past mental health diagnoses and treatments, including “a wide range of psychiatric medications including antidepressants, stimulant medications, mood stabilizers, and even an anti-psychotic medication.”
Dr. Young recounted the teen’s pattern of destructive behavior, and admitted, “On paper, Colton resembles the picture of an emerging antisocial character—violating the rights of others and neglecting his own individual development (e.g., education).” However, he found several factors that he believed showed that Colton was “not a typical antisocial youth.”
Colton’s violent episodes, Young noted, appeared to be limited to fights with his mother. He didn’t use drugs or alcohol, a fact that separated him from the vast majority of antisocial youth. “By Colton’s account (and that of numerous available records) Colton’s mother has been heavily affected by alcohol abuse throughout Colton’s developmental years; and there has been a variety of men in the home who had their own alcohol and drug addictions. Colton understands that both his parents have had severe substance abuse problems, and he wishes to avoid complicating his life further with drugs or alcohol.” Young also found that “Colton does not externalize blame and responsibility for his actions. He readily acknowledges his poor choices… He holds out some hope of taking up a much healthier developmental track in the future.”
During their meeting, Colton told Young about his issues with insomnia, low energy, poor appetite, depression, and anger, but said that even though he knew he was eventually going to be caught and “locked up,” he felt better in every aspect when he was out on the run as opposed to when he was at home. “He reports that for many years he has felt depressed when he is around home and his mother.”
Dr. Young concluded that Colton’s primary issue was “long-term, agitated and self-defeating depression” caused by his upbringing, which “precluded the development of basic trust and psychological health of the child.” Young traced Colton’s social anxiety, deep resentment, impulsiveness, and lack of focus and interest in schoolwork to that depression. He provided several DSM diagnoses; the most serious was the continuing depression stemming from “many years of stressful, unstable and even abusive home environment.” He also reported that Colton still suffered with parent-child relational problem, “a serious psychiatric problem located not within the child, but between the child and his parent.” Young reiterated that “a good part of his self-defeating and defiant behaviors can be traced to an accumulation of resentment, hostility and despair in that maternal relationship.”
Colton told the psychologist that he understood he needed help from mental health professionals and said that his number-one worry was “his future.”
Young wrote that “Colton is the kind of teen whose psychological development could be hardened into an uncaring and unhopeful young man if compelled to spend lengthy periods in JRA [Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration] institutions. What he needs most at this point is to associate with healthier peers, teachers and other adults; and to get to work and school.”
Colton was clearly not happy being locked up, but told Young that some times were worse than others. “He was able to relate that his mood drops precipitously after he has a telephone call from his mother. He fears that his mother wants him to get a long sentence.”
Looking ahead to Colton’s eventual release, Dr. Young’s report said that “Colton surely cannot be expected to stay on a positive course living in his mother’s home,” and mentioned that his aunt Sandy offered to provide him with a home and structure. Sandy wrote a letter to the judge describing her ranch and the animals that Colton had shown interest in and said, “We would play a positive role in his life.”
JUVENILE COURTS DON’T WORK the same as the adult court system. There’s no trial by jury, just adjudication by a judge. The test for guilt is a preponderance of evidence, not “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Despite that, Colton’s defense team felt the county had little to go on for many of the charges.
“We whittled it down from the twenty-three to three that they could probably prove,” says Shauna Snyder. “There was only one they had absolute proof on and that was the house they caught him in. The other two counts, they had some proof, so we took the deal instead of having to go to trial on all twenty-three. Plus they were threatening to pile on even more charges if we didn’t take the deal. It would have been a mess to go to trial.”
For the county, a deal that resulted in serious incarceration time made sense. “He’d become known in our office as a frequent flier,” says Island County prosecutor Greg Banks. Banks had been serving as prosecutor since 1999, but says Colton stood out among juvenile offenders. “For a young kid, he had been through the system a lot.” Each of those previous times, Banks says the system had been more than fair. “With juveniles, rarely do we just bring the hammer down. The idea is to try to rehabilitate them, and the system is designed with more flexibility than the adult justice system.” Banks notes that a number of times Colton had been given community service instead of detention, and credit had been given for attending therapy.
“There were services provided to Colton along the way,” he says. “Most of the time we have pretty good results, but Colton was a glaring exception. He’d been escalating, really shaking up the community. Now we had evidence that he and Harley were in possession of a gun, so it seemed like the best way to protect the people of Island County was to incarcerate him.”
The deal they struck had Colton plead guilty to three charges, each with a sentence of fifty-two weeks, to be served consecutively. On any one of these felony counts, the maximum sentence for a juvenile could have been detention until his twenty-first birthday, which in Colt’s case would have meant about five years from the time of his arrest.
Prepared to take the three-year sentence, there was still one more big hurdle for Colton: appearing in a public courtroom. Rachel Miyoshi says Colton begged her to try to get cameras banned. When she couldn’t, his next priority was getting a haircut. Says Shauna Snyder, “We had to file a whole motion to get a barber in the jail because Colton didn’t want to go to court if his hair wasn’t cut.”
Chapter 20
Judges have discretion as to where juveniles serve their time. In Colton’s case, the judge looked at his history of successfully eluding the police and punched his ticket for Green Hill School, the highest-security facility in Washington State’s JRA. Seventy-five miles south of Seattle in the town of Chehalis, Green Hill accepts only male prisoners, and along with those convicted in JRA it also houses juveniles sentenced as adults under the state’s Department of Corrections. Any kid convicted of murder in Washington State goes to Green Hill until he’s eighteen and transfers out to adult prison.
Despite its maximum/medium-security designation, Green Hill is no Alcatraz. A fence surrounds the school and shop buildings, a gymnasium, and the housing units. Inside, though, it feels more like a school with extra security—that is, until the occasional hell breaks loose. The kids can’t go home at night, but otherwise, Green Hill’s general rules—no talking when moving between buildings, but liberal policies on cursing—seem looser than a Catholic grade school.
Colton arrived and, like all prisoners, was assigned to a high-security intake unit for his first thirty days so the staff could get a behavioral assessment. In this unit, called Birch (all housing units are named after trees), kids go to classes, eat, and recreate separately from the general population. Staff look over their records and closely watch how they behave, then send them either to a sex offender unit, drug and alcohol education unit, or general population housing.
During intake, the boys are given their uniforms: white sneakers, navy blue pants, and green T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets. They’re told the house rules and about honor levels, which offer increased privileges in exchange for good behavior. Honor Level IV can nab a detainee a private room with his own TV and PlayStation. The kids are also instructed from day one that they can get out of Green Hill asap via what’s called a CRA, community risk assessment. The CRA is a mandatory report card completed for each juvenile inmate every ninety days. Based on a point system, two consecutive low-score CRAs count as a “get out of jail free” card. Depending on the exact scores, kids can either be sent home if they’ve served their minimum sentence or to a low-security community facility, aka group home, aka halfway house.
After his thirty days in Birch, Colton was transferred to Maple Living Unit in the general population. Maple had ten rooms per wing, including two special Level IV honor rooms. Staff say that typically they try to limit the number of kids per wing to twelve or thirteen, with a few doubled up and the rest single-bunked. Other than assigned roommates, “the kids are never allowed in each other’s rooms.” There’s a video game console in each
