Clemency board should save a life thrown away
A Times EditorialPublished December 13, 2005
When Circuit Judge Ric Howard sent Adam Bollenback to prison in 2002, he did so with the stated intention of aiming to "break (Bollenback's) spirit."
How he intends to measure the success of that strategy remains unclear. If the goal was to scare the Inverness teenager, then Howard may well have succeeded. Being stabbed in the neck with an ice pick wielded by a fellow inmate tends to create that result.
It is less likely that Bollenback is coming around to Howard's view that an outrageously outsized prison sentence is commensurate with justice. Serving 10 years in an adult prison for the petty crime of stealing a six-pack of beer tends to generate feelings of being abused, not helped, by the judicial system.
Bollenback's case has stood as the local gold standard of unfair and inappropriate sentences by Howard until being eclipsed by the recent William Thornton ruling. Bollenback, however, should not be allowed to languish anonymously in his imposed hell for years to come simply because his case no longer is front-page news.
Like Thornton, Bollenback is seeking justice outside the Citrus County Courthouse. On Thursday, he will get a chance at freedom and at rebuilding his life when the Florida Board of Executive Clemency is scheduled to consider his clemency request.
The four-member board, led by Gov. Jeb Bush, should waste no time in granting Bollenback's release.
Strict law-and-order types may carp that Bollenback is a criminal and deserves punishment. And they have a point. Up to a point.
Bollenback did commit the crimes for which he was convicted, and they were not the first blemishes on his record. He has a record as a juvenile of battery and assault, although the circumstances of those offenses (he was charged with aggravated assault after throwing a stick, for example) raise legitimate questions about the fairness of the charges against him.
The crimes for which Howard sentenced Bollenback in 2002 involved stealing a six-pack of beer from the open garage of a neighbor who later said that had she known at the time that such a harsh sentence was a possibility she never would have called the police.
The teenager also managed to slip away briefly from a deputy who was taking him to jail, which says as much about the deputy's actions as it does Bollenback's.
Bollenback also has been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, and his mother told the judge that the offenses occurred when he was off of his medications. This aspect of the case should have received the court's attention, but it was ignored.
The state Department of Corrections considered Bollenback's crimes and record and recommended that the 17-year-old wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet for two years. The Department of Juvenile Justice recommended a short term in a juvenile detention facility.
Howard rejected all of that pertinent information and chose to use Bollenback to send a message not just to the teen but to the community at large that he will be tough on crime. Bollenback's life was to be sacrificed in order to make a statement.
While we want our judges to be firm and no-nonsense, we demand that they also be fair and to dispense justice with compassion and an understanding of the facts of the case. Howard's sentence failed those tests.
Even those who would side with Howard must concede that having served 40 months in prison, Bollenback has more than paid back society for his crimes. It is now up to the state Board of Executive Clemency to correct this gross error and to save this young man's life.