Transcriber: Delia Cohen Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
A man arrives home after a long day of work.
He enters his home;
he notices an intruder, rummaging through his belongings.
The man attacks the intruder: hits him on the side of his head.
The intruder, while falling,
simultaneously pulls a gun out his waistband.
Pow! Pow!
Two shots.
The homeowner grabs his midsection and runs into his bedroom.
The intruder, in a panic, runs outside of the house,
where he's later apprehended
and charged with the robbery, burglary,
and first-degree murder of a human being.
That's a real-life scenario that occurred in the year 1975
by the intruder, Mr. Clarence Hollands Davis.
That scenario's played out thousands of times annually
throughout the U.S.
However, often we're not privy to what are the causative factors
that would lead a young man of 19 years of age to commit
such a heinous act as murder.
Well, thankfully, we have the sentencing transcripts that reveal
one of the possible factors as expressed by his attorney of record, Mr. Tannenbaum.
"Your Honor, I don't usually give
the scenario or the details of a defendant's life before the court.
However, there are large portions missing out of the probation officer's report.
As stated, the defendant was born at a time and place.
However, at a very young age,
he was, de facto, abandoned by his mother.
He was later adopted by a woman that, sadly, turned out to be an alcoholic.
The informative rearing years, Your Honor, were awful.
He went from foster home to foster home,
group home to group home.
Subsequently, he was placed in a runaway detention facility
that ironically he ran away from.
Unfortunately, the defendant was left to survive the best way he knew how:
by his own instincts.
Mr. Davis aged out of the foster care system after turning 18 years of age.
There's an article titled "A Critical Look at the Foster Care System"
that cited a 2010 study conducted by researchers
from the University of Illinois and the University of Washington
that found that 60% of the young men
that had been in foster care had been convicted of a crime.
That was in comparison to just 10% of young men
never involved in the foster care system, yet convicted of a crime.
That's a 50% disparity.
That same study stated that three quarters of the young women that had been
in the foster care system were on public assistance by the age of 24.
What I propose as a solution to reduce these numbers
is that there needs to be some form of transitional housing for those
that age out of the foster care system.
Now this transitional housing
would be coupled with case managers
responsible for assisting them with enrolling
in vocational trade programs so they could obtain viable job skills.
Also for those that would like to upgrade educationally
the case manager would assist them with enrolling in GED programs,
enrolling in community college
so they could obtain their undergraduate degrees.
Furthermore, many of those in the foster care system
suffer from mental health concerns
often as a result of coming from unstable family backgrounds,
and therefore, there would be mental health professionals
to assist them so they can have a smooth transition back into society.
One of the reasons I'm so interested in this
is because my mother was a foster child: the woman sitting to the right
of the handsome young man you're focusing on right now.
Is that right?
(Laughs)
In 1955, my grandfather was murdered in Port Au Prince, Haiti,
leaving my grandmother - or "grandmere" in Creole -
to raise five young children on her own,
the youngest of which was my mother.
Mon grandmere gave my mother over to the care of her godmother
at the tender age of nine months old.
Subsequently, my mother and her godmother moved to the U.S.
where sadly my mother suffered abuse at the hands of her godmother.
Thankfully an organization by the name of "The Women's Service Club"
in Boston, Massachusetts, intervened with the assistance
of social services, and they placed my mother in the care
of the late Frances Moore, who I called "Grandma" all my life.
Grandma instilled in my mother the importance of education.
I'm happy today to say my mother is a certified nursing assistant,
and just this year, 2014, she obtained her certification as a dialysis technician
clearly showing that the foster care system is a very beneficial system,
and there need to be more Frances Moores in the world.
Unfortunately, however, that was not the case for Mr. Clarence Hollands Davis.
This picture was taken in 1981.
While my mother was in Detroit raising a young family,
Mr. Clarence Holland Davis was 24 years old, under the jurisdiction
of the California Department of Corrections for murder.
Human life is too precious and too intertwined
to leave its outcome to just chance.
My call to action for you today is that you take the time and invest
in transitional housing
for one of the most vulnerable segments of our society:
those that age out of the foster care system.
By benefiting them, you'll also be benefiting all of society
as you reduce the number of people afflicted by crime in our country,
as you reduce the number of people who are incarcerated in our country,
and as you assist the people that are most in need throughout our country.
And with that, I'd like to thank you all for your time.
(Applause)