16 YEAR OLD COOPER VAN HUIZEN -
PICKED
OUT AS A DETERRENT?
Did 2nd District Court
Judge Ernie Jones, of Ogden Utah single Cooper Van Huizen out, a 16 year old
boy with NO criminal history, as a Deterrent to other Youths in Weber County,
Utah?
Did he
think that by letting another Juvenile - 17 year old Joshua Dutson with prior
history of criminal behavior take a plea to lesser charges, sentencing him to
210 days in the Weber County Jail and 3 years of Probation, and Adult 19 year
old Tomek Perkins also with a criminal background take a plea to lesser
charges, 180 days in Weber County Jail and 3 years’ Probation; while
sentencing a 16 year old with NO criminal history to 2 1 to 15 year term in the
Utah State Prison, at the Point of the Mountain, would deter other youths
from committing crimes?
See these
Two (2) boys 17 year old Joshua Dutson, 16 year old Cooper Van Huizen and One
(1) adult along with two other Adults, 18 year old Dexter Skinner, and 18 year
old Wesley Brown on November 3, 2013 committed a crime. Unbeknownst
to Cooper the other 4 had planned a robbery, but needed guns so Joshua got
Cooper High, and when they ran out of weed said he knew where they could get
some more.
Cooper,
being 16, and not thinking of anything but smoking a little more weed went
along with Josh’s idea. He took two guns from his father’s gun cabinet, two
older ones, a .221 caliber – like you would see used at a track meet as a starter’s
pistol and a 22 caliber. He didn’t have any ammo for either of them but was
told they would get some after they picked up the weed on the way to the hills
to go Target Practicing.
They went
to the house of a drug dealer that Wesley Brown and Dexter Skinner were acquainted
with, knocked on the door and were invited in, by the Drug Dealer. He then
invited them to the basement where he did his business. They hung around for a
while, Cooper standing back off to the side, because he only knew Joshua and
had met Dexter, but did not know any of the others, and he had never before
gone out to purchase marijuana.
Now I have to make a comment here before everyone starts yelling
about the “excuse” that Cooper was high and therefore his judgment was clouded.
It has been scientifically proven that a 16 year olds mind is still developing
and THC will impair their Judgment, it will not make them freak out, it won’t
make them more aggressive than they would normally be, but their decision
making CAN AND WILL impair their judgment. See Citations Below:
After
they left the house, with 19 year old Perkins driving the “getaway” car, The
Drug dealers Mom went to the basement to find out what had just happened. “Her
son’s friend said they were just robbed at gunpoint.
The son
pleaded with his mom not to call the Police, because he didn’t want to go to
jail for dealing drugs. About 25 minutes after the 5 boys had left the house
the mom went out got in her car and drove over to the High School, and talked
to the School Officer, telling him that her son had just been robbed at
gunpoint. The school officer then called the Police who responded to the house.
When Christian (the boy selling the drugs) and his friend saw the Police, they
ran. When they were caught and taken back to the house and questioned the
friend said, “I didn’t want to be arrested for possession of marijuana,” and
Christian said, “I don’t like the cops.”
Both boys
were uncooperative and made it difficult for the Police to investigate by
limiting the areas to be searched. Victim statements from both of these youths
changed, several times. When it came time to go to Court Christian did not show
up, but his latest Victim’s Statement was entered into evidence as “Fact” even
though the Defense would not have been given the opportunity to face their
accusers.
One thing
that was very apparent in their initial Victim’s Statements, in the Mother’s
Witness Statement, as well as the Defendants Statements, the 5 boys were
invited into the home, they were invited into the basement, and they visited
for a while even joking around about the gun that Dexter had with him, and the
Victim’s did not take Dexter serious when he said, “This is a hold up, we want
your stash, phones, and wallets,” Dexter had to convince them that this was not
a joke. At which time Joshua pulled out his gun, and Wesley went upstairs to
the Mother’s Bedroom, and said, “Hi Mom,” and showed her the gun in his waist
band.
Both of
the Victim’s also in their initial statements said, “The white boy just stood
back and didn’t do nothing.” It was not until after they had started talking to
the Prosecutor that their stories began to change, which it did several times.
The Victim’s statements that were introduced by the Prosecutor in court were so
contradictory to the initial statements, given before given time to make
themselves look better and avoid being charged with crimes themselves that it
sounded like a completely different crime.
Although Rex Bray Attorney at Law, the
first Attorney was supposed to be a friend of the family, and
swore that he had Cooper’s best interests at heart, and would do everything to
make sure that Cooper was treated fairly, he blew it. There were improprieties
with the Head Prosecutor having worked in that Court, also he was married to
the Court Clerk. Then he did no Research into Utah Juvenile Law, any of the
other necessary work to keep Cooper in Juvenile Court… Oh yea he didn’t need to
because he didn’t show up to Cooper’s Court Dates that’s right. I guess he
figured why waste his time doing his job!! Instead he took Cooper’s father’s
money and left Cooper to fend for himself. Because of this incompetence Cooper was
bound over to District Court, where he was “Certified” as an adult.
The
family immediately fired this so called Attorney, and hired another one to take
over Cooper’s Defense. But he too didn’t bother to do Research or work to build
a defense for Cooper, as is evident by the sworn declaration of Roy Cole
Attorney at Law;
- The Prosecution team never provided the recordings of the Police interrogations and Witness interviews in this case, despite my discovery request.
- I did not independently obtain these recordings.
- I did not obtain a recording or transcript of the preliminary hearing in Juvenile Court.
- When I was retained to represent Cooper Van Huizen, he had already been bound over from the juvenile court to be tried as an adult under the ‘Serious Youth Offender Act.’
- Cooper and his parents wanted his case to resolved in juvenile court and asked me to appeal from the order sending him to adult court.
- I believed that the time to file the appeal had run before they hired me to represent Cooper and I told them that an appeal was not possible.
- I advised Cooper to accept the plea agreement and plead guilty to the felonies, because this case is an aberration from his otherwise law-abiding life, and I fully expected that he would earn the double 402 reduction after a successful probation, and have no felonies on his record.
- I believed there would be no Prison sentence, as a 402 reduction cannot follow imprisonment, and the double 402 reduction was the incentive for him to plead guilty to two second degree felonies, along with avoiding life prison commitments.
- This is what I told Cooper and his parents, and this is what their decision was based on.
So
because of the lack of effort or work of any kind Cooper ended up sitting in PC
– Protective Custody at the Utah State Prison at the Point of the Mountain, in
Draper Utah.
He is locked in his 6’ x 12’
cell 23 hours a day 365 days a year, his only human contact is when the Guards
are making their rounds, a couple of times a week when someone from Mental
Health stops by to do a welfare check, or when his attorney goes to see him.
Eventually he will get visits from his Family and a few others that get Ok'd by
the Prison staff. But this contact will be through 2”s of glass, and through a phone that is monitored and recorded.
Cooper is
a Juvenile that broke the law, by association!
Cooper
did not:
- Get involved in the Robbery
- Hold a weapon during the robbery
- Make any threats during the robbery
- Have prior knowledge of the robbery
Cooper
did:
1. Take two unloaded weapons
from his dad’s gun cabinet
2. Cooperate with Law
Enforcement
3. Maintain the same details
throughout – never changing his story
4. Trust his Attorneys
5. Trust the Prosecution
6. Trust the Judge
CITATIONS:
Brain imaging shows that the brains of teens that use
marijuana are working harder than the brains of their peers who abstain from
the drug. At the 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in
Boston, Mass., Krista Lis Dahl Medina, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of psychology, presented
collaborative research with Susan Tapert, associate professor of psychiatry at
the University of California, San Diego.
Medina’s Oct. 12
presentation, titled, “Neuroimaging Marijuana Use and its Effects on Cognitive
Function,” suggests that chronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence – a
critical period of ongoing brain development – is associated with poorer
performance on thinking tasks, including slower psychomotor speed and poorer
complex attention, verbal memory and planning ability. Medina says that’s
evident even after a month of stopping marijuana use. She says that while
recent findings suggest partial recovery of verbal memory functioning within
the first three weeks of adolescent abstinence from marijuana, complex
attention skills continue to be affected.
“Not only are their
thinking abilities worse, their brain activation to cognitive tasks is
abnormal. The tasks are fairly easy, such as remembering the location of
objects, and they may be able to complete the tasks, but what we see is that
adolescent marijuana users are using more of their parietal and frontal
cortices to complete the tasks. Their brain is working harder than it should,”
Medina says.
Medina says
adolescence is a critical time of brain development and that the findings are
yet another warning for adolescents who experiment with drug use. She says more
study is needed to see if the thinking abilities of adolescent marijuana users
improve following longer periods of abstinence from the drug. “Longitudinal
studies following youth over time are needed to rule out the influence of
pre-existing differences before teens begin using marijuana, and to examine
whether abstinence from marijuana results in recovery of cognitive and brain
functioning,” says Medina.
The research was
supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). (Fuller, 2008)
I’ve heard
teenagers discredit drug using performers, but I’ve more than once gotten a
feeling that the more emotionally immature or insecure adolescent secretly
wonders if drug use will help them find success or take away the pain of
failure.
Unlike street
marijuana, properly used medications are monitored, pure substances,
and they are being used for the correct diagnosis. Marijuana is often used for
social or psychological reasons, not truly ‘chemical imbalance’ reasons. No
physician would give a stimulant to a kid who was primarily socially nervous about asking a girl to dance – his brain doesn’t need extra
dopamine release, it needs guidance and mentoring. (THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN - BLOG,
2011)
The main active chemical in marijuana is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol,
more commonly called THC. THC acts upon specific sites in the brain,
called cannabinoid receptors, starting off a series of cellular reactions that
ultimately lead to the “high” that users experience when they smoke
marijuana. Some brain areas have many cannabinoid receptors; others have
few or none. The highest density of cannabinoid receptors are found in
parts of the brain that influence pleasure, memory, thinking, concentrating, sensory and
time perception, and coordinated movement.
Marijuana’s “high” can affect these functions in a variety of ways,
causing distorted perceptions, impairing coordination, causing difficulty with
thinking and problem solving, and creating problems with learning and
memory. Research has demonstrated that among chronic heavy users these effects
on memory can last at least seven days after discontinuing use of the drug. (N/A, N/A, p. F. A. Q.)
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