Ingrid Lotts traveled four hours, from Yakima to the central branch of the Seattle Public Library, to thank the man who’d given hope to her imprisoned husband.
The man who offered hope was Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit based in Montgomery, Ala., that provides pro-bono legal representation nationwide to inmates, people of color and poor defendants denied access to fair representation. Since founding EJI in 1989, Stevenson and his team of attorneys have challenged sentences of death and life without parole for numerous minors.
Stevenson came to Seattle Nov. 4 to read from his new book “Just Mercy,” which documents his work. He attracted a full house, including Ingrid.
Stevenson and EJI are helping
Ingrid’s husband Quantel Lotts, who is serving life without parole in a Missouri prison. Ingrid met Quantel in person after watching a 2009 story about his case on cnn.com.
A fight, a knife, a sentence
Quantel, who is African-American, grew up in a poor section of St. Louis, and in his youth, he was exposed to drugs and violence. As a result, Quantel suffered emotional trauma, which made him prone to explosive bouts of anger.
In November 1999, when Quantel was 13, he and his step-brother Michael Barton were play-fighting. The play fight led to a real fight. During the altercation, Quantel killed Barton with a hunting knife.
Under Missouri law, Quantel was too young to work, drink alcohol,
consent to sex or obtain a tattoo without adult permission, but he wasn’t too young to be tried as an adult for first-degree murder. At 14, Quantel was sentenced to life without parole.
Speaking at the Seattle reading, Ingrid said she felt compassion for Quantel’s predicament and started writing him letters in prison. The two became pen pals. She traveled from Yakima to visit him. They married in 2011, when Quantel was 25. Ingrid was 52.
She blames her husband’s sentencing on a lack of competent legal representation.
“I have read the transcript, and it’s a joke from day one,” she said. “His lawyer called only one witness, and it was a psychologist. Of course the prosecution brought a witness with the same credentials so [they] counteracted each other.”
Ingrid said that when Quantel was a minor in an adult prison, his mental state deteriorated. He attempted suicide on numerous occasions.
“Early on, all he could do [was] sit there and cry and absolutely had no hope whatsoever. He was going to die in prison,” Ingrid said.
She added, “He always had high hopes: He wanted to go to college; he wanted to become something. He is a very intelligent person. He was never given any opportunities. And when you’re in prison, especially with [a] life [sentence], you get nothing.”
No parole, but some hope
Quantel’s fortunes improved when he met an EJI senior attorney who agreed to challenge his sentence and serve as his legal representative.
According to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a crime-fighting agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, juvenile crime greatly increased during the 1980s, which pushed the arrest rate for violent crimes of males and females higher throughout the 1990s. In 1992, 45 states passed or amended legislation making it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults. Minors could receive punishments as harsh as life without parole — or even the death penalty.
Since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, 22 minors have been executed. A 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling made it unconstitutional to sentence minors to death.
Although the banning of the death penalty for minors is a victory, Stevenson said there is a lot of work to be done.
“My clients who have been on death row weren’t doing cartwheels, because they’re going to die by incarceration rather than die by execution,” he said.
According to a CNN report, more than 2,200 inmates are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed as minors.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences without parole for people who were under 18 at the time of their crimes represented “cruel and unusual punishments.” Theoretically, it means that all those people will be able to get a her to be re-sentenced, said an eji representative.
But some states have been resistant to providing those hearings and say the high court’s ruling should not apply retroactively. Missouri has not addressed the issue, the representative said.
Stevenson said that in the United States, “black and brown boys” are most likely to be perceived as dangerous.
“That presumption of guilt follows you to department stores and in the streets and absolutely follows you into a criminal court. And that is going to undermine your ability to get a fair trial in a pretty serious way,” he said.
Stevenson, who teaches law at New York University, has garnered a lot of national attention, including in The New York Times, and on National Public Radio and CNN. In 2012, he delivered a TED talk to glowing reviews. Almost immediately after that appearance, he raised more than $1 million for a campaign to end putting minors in adult prisons and jails. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called Stevenson “America’s young Nelson Mandela.”
Stevenson said he wants states, including Missouri, to ban life sentences for minors. He said EJI hopes it can have Quantel resentenced, so that he can come home to his wife.
“We think there should be a minimal age for trying a child as an adult. I want to end the practice of putting kids into adult prisons,” he said.
For state-by-state guide to Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP), click here