Angeles because he was on probation following his adjudication as a ward of the court for a
prior offense.
In poor urban neighborhoods across the United States, black and brown boys routinely
have multiple encounters with the police. Even though many of these children have done
nothing wrong, they are targeted by police, presumed guilty, and suspected by law
enforcement of being dangerous or engaged in criminal activity. The random stops,
questioning, and harassment dramatically increase the risk of arrest for petty crimes. Many of
these children develop criminal records for behavior that more affluent children engage in
with impunity.
Forced back to South Central, blocks from where his brother was murdered, Antonio
struggled. A court later found that “[l]iving just blocks from where he was shot and his
brother was killed, Nuñez suffered trauma symptoms, including flashbacks, an urgent need to
avoid the area, a heightened awareness of potential threats, and an intensified need to protect
himself from real or perceived threats.” He got his hands on a gun for self-defense but was
quickly arrested for it and placed in a juvenile camp where supervisors reported that he
eagerly participated in and positively responded to the structured environment and guidance
of staff members.
After returning from the camp, Antonio was invited to a party where two men twice
Antonio’s age told him that they were planning to fake a kidnapping to get money from a
relative who would pay the ransom. They insisted that Antonio join them. Fourteen-year-old
Antonio got in a car with the men to pick up the ransom money. The pretend victim sat in the
backseat, while Juan Perez drove and Antonio sat in the passenger seat. Before they arrived
at their Orange County destination to retrieve the money, they found themselves being
followed—and then chased—by two Latino men in a gray van. At some point, Perez and the
other man gave Antonio a gun and told him to shoot at the van, and a dangerous high-speed
shoot-out unfolded. The men chasing them were undercover police officers—but Antonio
didn’t know that when he fired. When a marked police car joined the pursuit, Antonio
dropped the gun just before the car crashed into some trees. No one was injured, but Antonio
and Perez were charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder of the police
officers.
Antonio and his twenty-seven-year-old co-defendant were tried together in a joint trial, and
both were found guilty. Under California law, a juvenile has to be at least sixteen to be
sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for murder. But there is no minimum age for
kidnapping, so the Orange County judge sentenced Antonio to imprisonment until death,
asserting that he was a dangerous gang member who could never change or be rehabilitated,
despite his difficult background and the absence of any significant criminal history. The judge
sent him to California’s dangerous, overcrowded adult prisons. At fourteen, Antonio became
the youngest person in the United States condemned to die in prison for a crime in which no
one was physically injured.
Most adults convicted of the kinds of crimes with which Trina, Ian, and Antonio were charged
are not sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. In the federal system, adults who
unintentionally commit arson-murder where more than one person is killed usually receive
sentences that permit release in less than twenty-five years. Many adults convicted of