police and then failed to heed a dispatcher’s request for him not to follow a “suspicious” person.   

“We don’t need you to do that,” the dispatcher in Sanford, north of Orlando, replied when George Zimmerman, an aggressive neighborhood-watch volunteer, told the dispatcher he was following a “black male” who looked like “there was something wrong with him.”   

Trayvon was black, unarmed, wearing a “hoodie.” His shooting and the aftermath — no arrest of 28-year-old Zimmerman — has triggered outrage nationwide. Late Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into this case, which has exposed a current of distrust and fury at police in Sanford. 

There’s also talk about the risks black youths, especially, face because of racial profiling, whether it’s by authority figures or ordinary citizens. Trayvon was staying at his father’s girlfriend’s home in the same complex where Zimmerman lives, and was walking back from buying some snacks.

As the nation’s highest court prepares to hear oral arguments today on the constitutionality of sending juvenile killers to life in prison with no chance for parole, an unlikely trio of Bostonians is hopeful the justices move quickly to abolish the sentence.

“I would give my life for Hassan and he would do the same for me,” said retired Massachusetts Juvenile Court Judge Mark E. Lawton, speaking about a teenage killer he sentenced more than 20 years ago — but has now become Lawton’s close friend.

“If he were the devil incarnate I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, but he is a great tool for goodness,” Lawton said last week, as he prepared to introduce Hassan Smith, now 40, to his juvenile law class at New England School of Law in Boston.  

Smith, now a father of three who mentors troubled inner-city youth, believes firmly teenagers — like the one he once was — deserve a chance at redemption no matter how serious their mistakes.

It is that very question the high court is being asked to rule on in the appeals of two-14-year-old killers. Like Smith, who was 16 when he shot Jeffrey Booker in Boston, both inmates are black.

One of those defendants, Evan Miller, from Alabama, was 14 in 2003 when he and an older boy fatally beat a drunken neighbor to death in a trailer park, lit the victim’s home on fire and fled.

The second defendant appealing to the high court, Kuntrell Jackson, was convicted in a 1999 armed robbery in which another youth fatally shot an Arkansas convenience store clerk. Both Miller and Jackson were sentenced to life without parole.

Tuesday is a big day for juvenile justice in this country. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments both challenging and defending the constitutionality of sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole for cases of homicide. 

The high court will examine the cases of two men convicted of homicide for two separate killings, in Arkansas and Alabama. Both men were 14 years old at the time of the incidents, and they are represented by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. The group represents indigent defendants, including juveniles, and defendants its lawyers feel have faced unjust treatment or racial bias.

The initiative is arguing that life without the possibility of parole for minors — or “death in prison” — amounts to the sort of “cruel and unusual” punishment outlawed by the Constitution.  

Arguments challenging the constitutionality of such sentences will touch on questions of child development and brain science, and the ability of youths to transform and succeed in efforts at rehabilitation. 

The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, based in Georgia, has posted an in-depth story that includes details about the killings the two youths committed with other youths, the arguments put forth by the Equal Justice Initiative and the various directions the court’s ruling could eventually take. Currently, the story notes, there are about 2,570 convicts serving life without parole sentences they received as minors.  Seven states bar such sentences.

A newly released pool of federal data reveals that Kern County, California — whose schools were the subject of a recent Center for Public Integrity story — has exceptionally high rates of suspension and expulsions for minority students.

The new federal information dovetails with the findings of the Center’s investigation last December, which showed that Kern County, an oil and farm region in the Central Valley, is California’s expulsion capital. In 2010-2011, Kern’s schools had four times the state average for expulsions and more than seven times the last known national average in 2006. The raw number of students expelled in sparsely populated Kern was even greater than the number expelled in Los Angeles, which has nine times the student body.

Parents in Kern complained about high rates of removal for children and about the process for challenging decisions, and some black parents told the Center they felt schools were too quick to oust their children.

California state data analyzed by the Center demonstrated that the vast majority of Kern expulsions were not for “zero tolerance” violations that require expulsion, such as gun possession. The analysis showed that most of Kern’s expulsions were discretionary, and that the schools had unusually high rates of expulsion for defiance, disruption and obscenity. More than one in four expulsions statewide for obscenity or vulgarity took place in Kern.

Ethnic disparities

The state data, however, did not include a breakdown of the ethnicity of students. The new federal statistics do contain ethnic breakdowns, and confirm some parents’ concerns.

Three guards at a girls’ prison in Georgia have been cleared on a disturbing allegation, but one was fired and two were disciplined in connection with other misbehavior, our colleagues at the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange report.

It’s the latest in a series of allegations of violence, employee misconduct, corruption and other trouble inside Georgia’s juvenile detention system. The state’s new Juvenile Justice commissioner is scrutinizing its problematic history and suggesting reforms. One problem: The system’s guards are comparatively low-paid and there is frequent turnover.

A male ward in an Augusta, Ga. detention center was indicted in November and accused of beating another ward to death.

The latest scandal involving girls stems from an assault on a girl by another female ward inside a Rome, Ga., detention center in December. The victim, who has lacerations and a broken nose, alleged that the attack was instigated by guards; she alleged that the assault was payback because the victim had previously confided in her mother that guards had offered her food from outside the prison if she would fight another girl.

Guards passed lie-detector tests and were exonerated after insisting that this accusation and similar allegations of food bribes by other witnesses were false.

Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan unveiled a vast collection of school data Tuesday, calling attention to alarmingly high discipline rates for minority students in comparison to their white counterparts. The trend lines applied to suspensions and expulsions, as well as referrals to law enforcement agencies.   

Black and Latino students together represented 42 percent of the population in the data, but were more than 70 percent of those arrested or referred to law enforcement during the 2009-2010 academic year, according to the department’s analysis of statistics from more than 72,000 schools that were submitted to the U.S. Department of Education.

The grouping of statistics, last gathered nationally in 2006, is called the Civil Rights Data Collection and it is managed by the department’s Office for Civil Rights. The data is the most recent and largest pool of such information in the federal collection’s history, coming from schools serving 85 percent of all American students. 

“The sad fact is that minority students across America face much harsher discipline than non-minorities, even within the same school,” Duncan said at an event at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Black students were only 18 percent of the sample of data collected. But they represented 42 percent of students referred to law enforcement; 35 percent of students suspended once; 46 percent of students suspended more than once; and 39 percent of students expelled during the 2009-2010 school year.

The valedictorian of a Florida high school faces a deportation order this month, and a prominent congresswoman has assumed a key role in imploring federal authorities to allow the young woman to stay.

This same congresswoman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has also endorsed Mitt Romney for the GOP presidential nomination. But Romney has vowed he would veto, should it ever be approved, the long stalled DREAM Act proposal to allow students like the Florida valedictorian to earn legal status by attending college or serving in the military.

That’s the way it goes in the contradictory world of immigration and politics, which is buffeting more kids as parents are deported or forced into shadows and children who’ve grown up here — undocumented — become adults in crisis.

It’s not unusual for one politician endorsing another to disagree on some matters. But Ros-Lehtinen, who is Cuban-American and counts immigrants among her base, has been an ardent champion of the DREAM Act for many years, as well as an aggressive backer of comprehensive immigration reform.

Last Friday, her office issued a statement pointing to student Daniela Pelaez’s case  as proof of “an urgent need” for Congress to approve the DREAM Act, “so that many young people can form part of our armed forces or attend college and contribute to our generous and great nation.”

National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” has aired a version of the Center for Public Integrity look into aggressive ticketing of students in Los Angeles for violating a daytime curfew. The piece on Los Angeles’ changes to this anti-truancy law was co-reported by KQED radio’s Krissy Clark.

A web package also appears on NPR’s website.  In early February, NPR ran an interesting piece delving into what one school attendance agent in Detroit, Mich., found during his rounds to scout out why kids were not appearing at school. Gentle but also firm with parents — who could face prosecution — the school agent found a mother of newborn twins living temporarily in a hotel room who said she couldn’t get her other kids on the bus.  

He also found a mother who said her children didn’t have proper clothing and needed glasses, and he gave her some vouchers to get both. Another mother shouts at the agent and complains about the school calling whenever her son misses a day.  

In another part of the country, television news outlets have examined how police officers in Kern County, Calif., make rounds to catch truant students.

In one KGET report, officers are gruff, confronting parents and yelling at kids to get dressed and get to school. In a piece by KBAK,  officers are less aggressive, but tension erupts between a father and a daughter when an officer arrives at a family’s home.  Officers warn students that their parents can be fined and kids can be incarcerated.