Young teenagers are being sent to adult prisons for the rest of their lives, with no chance of ever getting out. It's happening more often than you might think.

[Times photo: Jamie Francis]
Lolita Barthel was convicted of murdering 64-year-old Richard Menendez during a home robbery in Tampa six years ago. At Dade Correctional Institution, Barthel sees her future in her fellow inmates.

By CURTIS KRUEGER

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Lionel Tate and Nathaniel Brazill's crimes were so horrific that it was no surprise to see their adolescent faces all over the news.

Tate smashed the skull of his 6-year-old playmate when he was 12, and Brazill was 13 when he shot his teacher on the last day of seventh grade.

What got them international publicity was that they were so young -- and that each faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of ever getting out.

It seemed like something new, that Florida had begun a tough new era where even kids who were barely teenagers could be locked up forever.

But it's not new. At the request of the St. Petersburg Times, the Department of Corrections tallied the number of people in Florida's adult prisons serving life sentences with no chance for parole for crimes they committed before turning 18.

The total: 197.

* * *

On the second day of her senior year at Tampa Bay Tech, Lolita Barthel was arrested in the principal's office.

The police said that she and two friends forced their way into the home of Richard Menendez, a 64-year-old traveling salesman. One of the friends, given a deal for her testimony, said they had robbed other elderly people without incident, but Menendez went for the gun, which Barthel held. She quoted Barthel: "Don't nobody put their hands on me. I'm going to smoke you." Barthel denies it.

Convicted of robbery and murder, she says her mind was such a mix of fog and fear that she doesn't even remember the judge telling her she would never get out of prison.

She did not really grasp her sentence until she entered Jefferson Correctional Institution near Tallahassee and looked around.

"The older people walking around with canes and stuff. They been locked up since they were 16 and now they're near 70. That's when it really hits you. Then you be like, well, that's me."

An older inmate asked what she was looking at. Lolita told her: "Don't take it personal, ma'am, I just can't believe it."

She was 17 at the time of her arrest, 19 when she reached prison. Now she's 23. "How do you cope? To me, I don't cope. You know how you can have an issue, but put it like in the back of your mind, or you block it out and you try to believe something totally different? That's what I do. That's what keeps my sanity."

Well-meaning friends approach her mother, Loretha Barthel, and ask how she's getting by. "I think I'm still in shock. After all these years, I still don't believe it."

Both still pray for a miracle. In the meantime, they keep up traditions as best they can. At home in Tampa, Lolita would buy her mother a watch every Christmas. Now in a prison near Miami, she combs magazines at Christmastime until she finds a picture of a watch. She clips it out and mails it home.

In 1999, her mother made a rare visit and they shared a prison Christmas. Dinner came from the canteen. One of Mom's presents was an unopened pack of cigarettes.

Mother and daughter posed for a photo in front of a Christmas tree. Lolita, dressed in prison blues, handed her mother an empty box that was wrapped to look like a present.

* * *

It used to be that a first-degree murder conviction carried two possible sentences: death, or life with no chance for parole for 25 years. But the Legislature changed the law in 1994. Now, life means life, with no chance for parole, ever.

Even before the 1994 law, other crimes, including armed robbery and certain sexual batteries, carried life sentences with no mechanism for parole.

Florida has become a nationwide leader in sending juveniles into the adult court system, which makes it more likely that young people can receive this penalty.

Of the 197 people serving life-with-no-parole sentences for crimes committed before they turned 18, three were 13 years old at the time of their offenses; 10 were 14; 22 were 15; 60 were 16; the largest number, 102, were 17.

All but four of them are males, and 64 percent are African-American.

Juvenile lifers occupy a weird corner of the criminal justice system. Someone who is younger than 18 can be tried and sentenced as an adult, but if he tries to buy cigarettes at the prison canteen, he'll be turned away. Too young, under Florida law.

Most prisons offer vocational programs for "rehabilitation," and sometimes true-lifers can take them. But for what? Short of the governor commuting their sentences, these prisoners will never get to use those skills on the outside.

Tronneal Mangum was 14 when he shot a middle school classmate in Palm Beach County. Every weekday in DeSoto Correctional Institution, Mangum attends an auto repair class. He is being taught how to fix cars but has never driven one and never will.

Mangum shot John Kamel three times in the chest after he demanded that Mangum give back a wristwatch, a gift from Kamel's father. After the shooting, Mangum ditched the .38-caliber handgun under a portable classroom and went on to class.

Having done more than three years now, Mangum says he has learned to pass the hours in meditation. "Buddhism, Hinduism and Kundalini, I study s-- like that," he said. If he feels overwhelmed by the futility of prison, "I just lay on my rack and focus."

Some of these young lifers spend years in prison before they even grasp what's ahead.

"When children are adolescent they have a difficult time even picturing themselves at 40," said Morrissa Watson, director of mental health for the Department of Corrections. "How can you conceptualize your entire life when most of them can't even see themselves at 40?"

Understanding comes in a series of revelations. A friend visits and talks about his new job . . . or becoming a father . . . and the inmate realizes he'll never have those experiences.

Or the same feeling can come from something ordinary, Watson says, like when an inmate is transported from prison to prison, notices that car models have changed and realizes, "I'll never really know what new cars are."

* * *

Ian Manuel was 13 when he shot Deborah Baigrie during a stickup in a parking lot of the Cold Storage Cafe in downtown Tampa 11 years ago. The bullet entered her mouth and ripped out of her cheek. She lost her gums and teeth on the left side of her mouth.

Manuel had committed his first robbery at age 11. At sentencing, the judge told him: "There is no second chance available."

He is 24 now, in solitary confinement in Florida State Prison, by reputation the state's toughest. He has been sanctioned repeatedly for fighting, exposing himself to guards, disobeying and other infractions.

"The last time I shared a cell with someone was in 1998," Manuel wrote in a letter. The DOC would not allow him to be interviewed.

He said he gets out of his cell for three hours of recreation per week, in a small area "that everyone even the officers call "dog cages.' "

His worst moments came in 1996, when his mother died of AIDS and he was unable to attend the funeral, and last year, when he was resentenced on one of his charges but still kept his same overall release date: Never.

* * *

Floyd LaFountain and two buddies from Massachusetts came to Tampa and broke into the home of 73-year-old Manuel Huerta in 1994. One of LaFountain's friends, a 16-year-old, put a .22-caliber rifle to Huerta's forehead and pulled the trigger, which made all three guilty of murder.

"Can't you just sentence me to death?" LaFountain asked the judge. She gave him two consecutive life sentences.

A lifer's ultimate dream is to win a miracle appeal that will throw open the prison doors. LaFountain was lucky enough to have an appeals court throw out a life sentence and a 30-year sentence because the judge exceeded sentencing guidelines without filing her reasons in writing.

But LaFountain wasn't going anywhere: His other life sentence stood.

Now he's appealing that one, relying on legal help from an inmate he met at another prison.

LaFountain was 16 when he broke into Huerta's house. He's 23 now, at Calhoun Correctional Institution west of Tallahassee, a compound of charcoal brick buildings with guard towers overhead. He attacks the hours by reading and lifting weights. And if his last appeal fails?

"To be 100 percent honest, I'd rather go to death row, whatever, spend four or five years and die."

That would be better than "some of these guys I see that they've been in for 25, 30 years. They walk around, "Yeah, I've been down since 66.' You know, or, "I've been locked up since 73.' And I'll be thinking, man, I couldn't live in here like that for that long . . . cause this just ain't no life."

For young lifers, appeals may seem even more important than for older inmates, because of the dangers they face in prison. It's an axiom that older, prison-wise inmates will prey on younger ones.

LaFountain said he has seen two inmate-on-inmate rapes. Usually, though, "they won't just come right at you and say "Hey, you're going to be my girlfriend.' " Instead, young inmates are maneuvered into debt, then pressured to pay it off with sex.

The Florida Legislature just passed a law that will require under-18 inmates in adult prisons to be housed separately from the general prison population.

Three days after Lionel Tate was sent into the prison system in March, Gov. Jeb Bush transferred him to a juvenile facility. And last month, after Nathaniel Brazill, also 14, was found guilty of second-degree murder, meaning he will probably get a lesser sentence than life, Bush remarked, "There should be a sensitivity to the fact that a 14-year-old is not a little adult."

* * *

Rico Antonio Wise received a 15-year sentence for burglary and battery when he was 17. He picked up his life-with-no-parole sentence while serving time at Jackson Correctional Institution. A prison melee ended with six guards sent to the hospital; 64 inmates were disciplined, and eight charged with crimes. Wise got a life sentence for battery on a law enforcement officer.

What does he consider the worst aspect of prison life? Wise answered in a letter:

What do you think? Do you think my greatest fear is the correctional officer? Do I fear police brutality? How about rape? Maybe you think my greatest enemies are the fools that run around the prison intent only on the violence in their minds.

And if you thought any of these things, you were wrong. The thing that I fear most is emptiness -- emptiness in life, and vacuity. And my greatest enemy would be boredom, and perhaps the hopelessness of a life bereft of action."

- Times staff writer Curtis Krueger, who writes about social issues, can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8232.

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