before the crime took place. He’d been left to wander the streets with little parental or family
support. In solitary, he met few prisoners or correctional staff. As he sank deeper into despair,
Debbie Baigre became one of the few people in Ian’s life who encouraged him to remain
strong.
After communicating with Ian for several years, Baigre wrote the court and told the judge
who sentenced Ian of her conviction that his sentence was too harsh and that his conditions
of confinement were inhumane. She tried to talk to prison officials and gave interviews to the
press to draw attention to Ian’s plight. “No one knows more than I do how destructive and
reckless Ian’s crime was. But what we’re currently doing to him is mean and irresponsible,”
she told one reporter. “When this crime was committed, he was a child, a thirteen-year-old
boy with a lot of problems, no supervision, and no help available. We are not children.”
The courts ignored Debbie Baigre’s call for a reduced sentence.
By 2010 , Florida had sentenced more than a hundred children to life imprisonment without
parole for non-homicide offenses, several of whom were thirteen years old at the time of the
crime. All of the youngest condemned children—thirteen or fourteen years of age—were
black or Latino. Florida had the largest population in the world of children condemned to die
in prison for non-homicides.
The section of South Central Los Angeles where Antonio Nuñez lived was plagued by gang
violence. Antonio’s mother would force her children to the floor when shooting erupted
outside their crowded home, which happened with disturbing regularity. Nearly a dozen of
their neighbors were shot and killed after being caught in the crossfire of gun violence.
The difficulties outside Antonio’s home were compounded by severe domestic abuse inside
the home. From the time Antonio was in diapers, he endured abusive beatings by his father,
who hit him with his hand, fist, belt, and extension cords, causing bruises and cuts; he also
witnessed terrifying conflicts in which his parents would violently assault each other and
threaten to kill one another. The violence was so bad that on more than one occasion Antonio
called the police. He began experiencing severe nightmares from which he awoke screaming.
Antonio’s depressed mother neglected him; when he cried, she just left him alone. The only
activity she could recall ever attending for Antonio was his graduation from a Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program in elementary school.
“He was excited to take his picture with the police officer,” she would later say. “He
wanted to be a police officer when he grew up.”
In September 1999 , a month after he turned thirteen, Antonio Nuñez was riding his bicycle
near his home when a stranger shot him in his stomach, side, and arm. Antonio collapsed
onto the street. His fourteen-year-old brother José heard him screaming and ran to his aid.
José was shot in the head and killed when he responded to his little brother’s call for help.
Antonio suffered serious internal injuries that hospitalized him for weeks.
When Antonio was released from the hospital, his mother sent him to live with relatives in
Las Vegas, where he tried to recover from the tragedy of José’s death. Antonio was relieved to
be away from the dangers of South Central Los Angeles. He stayed out of trouble, was helpful
and obedient at home, and spent evenings doing his homework with help from his cousin’s
husband. He put the gangs and violence of South Central behind him and showed remarkable
progress. But within a year, California probation authorities ordered him to return to Los