GIST: Circuit Judge Evelyn Baker believed Bobby Bostic would die within five years of going to prison after she sentenced him in 1997 to 241 years for his role in an armed robbery.
While ordering what could have been effectively a life sentence for Bostic, Baker said, she believed the then-16-year-old would become “another statistic” because of his “dangerous” and “stupid” behavior.
Instead, Bostic, now 42, will be leaving prison next year. He was recently granted parole thanks to a change in Missouri law for juvenile offenders, and help from Baker.
Bostic went to prison for the 1995 robbery of a group of people delivering Christmas presents for the needy in the city’s Botanical Heights neighborhood.
He and an 18-year-old accomplice each shot and wounded a victim — slightly injuring one — and then carjacked a woman in St. Louis. The accomplice took a plea deal and got 30 years. Bostic went to trial and lost.
Under the old law, Bostic would not have been eligible for parole until he turned 112 years old. Now, he’s scheduled to leave prison next November after 2½ decades behind bars.
“I sentenced a child but Bobby Bostic is a very fine young man now,” Baker told the Post-Dispatch in an interview this month. “He’s changed. He’s done a 180. Emotionally, intellectually, he’s become an adult. He’s a very bright person. And I think he really started looking inward to see what it was that he needed to change about himself.”
Three years ago, Baker asked the U.S. Supreme Court to give Bostic the chance for reform and added her name to an amicus brief filed by 26 former judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. Bostic sought relief under a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned sentences of life without parole for juveniles in non-homicide cases.
His lawyers argued Bostic’s prison term violated the constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But in 2018, the nation’s highest court rejected Bostic’s appeal.
Now, Bostic is the first in Missouri to win parole under an amended state law that took effect in August. Bostic is among about 100 people in Missouri serving de facto life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Bostic in his quest for parole.
Rep. Mark Sharp, D-Kansas City, who sponsored the amendment, said earlier this year that it was Bostic’s case that inspired the law change relating to juvenile parole. It offers parole eligibility to those sentenced as juveniles to prison terms of more than 15 years for crimes other than homicides.
“I’m overjoyed,” Bostic told the Post-Dispatch Thursday by telephone from the Jefferson City Correctional Center. “At the same time, I feel like it’s long overdue. But I’m blessed to have the opportunity to have a second chance at life.”
‘Bobby’s Law’:
Baker, 73, said in an interview that Bostic’s case is one of three she never forgot — the other two were men she sentenced to death for murdering children.
“He was so young and so tiny,” Baker said of Bostic. “And he wound up with more time than people who kill people.”
The 241-year sentence was excessive, Baker said, but it also “kept him alive and allowed him to grow up to become the man that he is today.”
Baker told him as she delivered that sentence, “You’re gonna have to live with your choice and you’re gonna die with your choice because, Bobby Bostic, you will die in the Department of Corrections.”
But Baker changed her view of Bostic a few years ago, writing in a Washington Post op-ed piece that she “deeply” regretted punishing Bostic for his immaturity. In her essay, she noted scientific research that juvenile brains lack impulse control and don’t assess risks and consequences the same as adults.
Allowed one advocate at his Nov. 9 parole hearing, Bostic picked Baker. She readily accepted his invitation after having received letters from him and visiting him in prison. Baker said she calls the amended Missouri law “Bobby’s law.”
Tony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, said Bostic’s case “demonstrates what we all know: Who we are as children does not forever demarcate who we can become as adults.”
Baker said she hopes Bostic’s case leads to changes in how juveniles are treated in the criminal justice system.
“In this society, we talk about our love of children,” she said. “We don’t seem to love them very much. I think every kid should be given the opportunity to show that he or she has changed, grown up, reformed and that their whole live should not be based on a stupid decision.”
‘Never gave up’:
In a 2014 Post-Dispatch profile of his case, Bostic said he grew up poor in north St. Louis, first used marijuana at age 10 and PCP and alcohol not long after. He dropped out of high school after being arrested for drugs and said a younger brother was paralyzed in a gang-related shooting.
Bostic still regrets his actions but says he believes his sentence was excessive. He said his first goal after prison is to counsel young people and speak publicly about his experiences to help them avoid making similar mistakes. He said he has written more than a dozen nonfiction and poetry books while in prison and plans to start a publishing company to reach at-risk youths.
“As I was here in prison, I couldn’t sit around and blame nobody but myself,” Bostic said. “I didn’t live on anger here. I just took the sentence and made the best of it. I fought to try to give it back unsuccessfully in a lot of ways over the years, but I never gave up.”
Bostic said he didn’t harbor bitterness over his sentence nor feel sorry for himself. Instead, he focused on bettering himself through reading, writing and taking college-level courses that allowed him to earn an associate’s degree and then a bachelor’s degree.
“I took that energy from being mad at the unjust sentence to say, ‘OK, one day I’ll get out one day but until then, just keep changing your life,’” he said. “It was my own actions that led me here so I had to change that. At the same time I was trying to find a way free.”
Bostic said the hardest part about being in prison was losing parents, a brother, friends and the chance to start his own family. But he never lost hope.
“If I’d have gave up hope, then there wasn’t nothing to live for,” he said. “This is not a place where I want to spend the rest of my life. So I had to have hope. And then the goals I wanted to do — I can’t reach kids the way I could if I’m out there. I can’t help change their lives in here. I can’t use my bad life as an example for nobody here.”
Bostic is grateful to Baker for being his ally, but he also now considers her a friend. Baker said she was happy to help and hopes he’ll be careful after prison, fearing he’ll encounter people “who will try to undo him.”
She plans to greet him when he’s released.
“I want to be there the day he walks out and once again give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek,” Baker said."PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
