Bosket, now 57, has been incarcerated for all but two years since the age of 9.
|
|
Mr. Bosket was a 15-year-old black boy who fatally shot two men and wounded a third on the subway.
|
|
To the Editor: As the prosecutor in the 1978 double murder case against Willie Bosket, 15, I read with unease the Feb.
|
|
It began prosecuting young adolescents as adults under a draconian law passed in 1978, in the aftermath of the Willie Bosket case.
|
|
But the Raise the Age legislation didn't roll back the so-called Willie Bosket Law, and end the practice of charging 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds as adults for serious violent felony charges.
|
|
Along the way, we meet Jacob Hays, an early-19th-century city constable; Samuel Liebowitz, the defense lawyer who helped spare all but one of his clients the death penalty, then became a hanging judge himself; Willie Bosket, the teenager whose murder spree changed juvenile justice laws (he will be eligible for parole in 2062); and Jack Maple, the natty architect of the data-driven oversight system known as CompStat.
|
|
From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Awards history there were several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction, with dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories. He also wrote All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence (1995)"NewsHour Online: David Gergen interviews author Fox Butterfield". Retrieved 2007-04-23. about the child criminal Willie Bosket.
|
|
On March 19, 1978, Bosket, then fifteen years old, shot and killed Noel Perez on a train operating on the New York City Subway's 3 train during an attempted robbery near the Harlem–148th Street terminal station. Eight days later, Bosket and another accomplice shot dead another man, Moises Perez (unrelated to his first victim) in another attempted robbery at the back of another 3 train at the 145th Street station, one station south of 148th Street. In between, Bosket and his accomplice shot a New York City Transit employee working in the Lenox Yard adjacent to the Harlem–148th Street station and committed two other armed robberies, one of them on the service.Dodge City, The Deadliest Precinct in Town, New York Magazine, August 28, 1978 Bosket was tried for the murders in New York City's family court.
|
|
A year after he began serving his sentence for the two murders, Bosket escaped from the youth facility. He was caught after two hours, tried as an adult for the escape and sentenced to four years in state prison. He was returned to the Division of Youth in 1979, and was released in 1983. After 100 days he was arrested when a man living in his apartment complex claimed Bosket had robbed and assaulted him.
|
|
Bosket had a traumatic childhood. When his grandfather was released from prison, he raped Willie many times. When he was 9 years old, his grandfather had him perform anal sex to "teach him about girls". His mother, Laura, had different live-in boyfriends who beat her and, as a boy, Bosket often jumped in to defend her, in one incident hitting a man with a pipe and slashing him with a knife and in another threatening "I'm going to burn that motherfucker up".
|
|
All three sentences are consecutive. His earliest possible release date is September 16, 2062, when he will be 100 years old–all but assuring that he will die in prison. Since his conviction for the 1989 assault, Bosket (NYSDOCS inmate number 84A6391) has been housed in solitary confinement. While at Woodbourne, nominally a medium-security prison, Bosket was housed in a specially-built plexiglass-lined cell stripped of everything but a cot and a sink/toilet combination, with four video cameras watching him at all times.
|
|
Convinced that he would die in prison, Bosket took out his rage on correction officers, getting into numerous altercations. Arrested for one of those incidents, he was convicted of assault and arson, and sentenced to 25 years to life. In 1989, he was sentenced to an additional 25-years-to-life sentence for stabbing corrections officer Earl Porter at the maximum-security Shawangunk Correctional Facility.Jailed 'Monster' Gets More Prison Time for Stabbing a Guard, The New York Times, April 20, 1989 After the 1988 assault, Bosket was transferred to Woodbourne Correctional Facility, where in April 1989 he drew a third 25-years-to-life sentence for assaulting a correction officer with a chain.
|
|
New York was the first state to enact a law of this nature; all of the other states have since followed suit. Because it was Willie Bosket's case that was used to push laws allowing juveniles to be tried as adults, it is sometimes referred to as the Willie Bosket Law.
|
|
As the trial was underway, Bosket surprised his own lawyer by pleading guilty to both murders. He was sentenced to a maximum of five years in the Goshen Youth Facility. Although prosecutors tried to get a longer sentence, five years was the most they could get under the law, at the time.
|
|
Briscoe was found innocent in that case. In 1984, Maddox was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice after a courtroom melee in which he and his client Willie Bosket were confronted by court officers. Maddox was the defense lawyer for one of the two men hired by Marla Hanson's landlord to mutilate and disfigure her. Maddox challenged Hanson's character during the trial.
|
|
Then while awaiting trial on that crime, Bosket assaulted several court officers. He was found guilty of attempted assault for the dispute in the apartment and sentenced to seven years in prison. At this point, his escape from the youth facility nearly came back to haunt him. He was 16 years old at the time, meaning he was now considered an adult for criminal purposes.
|
|
Bosket was born in Harlem. His father, Willie Sr. (Butch), killed two people in a Milwaukee pawn shop shortly after his son was conceived and was sentenced to life in prison, where he earned a degree in computer science and psychology. Butch was released from prison and went on to get a job as a computer programmer for an aerospace company but was charged with a crime. He shot his girlfriend and committed suicide to avoid being caught.
|
|
He was only allowed out of his cell for one hour a day, apart from medical visits and haircuts. Although he was allowed visitors, they could only speak to him through a window in his cell.Bosket profile at Crime Library Bosket once declared "war" on a prison system that he claimed made him a "monster," and was cited for almost 250 disciplinary violations from 1985 to 1994. However, he has not had a disciplinary violation since 1994.
|
|
Woodbourne Correctional Facility houses the inmate in with the most time spent in New York state's solitary confinement units. Inmate Willie Bosket, now suffering mental and health problems, was confined in Woodbourne Correctional Facility. He has been in SHU for over 20 years after violent incidents directed at prison staff. Allowed no physical contact with humans, he is watched on camera at all times, takes showers in his cell (the water turns on for 10 minutes every two days) and is fed through a metal slot.
|
|
The Red ID card system, instituted in the early 1990s, was a way of identifying inmates with histories of inciting riots, cuttings, stabbings, and other dangerous behaviors. It almost always meant the convict had spent time in a notorious ward designated for punitive confinement called "The Bing" (HDM 5 Block). Prisoners Pavle Stanimirović, James Rosado, Tyrone Green, Pedro Hernandez, Willie Bosket, Hector Rivera, Ángel Díaz, John Maldonado and Dominick Pollatti all spent time in "The Bing." The New York City Department of Correction ended punitive segregation for adolescents in December 2014, and ended punitive segregation for young adults, 18 to 21, in October 2016.
|
|
During the campaign, he had called for juveniles to be tried as adults for certain violent crimes, a move steadfastly opposed by Carey. The situation was dramatically altered, however, when Willie Bosket, a 15-year-old from Harlem, killed three people in the New York City Subway and was only sentenced to five years in a state youth facility. The outcry over such a lenient sentence led Carey to reverse course and support a law allowing juveniles as young as 13 to be tried as adults. A New York State office building in Hauppauge, Long Island, was renamed the Perry B Duryea Jr State Office Building at the request of Suffolk County Court Judge, the Hon.
|
|
William James Bosket Jr. (born December 9, 1962) is an American convicted murderer, whose numerous crimes committed while he was still a minor led to a change in New York state law, so that juveniles as young as 13 could be tried as an adult for murder and would face the same penalties.Bronx Leads City in Convictions Under Tough Juvenile Offender Act, The New York Times, March 24, 1981 He has been in either prison or reformatories for all but 18 months since 1971, and has spent all but 100 days of his adult life in custody. He is currently serving a sentence of 82 years to life at Five Points Correctional Facility.
|
|
Incumbent Republican Superintendent of Education Mick Zais did not run for re-election to a second term in office. Lee Atwater's widow Sally Atwater, Anderson County School Board member Gary Burgess, South Carolina Department of Education official Meka Bosket Childs, Amy Cofield, candidate for the State House in 2010 Sheri Few, Don Jordan, Charleston County School Board member and candidate for South Carolina's 1st congressional district in 2013 Elizabeth Moffly and former State Representative Molly Mitchell Spearman ran for the Republican nomination. As no candidate won a majority, a runoff was held between the top two finishers, Molly Mitchell Spearman and Sally Atwater. Awtwater was considered to be the frontrunner, until she called conservative talk show host Russ Cassell on News Radio WORD to talk about her candidacy.
|
|