Juvenile

Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month.

Over the last 10 years, California's juvenile justice system has begun to emerge from the darkest of its dark days. In settling lawsuits, the state agreed to turn away from inhumane practices and reduce youth prison violence, abide by laws that require educational and mental health and healthcare services, and provide access for the physically disabled. The state was caught physically abusing its wards, sometimes by looking the other way when fights broke out, sometimes by spurring the fights on, sometimes by guards actually beating the wards.

J. Paul Reddam might not be the type of businessman for whom people suffering through the recession can bring themselves to root. Reddam, 56, is president of Anaheim-based CashCall, the mortgage refinancing and high-interest personal loan company who critics say has unfairly capitalized upon people's financial woes during the country's economic and employment crisis. But the Sunset Beach resident is also owner of Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another, who could provide horse racing with a huge shot in the arm Saturday with a victory in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.

Do Los Angeles County prosecutors too often or too seldom use their power under 2000's Proposition 21 to charge an accused juvenile as an adult, without first submitting the question to a judge? Does "direct filing" against juveniles, as it is known, make residents safer? Is it a good escape valve for the justice system now that fewer juveniles can be sent to state youth camps, and now that prison realignment is making county jail space more difficult to come by? Los Angeles voters need to know how well the six candidates for district attorney grasp the facts of direct filing and whether and how often - and why - they would exercise that option.

Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole. The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

Juvenile hoodlums rape, rob, kidnap and murder innocent victims on a daily basis. Names cannot be released "because of their age." Isn't it time to change this outdated rule? These "alleged" young criminals may be released on bail pending trial. How will unsuspecting law-abiding families know a possible dangerous outlaw resides in their midst? RUTH V. ENAKEFF, Downey

I suppose your new Sunday Opinion columnist, Joel Stein, was hired for his youthful edginess, but all I'm seeing is someone juvenile and coarse. Why not bury him on the Sports pages or somewhere where his stories of porn star encounters won't take space away from the issues facing our troubled city and world? Better yet, fire him and the dope who thought he was a good idea. I have subscribed to The Times since the 1980s, but it's come to this: him or me. Dawna Kaufmann Los Angeles

A new Iranian judicial directive bans the execution of juvenile offenders for drug crimes but keeps capital punishment for those convicted of murder, a top judiciary official said. Hossein Zabhi, deputy state public prosecutor, said judges are still required under Iran's Islamic-based laws to hand down death sentences for minors convicted of murder if the victim's family refuses financial compensation. Mohammad Mostafaei, a lawyer who has launched a campaign against execution of juveniles, welcomed the new directive but said it was not sufficient.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will close two of the state's eight juvenile prisons by July. The department said Friday that the Dewitt Nelson Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton and El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility in Paso Robles would close. Together they house about 400 inmates and employ about 800 workers. A declining juvenile prison population and a new state law that aims to keep less serious offenders in their communities prompted the closures.

This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in two cases, Sullivan vs. Florida and Graham vs. Florida, that will decide whether it's cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a 13-year-old or a 17-year-old to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The court should follow its prior reasoning in Roper vs. Simmons, a 2005 ruling that held the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional, and similarly draw a bright line at 18 years of age for imposing life sentences without parole.

Lawmakers created the California Youth Authority in 1941, making in the process a bold statement of purpose and conviction: Juvenile delinquents are redeemable. They should no longer be imprisoned with adults but instead given a chance at basic education and job training. Rehabilitation, not punishment, is the proper goal of an enlightened and effective juvenile justice system. But by the late 1990s the California Youth Authority had become a network of grim and violent youth prisons that were so abusive and so destructive to their mission that all but a few were shut down.

She starting leaving home at 13, and soon she was gone for good. The streets drew her, the Barrio Pobre gang took her in. She does not deny that at 16 she was there in Long Beach the night her boyfriend killed a younger girl in a gang dispute over a piece of jewelry. Now she is 37, and though two decades have passed, Elizabeth Lozano still looks young — short, thin, with long black hair and expressive eyes. Even in her prison blues, she radiates youth, and she has won acclaim for reaching out to help teenagers in prison and others who are at risk of ending up there.

Judge Michael Nash, who presides over the Los Angeles County Juvenile Court, has long argued that public access to the court's proceedings would improve its accountability and the accountability of those who appear before it. Last week, he set out to prove it. Nash, along with this page, had supported state legislation that would change the presumption that dependency court hearings, in which the fate of children in foster care is decided, should...

Los Angeles County Juvenile Court will be opened to press coverage regularly, with certain exceptions intended to protect the interests of children, under an order issued Tuesday by the court's presiding judge. FOR THE RECORD: Juvenile Court: In the LATExtra sections of Feb. 1 and Feb. 8, articles about a decision to open Los Angeles County children's courts to reporters erred in some instances in headlines and in text by referring to access by media. The order by Judge Michael Nash specified that those courtrooms be open to the press.

Jockey Garrett Gomez turned 40 on New Year's Day, which only means he's getting wiser and better based on the way he has been riding at Santa Anita. He has become the jockey to bet on in stakes races, winning his fourth in a row and sixth in nine days at Santa Anita on Saturday. Gomez guided 10-1 longshot Out Of Bounds to a half-length victory over 1-2 favorite Secret Circle in the Grade III $100,000 Sham Stakes, the first major West Coast prep race for 3-year-olds seeking a spot in the Kentucky Derby.

Juvenile dependency courts exist to protect children and youths who have been neglected and abused, so it's shocking that the presiding judge who oversees the Los Angeles County Superior Court's juvenile division is pushing a plan that puts foster children and youths at risk of further harm. If Judge Michael Nash's order stands, vulnerable children, youths and their families, who are already dealing with painful consequences of neglect and abuse, would face the additional burden of proving why the most intimate details of their lives should be kept private.

Ventura County sheriff's narcotics officers, assisted by the FBI, seized 28 pounds of marijuana and arrested two men and a juvenile in south Oxnard on Thursday after negotiating to buy the illicit drug, authorities said. The arrest occurred at 5:20 p.m. in the 6000 block of Arcturus Avenue, where undercover officers had agreed to meet to purchase 28 pounds of marijuana from Rigoberto Elenes Higuera, 27, of Oxnard, Sheriff's Sgt. Arnie Aviles said.

A top executive at the Los Angeles County Probation Department announced his retirement Monday amid an investigation into his outside business interests. Jitahadi Imara , 60, said he would retire in November as the deputy director responsible for managing the nation's largest network of juvenile incarceration facilities, including three juvenile halls, 18 camps and 4,000 youth offenders. "I am leaving on my own terms and have no regrets, only a pocket full of memories," Imara wrote in an e-mail message to Probation Department staff.

Dozens of foster children and attorneys protested Monday outside Los Angeles County's Edelman Children's Court in opposition to the proposed opening of juvenile dependency hearings to the public. Currently, members of the media and public are barred from entering dependency courtrooms without court permission. But Judge Michael Nash proposed a blanket order this month that would make the hearings open unless someone objects and a judge decides to close the proceeding. Lucias Bouge, a 19-year-old former foster youth opposed to Nash's proposal, said: "Kids laughed at me because of the way I talked, because my family was poor and because I was different from everybody else.

The presiding judge of Los Angeles County's Juvenile Court is preparing to open child dependency proceedings to the public in an effort to improve accountability and transparency in child abuse, neglect and foster care placement cases. Currently, members of the media and the public are barred from entering dependency courtrooms without court permission. But Judge Michael Nash is proposing a blanket order that would make the hearings open unless someone objects and a judge decides to close the proceeding.