One more chance for young offenders

Iowa inmates serving life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles are more than wayward kids.

They were sent away for anti-social acts that would make most adults cringe to contemplate - rape, kidnapping, murder.

Make no mistake, those juveniles' communities were safer after they were locked behind bars. There was a reason their cases were kicked up to adult court - like the case of Julio Bonilla, who was 16 when he kidnapped and raped a young girl in Polk County.

Bonilla was convicted of first-degree kidnapping in 2005 after a judge decided he should be tried as an adult. A jury found him guilty and sent him away for good. So what's cruel and unusual about telling Bonilla he used up his last chance?

The state Supreme Court ruled last week that Bonilla, now 24, must have some kind of shot at parole, in keeping with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year.

Unless the charge is murder, inmates sentenced to life for crimes they committed as juveniles must have some realistic opportunity to earn their release, “a chance to demonstrate growth and maturity,” the court ruled earlier this year. That ruling could apply to about a half-dozen other young lifers in Iowa.

Next, state legislators will have to decide what that chance will look like and when it will become an option.

When they do, they also should revisit legislation introduced two years ago that also would have afforded the same opportunity to all inmates serving life for homicides committed as juveniles - several dozen current Iowa inmates.

That 2009 state senate bill would have allowed such offenders to apply for a review after serving 15 years of their sentence.

Dubuque state Sen. Pam Jochum sponsored that bill to allow for the possibility that even those young inmates can be reformed.

It's a sensitive issue; we are talking about serious crimes - about people like Ruthann Veal, 32, who was 14 when she murdered a 66-year-old Waterloo woman in 1993, or Kristina Fetters, now 30, who stabbed and killed her great-aunt in 1994.

But science shows teen brains are just not developed enough to make decisions the way adults do. That was something we didn't fully understand back in the 1990s, when lawmakers turned to tough sentences to battle a frightening uptick in violent juvenile crime.

We shouldn't forget, those juveniles were locked away because they were dangerous. Decades into their sentences, that might still be true. There should be no guarantee Bonilla or any of his cohorts ever will be paroled.

But those who truly have reformed should get another chance.

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