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Shortly after midnight on March 6, 2010, Dakotah Eliason sat in a chair in his bedroom with a .38-calibre pistol in his hands, thinking about what the world would be like if he didn't exist. One of his friends had recently killed himself, and his girlfriend had dumped him. Earlier that night, Dakotah, who was fourteen, had taken his grandfather's loaded gun off the coatrack. The breakup felt like a sign that he would always be a failure, and he figured no one would miss him after a few days. He got a pencil and tried to compose a suicide note, but he didn't know what he should say.
Dakotah wondered if he was ready to die, and contemplated taking someone else's life instead. He thought about how people have good and evil sides, and how the good doesn't always win. It was the theme of an adventure story he was writing. He drank a can of Mountain Dew, then went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He was pale and lanky, with sandy bangs swept to the side. "What am I doing?" he said to himself. "Why? Why do I have the gun? I know better than this."
He walked into the living room and stared at his grandfather, Jesse Miles, who was sleeping on the couch. A retired machinist and an avid hunter, Jesse often fell asleep while watching the Discovery Channel, and stayed on the couch all night so his smoker's cough wouldn't wake his wife. For forty-five minutes, Dakotah sat on a wooden chair, three feet from his grandfather, and talked to himself quietly, debating what to do next. If he got hand towels from the bathroom, he could gag his grandpa. If he used a steak knife, the whole thing might be quieter. He figured he'd use the cordless phone on his bed to report the crime. He felt as if he were watching a movie about himself. Finally, at just after three in the morning, he raised the handgun, his arms trembling, and shot his grandfather in the head.
"Man, I shot Papa!" he shouted. He put the gun on the floor and rushed into his grandmother Jean's bedroom. She yelled for Dakotah to call 911, and he followed her orders "like a little puppy," she said later. When officers from the police department in Niles, a rural town in southeast Michigan, arrived, seven minutes later, Dakotah was waiting outside next to his grandmother, who was in her pajamas and frantically waving her hands. Jean explained that Dakotah had shot Jesse. "This is my grandson," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder.
A trooper named Brenda Kiefer handcuffed Dakotah, read him his Miranda rights, and told him that she needed to know what had happened but that she "was not here to judge." She asked if he wanted a parent there and heard him say no. (Dakotah insists that he said "Uh-huh," indicating that he did want a parent present, and that he rarely says "yes" or "no," a habit for which his father scolds him.) Dakotah had always admired police officers, and he responded politely to Kiefer's questions, as his grandfather, unconscious and bleeding heavily, was loaded into an ambulance. Dakotah told Kiefer that he had a loving relationship with his grandparents and often spent the weekends at their home, where he had his own room. He didn't know why he'd picked up the gun, but he guessed that it was "sadness and pent-up anger."
After talking to Kiefer for fifteen minutes, Dakotah was put in a patrol car, which was parked at the bottom of the driveway. The officer who sat up front, Eugene Castro, asked Dakotah his name, and then realized he had gone to high school with Dakotah's father, Steve. "So was he good at sports?" Dakotah asked. Castro said that Steve had played hockey and tried to end the conversation cordially, but Dakotah updated him on his father's path since graduation: after losing his job as a construction worker, he'd begun an associate's-degree program in criminal justice. Dakotah added that it would be nice to be on the police force, because of the job security.
Several times, Castro stepped outside the cruiser to answer phone calls. When Dakotah was alone in the car, which had a video camera running, his breathing became heavy and rapid, and he coughed and made retching noises. Then an Avril Lavigne song, "My Happy Ending," came on the radio. "Ugh, why does this song have to play!" he said. He began singing along with the chorus: "So much for my happy ending / Oh oh, oh oh."
Out the window, Dakotah could see the flash of cameras inside his grandparents' home, a two-story farmhouse that the couple had lived in for thirty-five years. "It looks like forensics is doing their thing," Dakotah said when Castro returned. "So what do you predict will happen to me? I mean, murder charge—that's big. I'm still a minor, but . . ." Castro said he didn't know, and explained that a judge, not the police, would decide. "My life just turned into 'Law & Order,' " Dakotah said. "But with no commercials."
When the officer didn't respond, Dakotah began breathing heavily again. "I wish I could take it back, but now I understand the feeling people get when they do that," he said, drawing out his words slowly. "You feel like nothing could ever hurt you—just for that split second, once you realize what you've done."
Steve Eliason had been asleep for only a few hours when a detective knocked at his door and told him that his stepfather, who had raised him, was in the hospital in critical condition and that his son had been arrested. Still groggy from a night of drinking with his wife, Lisa, and out-of-town guests, Steve expected that there would be some reasonable explanation. Dakotah's only previous encounter with the police involved a missing backpack, and he had quickly been absolved of blame. He was an honor-roll student with a close group of friends who called themselves the Randoms, because, unlike the jocks and the preps who occupied the upper tier of their school's social hierarchy, their hobbies were varied: video games, fan fiction, classic rock, anime.
The detective, Fabian Suarez, drove Steve to the police station and, just before five in the morning, led him into a windowless, fluorescent-lit room with a Formica table and three chairs. Dakotah sat alone at the table, and Steve stared at his son, shook his head, and then pulled up a chair next to him. For the second time that morning, Dakotah heard his Miranda rights—Suarez went through the litany rapidly, in a dispassionate monotone.
"Are you angry with me?" Steve asked Dakotah, his voice shaking. "Is it something I did?" He told Suarez that a family doctor had once suggested that Dakotah see a therapist, because Dakotah was upset that nothing he did could ever please his dad. Dakotah didn't play sports—he preferred singing, drawing, and writing stories—which meant that he didn't have to maintain his grade-point average for a team. "So I try to push him," Steve explained.
Detective Suarez asked if he could have a private conversation with Dakotah, whose focus had drifted; he was shaking his wrists, blowing on the skin where the handcuffs had been. Steve agreed and told Dakotah, "We are trying to get to the bottom of this. Please, please answer."
Alone with the detective, Dakotah was initially sluggish, as if humoring a concerned teacher. But when Suarez asked what made him angriest in life he said that he was mad at his mother, Mary, who had abandoned him when he was a baby and dropped in and out of his life, depending on whether or not she was with a new man.
Dakotah said it had never occurred to him to hurt his grandfather, but "something overcame me." It had been a typically boring Saturday: he played racing and fighting games on his PlayStation console for four hours, and watched part of "Terminator 3" and a few shows on Comedy Central. Then he had a brief, pleasant conversation with his grandmother before she went to sleep. Later that night, he started thinking about how his family and friends were too distant; it felt like everyone he loved was drifting away. For about two hours, the "main argument was homicide or suicide," he told Suarez. "You ever hear people talk about having voices in their head? Well, it's not so much that as multiple personalities. One is like the good guy and the other is essentially the bad guy."
"The thing is when you actually do kill somebody, whether you have an emotional attachment or not, you get about five seconds," Dakotah said. "All the tension goes away." He propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, rubbing his face. "It's just that initial feeling," he continued. "It's an overwhelming feeling—I'm not really sure how to explain it."
After ten minutes, Steve demanded to be let back into the room. He had spoken with his brother, who was at the hospital, and learned that their father had died. By the time he returned, the interview was over. Steve was aggressive and agitated, and told Dakotah he couldn't make sense of what had happened. "Help me understand," he pleaded. "You always seemed happy."
Dakotah looked up at him blankly, his hands folded on the table.
"You're not showing any remorse, Dakotah. I'm not saying it in a bad way, but is something wrong with your head? Do you have problems with thinking? I mean, because you're a very intelligent young man." Steve told him to imagine what would happen "if you weren't my kid, and I was in this room with the person that shot my dad." He raised his voice: "This is the shit they talk about. Kids get into these goddam video games and they don't pull their head out of the fucking game. They think they can just go"—he pressed his finger into Dakotah's biceps—"hit the re-start button!" He said he couldn't accept "I don't know" as an answer. "Why would you shoot Papa, D.? Papa loved you."
Dakotah's face had turned deep red, and he hung his head a couple of inches from the table. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
"Don't hold it in. Let it out," Steve said. He put his arms around Dakotah, who had begun sobbing, and pulled him toward his chest. Dakotah circled his arms around his father, letting his weight collapse into him. "You've got to be strong for me, O.K.?" Steve whispered, rubbing Dakotah's back and staring at the wall with a bewildered expression. "You're my little boy."
Watching the local news the next day, Steve learned that Dakotah would be tried as an adult for first-degree homicide, which in Michigan carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The county's prosecuting attorney, Arthur Cotter, a towering man with white hair who was elected to office in 2008, had reviewed videotapes of Dakotah's statements to the police and concluded that Dakotah didn't belong in the juvenile justice system, which releases offenders from custody when they turn twenty-one. Cotter said that the decision was easy, because Dakotah had shown "an utter lack of remorse." "Even his father noticed it," he told me.
In Michigan, as in many states, prosecutors can try defendants older than fourteen in adult court without a hearing, a statement of reasons, or an investigation into the adolescent's background. The decision cannot be reviewed or appealed. This allows prosecutors to bypass the juvenile justice system, which was built upon the premise that youths are still malleable, in need of the state's protection, and uniquely capable of rehabilitation.
The first juvenile courts, which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, aimed to treat criminal behavior, not punish it, by intervening in the domestic lives of children whose parents had failed them. The establishment of a separate court system for youths followed other progressive reforms, like compulsory education and child-labor laws, which extended the boundary of childhood. The psychologist G. Stanley Hall lent scientific legitimacy to the concept of adolescence, describing it, in 1904, as a "genetic period of storm and stress," with a "curve of despondency" that rises at the age of eleven and falls by twenty-three. Juvenile hearings were sealed to the public and focussed on the personal history of the offender rather than on the offense. Judges designed individualized treatment plans to address whatever had thwarted the child's development: neglect, abuse, a poor education, an overcrowded home, unrestricted exposure to books about bandits. In 1910, Benjamin Lindsey, one of the first juvenile-court judges in the country, wrote that "our laws against crime are as inapplicable to children as they would be to idiots."
The juvenile justice system quickly became a model for courts throughout the world—the judicial scholar Francis Allen called it the "greatest legal institution invented in the United States"—but the system's paternalistic outlook often led to capricious rulings. In the nineteen-sixties, a new generation of children's advocates tried to redefine the "best interests of the child," focussing on liberating rather than protecting youths. In 1967, the Supreme Court reviewed the case of a fifteen-year-old who had been committed to a detention home for six years for making a lewd phone call, and ruled that the "condition of being a boy does not justify a Kangaroo Court." The decision established that juveniles deserve many of the same due-process rights as adults, including the right to a lawyer and the right against self-incrimination.
Once hearings became adversarial (resembling "junior varsity criminal trials," as one court decision put it), the system's original mission was gradually obscured. In the eighties, when youth crime rates began to rise, most visibly in gang-related violence, reformers argued that modern adolescents were more sophisticated than the youths of earlier eras. In 1985, Alfred Regnery, the head of the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, accused the juvenile courts of naively adopting Rousseau's theory that youths are "incapable of evil unless they are corrupted" and of listening to the "psychobabble of social workers." In the following decade, juvenile gun homicides more than tripled, leading to widespread hysteria, promoted by sensational news reports, about a rising generation of juvenile "super-predators." They are "doing homicidal violence in 'wolf packs,' " wrote John DiIulio, then a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton, who helped popularize the idea of a "demographic crime bomb." (He has since expressed regret, acknowledging that the prediction was never fulfilled.) Juvenile courts became increasingly punitive, and by the late nineties nearly half of committed juveniles were behind bars, rather than in community-supervision or treatment programs, and a quarter of them were locked up because of misdemeanors or probation violations. Forty-six states rewrote their laws to make it easier for minors to be tried as adults.
Although judges have long been attuned to the difficulty of trying mentally ill defendants, there is little recognition that people may be incompetent to stand trial because of their age. Each year, more than two hundred thousand offenders younger than eighteen are tried as adults, yet only about half of them understand the Miranda warning. According to studies of delinquent adolescents, they have trouble grasping that a "right" is an absolute privilege that they may exercise without penalty. Defendants fifteen and younger are particularly impaired, and waive their rights much more frequently than do adults. The vast majority misinterpret at least one of the four statements that make up the Miranda warning, stumbling on terms like "consult," "interrogation," "appoint," and "entitled," which may be above their reading level.
At a hearing to determine whether Dakotah's confessions were made voluntarily and could be used at trial, Dakotah maintained that he didn't realize that he was free to stop talking to the police once he had already started. The prosecutor, Arthur Cotter, broke down the Miranda warning and asked Dakotah which sentences he couldn't comprehend. Dakotah conceded that he understood the language ("Yeah, I know what a lawyer is"), but not its implications. He explained, "I just felt I had no choice but to answer the questions."
The judge, Scott Schofield, was not persuaded and ruled that all Dakotah's statements could be admitted as evidence. He pointed out that Dakotah watched "Law & Order," had proofread one of his father's papers for a criminology class, and used big words. (The trooper, Brenda Kiefer, testified that Dakotah, when describing his grandparents' property, had used the word "elevation" and warned that frozen ruts on the driveway were "treacherous.") Schofield dismissed the claim that Dakotah was in a psychotic or altered state of mind. He interpreted Dakotah's reference to hearing voices as an externalization of his own conscience, "a debate that he was having with himself—should I do the right thing, or should I not do the right thing?"
Dakotah often talked of becoming a writer. Throughout his freshman year, he wrote fantasy stories and shared them with his friends, who critiqued the plots and gave him tips for improvement. Tashawn Reese, who collaborated with him, said that Dakotah's stories were about underdogs who faced emotional challenges—the hero falls in love with an irresistible girl who's unavailable, or his parents die, or his school morphs into a crater—and usually the "theme was the eternal struggle between good and evil." The last story Dakotah brought to school was about two boys, one of whom develops demonic powers while the other acquires angelic ones; at the end, both soar into the sky.
Kelsey Crago, who dated Dakotah briefly, couldn't recall his doing anything unusual in the weeks before the murder. She knew that he was disappointed by his recent breakup—his girlfriend had broken things off by text message—but he didn't talk about it, because he didn't like drama. Kelsey described Dakotah as a "great listener, the main person I trusted if I needed advice," but he rarely shared his own problems. In letters to Dakotah, she repeatedly asked him why he had killed his grandfather, but never felt satisfied by his answers. "I wasn't thinking," he told her, and wrote that maybe he had watched too many crime shows.
At the Berrien County Juvenile Center, fifteen miles from his home, Dakotah complained that every time he closed his eyes he saw his grandfather's death, "like a movie." He told a caseworker that he was still trying to figure out what had happened and that he wished he had killed himself instead. He was forced to wear suicide garb, clothes too stiff to be torn, and was unable to sleep. His grandmother Jean, a petite, well-dressed woman with short white hair, wrote him a letter telling him that she forgave him, and visited him at the center after two weeks. "It was hard for him to look at me, with him knowing what he'd done," she told me. "He'd look up and then look away. Mostly, he just held my hand and rubbed it."
Steve berated himself for acting like a "maniac drill instructor" and losing his temper over anything his son did wrong. He also blamed Dakotah's "bio-mom," as he called her. In her statement to the police, Mary explained that she'd never intended to have a child with Steve. "I had a party at my apt.," she wrote. "We got drunk, we got pregnant." (Mary would not talk to me, explaining, "I have nothing to say.") She was rarely involved in Dakotah's life until he was seven; then she went to court to obtain joint custody. When Dakotah was twelve, she changed her mind and relinquished all her rights as a parent. Steve remembers Dakotah coming home from a visit and "brushing his hands like he'd just had crackers and was getting rid of the crumbs. He said, 'Mom finally washed her hands clean of me.' "
For Steve and his wife, the fact that Dakotah had killed his grandfather, a man he had loved, was proof that he'd been temporarily insane. A week after Dakotah was arrested, Steve hired Lanny Fisher, a local attorney who had gone to the same high school, was "great at sports but humble about it," and had been practicing law for three years. (Fisher offered to charge a fraction of his normal fee, since Steve and Lisa were living on her hourly wages from Subway.) Fisher, assuming that the trial would be a battle between mental-health experts, said he was "devastated" when he received the results of Dakotah's psychiatric report. The examiner, who interviewed Dakotah for a little more than three hours, noted that Dakotah preferred his own fantasies to reality, but he did not think his imaginary life had ever reached psychotic proportions.
Two more psychiatric reports were done, and neither found that Dakotah met the criteria for legal insanity, which would have meant that he could not appreciate the wrongfulness of his crime or conform his behavior to meet the requirements of the law. No history of physical or sexual abuse was uncovered. Fisher and Arthur Cotter had been discussing a possible plea bargain—fourteen years to life for second-degree murder—but after reading the psychiatric reports Cotter chose to go to trial, a decision that several family members endorsed. Jesse Miles's forty-seven-year-old daughter, Vickie Hartz, Steve's stepsister, told me that she was disappointed that Michigan doesn't have the death penalty. "My dad was an easygoing, mellow guy who did everything for that kid," Hartz said. "And Dakotah killed him with as much emotion as if he were moving a chair."
The murder trial began on August 17th, less than six months after Jesse Miles's death. Judge Scott Schofield, who presides over all the criminal trials in Niles, is known for running a "rocket docket" when his cases get local media attention. He set brisk deadlines for motions and hearings, saying, "It's a cliché, I know," but "justice delayed is justice denied." The courtroom was filled to capacity, with reporters from four local TV stations. Schofield referred to the microphone as an ice-cream cone and encouraged jurors to hold it close to their mouths so they wouldn't make a mess.
At the juvenile center, where residents spend six hours a day in school and attend workshops on risk and anger management, Dakotah was "student of the week" three times, and received awards for "social skills," "fabulous achievement and effort," and "making a difference." Still, Cotter requested that Dakotah's legs be shackled during the trial, saying that he might pose a security risk because of "his feelings of power." "When he shot his grandfather, he felt for fifteen seconds that nothing in the world could hurt him," Cotter told the court. Judge Schofield acknowledged that defendants have the right to be free of restraint but concluded that in this case the shackles were warranted, since "the Court has some concerns about Mr. Eliason being psychologically conflicted."
Cotter, in his opening statement, portrayed Dakotah as a sociopath so callous he was capable of "chitchat" and making a "whooey sound" in the patrol car just moments after shooting his grandfather. Dakotah was fascinated by death, he said, and would have killed his grandmother, too, if she hadn't woken up. Cotter cautioned the jury that when they viewed the videotape of Dakotah's interview at the police station they might be moved by the sight of Steve Eliason, "in a true test of the unlimitedness of a parent's love," embracing his son. "Do not confuse the emotions you're going to feel—the empathy that you are going to feel when you watch that point with his father—with any sadness that that young man felt remorse," Cotter said.
Lanny Fisher, unassuming and amiable, opened with a speech that laid bare his own confusion. "Most cases, most stories, they have the who, the what, the where, the when, and the why," he said. "The reason that we're all here today is the why." After months of research, he could find no coherent motive, so he presented the crime's incomprehensibility as proof that it couldn't have been deliberate. Cotter referred to Dakotah as a "young man"; Fisher called him a "boy." He emphasized that in the past year Dakotah had endured a series of losses: his cousin had been in a fatal car crash, his father had told him they were losing their house because he could not pay the mortgage, a friend had committed suicide, and his dog, Bam-Bam, had died of old age.
Fisher's other line of defense was to urge the jury to recall how it felt to be fourteen. "You can't drink," he said. "You have to be twenty-one to do that. You can't smoke, or vote, or join the armed services. You have to be eighteen to do that. Can't even drive a car . . . That's the person that's on trial, ladies and gentlemen."
The trial lasted two and a half days, and much of it focussed on testimony from police officers and forensic technicians who established details about the crime that were not contested by the defense. Fisher chose not to have Dakotah testify, since juveniles tend to make poor witnesses—they are easily misled or intimidated and often give inconsistent, idealized accounts of their own actions. For character witnesses, Fisher called Dakotah's high-school principal, who said that Dakotah was never sent to his office and was "probably not the top student, but pretty good," and a family friend who described him as "very mild-mannered, kind." Since Fisher was not advancing any theory about the crime, his conversations with the witnesses for the defense lacked direction and at times helped the prosecutor's argument as much as his own. When Jean Miles, weeping, took the stand, Fisher helped her paint an image of domestic normalcy:
FISHER: Your house was kind of a getaway for him, wasn't it?
MILES: Yes.
FISHER: It would be you, and Jesse, and Dakotah, and he could kind of play video games, watch movies?
MILES: Yes.
FISHER: And you guys gave him attention?
MILES: Yes.
FISHER: O.K. He had fun over at your house?
MILES: Yes. I hope so.
Cotter concluded the trial by describing Dakotah as a young man incapable of reciprocating his family's love. He argued that the crime exemplified premeditation, since Dakotah "considered the pros and cons of killing" for more than two hours. "It's almost like he was building up the courage to do it," Cotter said, before acting out Dakotah's interior monologue: "Are you going to do it? Do it. Do it! Shoot him." Cotter described Dakotah's reaction to the shooting as "just bizarre": there was "not a tear, not a sob," no "ounce of emotion." He dwelled on Dakotah's remark that the "tension goes away" after murdering someone. "That's when it starts, that's when the conscience kicks in," Cotter said. "He's got the emotional curve all wrong."
The expectation that defendants will display remorse either shortly after their crimes or never is generally accepted as common sense. In a Columbia Law Review study of cases of juveniles charged with violent crimes, the Emory law professor Martha Grace Duncan found that youths who failed to express their contrition promptly and appropriately, as adults would, were often penalized for showing "less grief than the system demands." In many cases, she writes, the juveniles appeared to be in shock or in a kind of dissociative state and failed to appreciate the permanence of what they had done. "Less under the sway of the reality principle," they were more prone than adults to engage in forms of denial. But prosecutors and judges interpreted their strange reactions—falling asleep after the crime, giggling, rapping—as signs of irreparable depravity. Duncan found that courts looked for remorse in "psychologically naïve ways, without regard for defense mechanisms, developmental stages, or the ambiguity that inheres in human behavior."
One of Dakotah's closest friends, Christina Wardlaw, who sat through the trial, told me that she had to suppress the urge to laugh as she listened to Dakotah's recorded conversations with the police. "He still saw himself as the same old Dakotah, jabbering and singing and making jokes," she said. "He had no idea what he'd become."
Dakotah's reaction, with its apparent remorselessness, less than three hours after shooting his grandfather, was discussed by three witnesses for the prosecution. It also figured in the jurors' deliberations. They asked to view Dakotah's videotaped conversation with the detective again, and an hour after watching the tape, and just three hours after beginning deliberations, they announced that Dakotah was guilty of first-degree homicide.
One juror told me that several people on the jury were troubled by Dakotah's youth, but they'd been instructed that if the evidence indicated that the offense was premeditated and deliberate the crime was first-degree murder. Age had no place in that calculus. As is required under Michigan law, the jury was not informed that the conviction carried the automatic penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Before the sentencing hearing, Lanny Fisher filed a brief asserting that the punishment violated the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits sentences that are cruel and unusual, based on the "evolving standards of decency in our maturing society." Life imprisonment for juveniles is forbidden by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty ratified by every country in the world except the United States and Somalia. In his brief, Fisher relied heavily on two recent Supreme Court cases, which, he maintained, suggest that the U.S. is increasingly recognizing the "distinct emotional, psychological and neurological status of youth."
In a 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, the United States became the last Western country to abolish the death penalty for juveniles. The decision drew on a growing body of scientific research that reaffirmed what, a hundred years earlier, passed for common sense: "the personality traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed." Anthony Kennedy, in his opinion, pointed out that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders explicitly prohibits psychiatrists from giving people under eighteen a diagnosis of antisocial disorder (a euphemism for sociopathy), since many signs of the disorder—egocentricity, failure to accept responsibility, impulsiveness, proneness to boredom—are natural aspects of adolescence. Kennedy noted that "adolescents are overrepresented statistically in virtually every category of reckless behavior."
The Court extended the reasoning it had used three years earlier when it outlawed capital punishment for defendants with I.Q.s below seventy. But the four dissenting Justices in Roper rejected the idea that the same claim of diminished culpability could be made for all juveniles, since the Court's analysis had been based on aggregate differences between youths and adults, which may have little bearing on the sophistication of individual defendants, particularly those at the "margins between adolescence and adulthood." Antonin Scalia criticized the American Psychological Association, which submitted a brief in favor of abolition, for taking a conflicting stance on teen maturity in an earlier case regarding the rights of juveniles to get abortions. The large body of research on adolescent cognition, Scalia wrote, had allowed the Court to "look over the heads of the crowd and pick out its friends," finding empirical support for previously held opinions.
Five years later, in Graham v. Florida, the Court again pointed to "developments in psychology and brain science [that] continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds," and, for the first time in a quarter century, invalidated a sentence other than capital punishment. Now the Court ruled that for juveniles—but only those whose crimes did not result in death—a sentence that offers "no chance for reconciliation with society, no hope" is cruel and unusual. Life-without-parole sentences have tripled since the early nineties, both because the punishment offers an alternative to death and because of crime policies that emphasize retribution and incapacitation rather than rehabilitation. The ruling did not guarantee young prisoners eventual release, only the possibility of it. In the decision, Justice Kennedy alluded to studies, outlined in a brief submitted by the American Medical Association, showing that the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with behavioral control, does not fully develop until people reach their twenties. Kennedy noted that in many states inmates who are ineligible for parole are denied access to educational programs, leading to the "perverse consequence in which the lack of maturity that led to an offender's crime is reinforced by the prison term."
Judge Schofield gave Cotter a week to submit a written response to Fisher's constitutional challenge and scheduled his own ruling and sentencing for the following week. At the hearing, on October 25th, Schofield gave a rhapsodic speech about how the legislative branch of government makes the law, and how the judicial branch has "nothing to do with that. And that's the way it should be." He called the case a "textbook example of our separation of powers" and denied Fisher's motion. He noted that the punishment wasn't unusual; thirty-nine states allow fourteen-year-olds to be sentenced to life without parole. No appellate or trial court has held that Graham applies to those convicted of homicide. Currently, there are some twenty-five hundred American inmates who were given life sentences for killing someone before their eighteenth birthday; for more than half of them, it was their first crime.
During the sentencing, Dakotah, who had just turned fifteen, periodically grasped at his chest and bent over, as if struggling to take in air. He wore a green prison jumpsuit, he had a new military buzz cut, and he showed early signs of a weak beard. At the end of the hearing, he was given an opportunity to speak before the court for the first time. He stood up and said that his heart was pounding so hard that he thought he was going to die, and he was trying not to pee in his pants. "If I don't regret this every day, then I truly am less than human," he said. "Then I do deserve to die in prison."
He began crying and apologized to his aunt and his cousins, who were sitting on the prosecutor's side of the courtroom and had publicly expressed their wish that he never reënter society. "No matter how much anyone hates me—it doesn't make a difference—I will still love you all because you're my family," Dakotah said. "I never finished that statement at the courthouse or at the station. The tension, it goes away, but it comes back tenfold. You deal with it on a scale that can never be measured."
Nine days after his sentencing, Dakotah was transferred to Thumb Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison on the eastern edge of the state, two hundred miles from his home and sixty miles from Detroit. The forty-acre prison complex, which is a half mile from Interstate 69, is surrounded by three sets of twelve-foot fences, edged with coils of razor-ribbon wire. Although the law mandates that incarcerated juveniles have no contact with adult prisoners, the same protections do not apply to youths who have been prosecuted as adults. The prison has six squat beige brick units, two of which house four hundred and thirty inmates who are under twenty-one years old. They cross paths with the Old Heads, as they are called, during visits to the library, church, and the segregation unit, where prisoners of all ages are punished with solitary confinement.
The prison rarely permits media visits, and, last January, the warden denied my request, citing Dakotah's age and "health-related" concerns. Journalists are subject to the same admission requirements as the general public, so I waited six months, until Dakotah was eligible to update his list of ten visitors who are not immediate family, and visited him for the first time last June, eight months after he had arrived at the prison.
The prison's visiting room has an atmosphere of casual boredom, like the waiting room of a doctor's office. About fifty upholstered metal chairs are arrayed around coffee tables, and inmates and their visitors pass time by playing Uno or checkers, drifting to the vending machines and back, or holding each other subtly enough to escape the guards' scrutiny. Two kisses are permitted, one at the beginning of the visit and one at the end.
I got a Coke for Dakotah, who had been assigned a seat near the guard's podium, and he quietly thanked me, then took a dramatic swig. "If I drink Coke like I'm drinking beer, it's because I've had a few beers before," he said nervously. He admitted that he didn't consider himself cool in other respects. "I was the smiley wannabe emo kid," he said. The only physical activity he excelled at was dodgeball. He had also taken karate, when he was nine, and was grateful to his dad for enrolling him in the class, because "it could definitely be helpful, if I have to protect myself."
At the juvenile center, Dakotah had developed a close relationship with a pastor and been born again. For several months, his mind had been on the afterlife. Since he'd been in prison, though, the spiritual world seemed less relevant. "No two ways about it, I ain't worth shit religiously," he said tentatively, as if testing the sound of the phrase. When I asked why, he explained that he talked like a sailor and was getting to be racist. Black inmates who didn't even know him would tell him to "shut your white ass up," and refer to him as "white bitch," "snowflake," and "cracker," a term he didn't fully understand until he checked out a book on the Civil War from the prison library.
At the prison's health-care center, Dakotah had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and he now took a heavy daily dose of an antidepressant and a sedative. The drugs had removed "this great weight, this nervous energy pouring off me," but they had also made him less creative. He rarely wrote stories anymore, and even letters to friends felt like an exertion. Though the medications helped, he wasn't convinced that the diagnosis was right; he still wished "someone could pinpoint what's wrong with me." He said that every time he hears a loud noise, like a door slam, "my mind goes right back to the incident, and all I hear is white noise."
Initially, other inmates wanted to know what he was in for (he kept his answer brief: "I shot someone"), but no one asked about his background anymore. Conversations rarely went much deeper than "What's for chow?" He scored well on the G.E.D. exam after taking the prison's prep class, but it was just a review of things he learned freshman year or picked up from the books he used to read secretly when classes were boring. "All I've learned in prison is some better ways to work out," he told me. He earned $1.14 a day mowing the grounds at the prison, and he figured that he would become a professional landscaper. He spoke casually of things he planned to do when he got out of prison, only occasionally catching himself to add "if I get out." He cheerily informed me that the prison has a policy whereby "guards will take you cuffed and shackled to your own funeral," before becoming flustered and correcting himself, explaining that he might get to attend the service when his grandmother dies.
Dakotah dreamed of becoming a country or rock singer, though he considered the goal cheesy. His first demo would be called "Generation Millennials." He spent most of his time listening to his MP3 player, purchased from the prison commissary, and singing along in his eight-by-eleven-foot cell. Depending on how much money his dad put into his account, he could buy about a dozen new songs a month, and he tried to memorize the lyrics to each one. The other day, his crew yard boss had referred to him as "the kid who sings," which he liked, since he'd become accustomed to responding to "white boy."
Dakotah quizzed me on the songs I knew, and each time I failed to recognize a hit he laughed and sang it for me in a whispery, high-pitched voice. As soon as he finished one song, he tried to find another, searching for anything I might know. "The only thing I really need is my music," he said, tapping his foot. "If I've got music, I'm straight—I can do my time. You won't hear a peep out of me."
Three months after the trial, Dakotah's case was assigned to the state appellate defender's office, which represents indigent clients who can't afford private counsel. His lawyer, the office's deputy director, has contested his sentence on the ground that Dakotah received ineffective counsel, in part because Lanny Fisher never brought in an expert to explain why Dakotah failed to show "stereotypical signs of adult-like remorse." A new medical evaluation characterized Dakotah as a "traumatized youth without access to his emotions in the moment." An evidentiary hearing will be held in February to determine whether Dakotah deserves a new trial.
Dakotah's sentence may also be affected by two cases that will be argued before the Supreme Court next term. Both cases, which will be heard in tandem, challenge the constitutionality of life-without parole sentences for juveniles fourteen and younger. The two defendants maintain that early adolescence is a distinct developmental period during which susceptibility to influence reaches its peak. "Relative to the cognition of adults and even older adolescents, young teenage judgment is handicapped in nearly every conceivable way," one petition reads.
But pegging legal protections to age markers also invites the escalating possibility of further dividing populations. It is well documented, for instance, that girls mature faster than boys, both physically and psychologically. (At a teen-ager's recent murder trial, a University of Pennsylvania neuropsychologist testified that "biology would say" that boys should be held accountable for their crimes at a later age than girls.) Terry Maroney, a Vanderbilt law professor, said that legal arguments based on developmental research, which have become more prevalent since Roper v. Simmons, could be used to challenge children's autonomy rights and create an "unduly complicated system with different rules for each potential subgroup." Deborah LaBelle, a lawyer and the author of a report on Michigan inmates sentenced to life for crimes they committed before the age of eighteen, said that she doesn't want to redraw a boundary that, for more than a century, has reflected the fact that "society has a different kind of responsibility to youth."
In Roper, the dissenting Justices argued that judgments about a defendant's maturity and culpability should be left to juries. But, in the new cases before the Supreme Court, both fourteen-year-olds were tried in states with mandatory sentencing for murder, so jurors couldn't take their age into account. One of the petitioners was physically abused by his alcoholic father, had attempted suicide six times, and was drunk and high on the night of the crime. His lawyer has argued that his mandatory penalty is cruel and unusual and violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects defendants' rights to due process. In death-penalty cases, trial procedure requires that juries consider mitigating factors, such as youth, mental health, and prior record, but there are no parallel safeguards in place for the penultimate punishment.
In Michigan, several judges have described their discomfort with sentencing an adolescent to die in prison, but the state's automatic-sentencing laws leave them no choice. In July, a federal district court ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union can proceed with a lawsuit challenging the state's mandatory-sentencing scheme for juveniles. Michigan has the second-highest number of juveniles sentenced to life without parole, and in 2008 the state's House of Representatives voted to abolish the practice, but the bill never passed in the state Senate; the issue is politically unpopular.
Prosecutors, who are elected officials, are also subject to political pressures, yet they have unfettered discretion to set the terms of a juvenile's charge. LaBelle told me, "I can't think of anywhere else in the world where the state can change the legal status of an individual—'Yes, I know you are a child, but now I will make you an adult'—so rapidly and in a factual vacuum." She continued, "We are telling these kids there is no such thing as redemption. They can never make amends."
For many juveniles, it is several years before they grasp the gravity of their crime and the permanence of the penalty. Joshua Miller, a twenty-nine-year-old inmate at the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, in Mississippi, told me that it wasn't until he reached his mid-twenties that the " 'without parole' part of my sentence finally dawned on me." After killing his girlfriend when he was fourteen—she rejected him, and he wanted to stage a " 'Romeo and Juliet' kind of thing"—Miller was placed in an adult prison, where older inmates "treated me like the weak coward that I was," he said.
During his first few years of imprisonment, Miller tried to stay abreast of new albums, movies, and fashions, but eventually he realized there was no point in "keeping tabs on a structure I could never be part of." He stopped reading fiction, because it was too painful to "journey into the free world." He said that he has never had sex. He considers his girlfriend, who was thirteen when he murdered her, the love of his life. Although he looks back longingly on his childhood, he doesn't like to hear stories about what became of his peers. "I can't ruin a memory, or I'll lose another attachment to that life," he said. "I refuse to believe that my friends aren't still children."
When I visited the Eliason family in June, Steve, Lisa, and their nine-year-old daughter had moved into Jean Miles's house, in order to save money. They had got a new couch and rearranged the living room, but the rest of the downstairs looked the same as it had in the police photographs. On top of the television was a framed photograph of Dakotah and his family standing in front of a pastoral autumn scene painted on a cinder-block wall in the prison's visiting room. Steve and Jean both told me with pride that Dakotah was learning to be a model inmate. He had called home, upset, the night before because the toilet in his cell had overflowed, and, when the guards wouldn't respond to his calls for help, he stayed composed and mopped up the sewage with his own clothes. "I tell him that if we go through the appeals process and nothing changes, then he can get as wild and crazy as he wants," Steve said. He has noticed Dakotah's language becoming foul, which "eats me up—he was a soft boy."
Steve and I had spoken on the phone several times before, and, in each conversation, he offered new theories about his stepfather's death and the ways it could have been prevented. At the house, he reënacted the crime as his mother sat in a rocking chair beside us. With his thumb and index finger extended like an imaginary handgun, he stood where he assumed Dakotah had been when he pulled the trigger. "If he had just missed by an inch, the bullet would have hit the glass cabinet over there and woken my father, who would have whupped Dakotah's ass," he said. "Then we would have gotten him some help."
Jean cried quietly throughout the demonstration, and added that Dakotah was a "loving grandson up until that moment." "I would bring him home tonight," she said. "I know the person he is." She often thought about what would have happened if she had forced her husband to hide his gun—it was kept by the door in case of intruders—or had sat down with Dakotah for dinner that night. All he ate was three cupcakes. "But I had all kinds of stuff for him in the freezer," she said under her breath.
The family talked about Dakotah's diagnosis of bipolar disorder, though it won't be relevant for the appeal—the legal bar for insanity is higher than simply having a psychiatric diagnosis. Since Dakotah's arrest, Steve had discovered a history of bipolar disorder in his family, and he, too, received a diagnosis of the illness. He often repackages lessons from his own therapy sessions for his son, who calls home every day. The family talks to him on a speakerphone until the prison phone service cuts them off, after fifteen minutes. When Dakotah complains of feeling homesick, Steve jokes with him, "Grow your beard a little thicker, and I'll shave my hair like you. You'll sneak out, and I'll take your place."
By September, Dakotah had spent nearly three months in solitary confinement. In April, 2011, after six months in prison, he got his first ticket for a rule violation, Threatening Behavior, which resulted in the standard punishment: thirty days in segregation. Dakotah had told a boy in his unit that he'd kill him if he kept prying into his case. The boy had been joking around, saying, "Who'd you kill? Who'd you kill?" Two months later, Dakotah received another ticket, for Sexual Misconduct, after a female guard accused him of exposing his penis through the vertical window on his steel door. According to Dakotah, he was sleeping at the time. He told the guard that it must have been his cellmate, but she said the skin she saw looked light, and his cellmate was black. Dakotah confronted his cellmate, a fifteen-year-old convicted of sexual assault, "but he just laughs about it," he said. "He giggles about all sorts of childish shit."
Two weeks after his punishment ended, he and his cellmate got into a fistfight, and, at the end of August, both boys were transferred to the segregation unit. His cinder-block cell had one barred window, a bed, a stainless-steel desk and stool that were attached to the floor, a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. All his meals were delivered to him through a metal flap on his door, starting with breakfast, at 4 A.M. The only time he could leave his cell was to shower, three times a week; he was handcuffed on the way there and locked into the shower stall.
When I visited Dakotah in September, it was the first time in nearly three weeks that he'd had an extended conversation with another person. We sat in a narrow cinder-block room, divided in half by shatterproof glass, and spoke to each other using rotary telephones whose dial pads had been removed. Dakotah had been animated in our previous conversations, but now he spoke in a dull, listless tone and sat slouched in his chair, his head resting against the wall of the cubicle. His eyes were dilated, and his lips were so chapped they looked bruised.
He told me that he was disgusted with himself for ruining his chance to see his family, who, for more than a month, had planned to visit on the second Sunday in September. It was the second time they'd had to cancel their plans at the last minute because he'd been placed in seclusion. (After a week without calls or letters from Dakotah, Steve had called the prison, and a phone operator told him that Dakotah was in the segregation unit, where visiting hours are restricted to Friday mornings.) Dakotah spent his first few nights in the segregation cell lying underneath his steel-framed bed, on the concrete floor, wearing nothing but shorts. "Oh, man, I was going off the deep end, like, living below the water," he said, jiggling the phone cord. "The little flame lighting my candle of sanity just blew out."
The effects of the sedative he'd been prescribed seemed to have worn off, and he struggled to sleep through the night. He woke up in cold sweats, with such vivid, violent dreams that he examined his body to see if he'd somehow been injured. "I don't understand sleep anymore," he told me. He had developed a theory, adapted from "The Matrix," which he had watched countless times, that maybe life is an illusion, a kind of thought experiment, and dreams are the true reality.
Dakotah began talking to himself in his cell, little comments and reminders at first, and then, as the days passed, full conversations. "I go into this other mode," he said, blowing air out of his mouth. "I can have all these conversations crisscrossing the room; there's a version of me on the bed, at the desk, at the sink."
At the end of my previous visits, Dakotah had chattered rapidly, nearly free-associating, occasionally singing, as if he would lose his visitor as soon as he paused. I had found myself coming to visiting hours later, to avoid prolonging the drama of separating. He would pick lint or stray hairs off my shirt or touch a scab on my hand, assuring me that it would fall off soon—any excuse for physical contact. But this time, our first visit with glass between us, he was the one to end the conversation. "I'm worn out," he told me. "My mind is kind of dead."
His sixteenth birthday was the next week, and I wished him happy birthday. "Yeah, I'm alive," he said, rolling his eyes. "Whoopdefuckingwhoo."
The day before Dakotah's birthday, September 23rd, Steve drove four hours to the prison to surprise him. Dakotah had recently been transferred to the Behavioral Modification Unit, where he had contact with other prisoners, but most of his privileges, including use of the phone, were still suspended. In the partitioned cubicle, Steve and Dakotah pressed their knuckles against the glass, as if they were touching. It had been three months since they'd seen each other. "You look pasty, son," Steve said tenderly. Dakotah, smiling broadly, smoothed the collar of his prison jumpsuit and confessed, "I don't feel like I look so good."
Steve updated Dakotah on developments in the lives of neighbors, relatives, and their pets, and then spoke at length about the mood-stabilizing medication he'd been taking. He said that he no longer acted like a tyrant at home, high-strung and aggressive. "That's one of our traits—not knowing how to express our emotions," he told Dakotah. The more Steve talked about their matching diagnoses, the more he seemed to convince himself that he was complicit in Dakotah's crime. He couldn't forgive himself for yelling at his children, which he now saw as a form of abuse. Dakotah, quiet and deferential, deflected his father's comments with reassuring jokes. (At an earlier visit, he described his dad as his role model, except for his domineering manner: "He was Sgt. Pepper, and I was the Lonely Heart Band.")
Steve wore an oversized tank top, which revealed a tattoo on his right shoulder in memory of his stepfather: "J.E.M., 1940-2010." Dakotah had wept when he first saw the tattoo, more than a year earlier, and now he intended to get one, too. He also wanted the name of his dead dog tattooed on his biceps, his dead cat on his forearm, and his great-grandmother's initials on his chest. At his father's request, he planned to wait until he got to the adult side of the prison, since the Old Heads were more likely to clean their needles.
Both father and son vaguely hoped that other problems, too, would be resolved on the adult side of prison: the units might be less chaotic and noisy, the inmates calmer and more responsible. Steve had reconciled himself to the possibility that Dakotah would eventually get affiliated—with the Aryan Brotherhood, he guessed—because he would need that protection. At the end of the visit, Steve reassured Dakotah that he would find mentors when he moved to the adult population. "Not someone who will take advantage of you but a man who was locked away from his own kids," Steve said. "I want a father in there watching over you." ♦


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November is Diabetes Awareness Month, a time to learn about prevention, detection and treatment of one of the most common chronic diseases in the United States. Diabetes is a metabolic disease that affects the body's ability to use glucose to produce energy.
Prevalence of Diabetes
Diabetes is a nationwide problem and is considered the most expensive chronic disease in the United States. In the past 10 years, diabetes incidence increased by almost 50 percent. The disease now affects 30 million Americans, including 12 million seniors. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 100 million Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic.
- Type 1 — Previously known as juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, type 1 diabetes usually begins in childhood. It comprises only about five percent of all diabetes cases.
- Type 2 — Also known as insulin-resistant diabetes or adult-onset diabetes, type 2 diabetes is the most prevalent type and comprises 90-95 percent of all diabetes cases. Risk factors for type 2 diabetes include family history of the disease, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle and obesity.
- Prediabetic — A condition in which blood glucose levels are too high, but not high enough to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Complications of Diabetes
If you have diabetes, you are at higher risk for diabetic eye disease, a group of eye conditions that affect diabetics. Some of the most common forms of diabetic eye disease include cataracts, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. All diabetic eye disease has the potential to cause significant vision loss and blindness.

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Posts Taggedwishlist
It's hard buying gifts for people, and wads of cash, though expedient, can seem tacky. If you want to give something meaningful without losing your mind or blowing your whole budget on just one gift, it really takes some effort. And there's really no guarantees you won't lose your mind.
Helping to preserve your sanity, or at least what's left, is iWishfor. This little app lets you create wish lists for yourself and browse the lists of your friends and family, taking the guesswork out of the holidays. Can iWishfor really save you all those headaches and maybe some returned gifts? (more…)


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Collectors can call at work until you say stop
Q. Can a debt collector call a person at work? I work as a receptionist for a company that often gets collection calls for an employee who works here. This person is unable to take the calls because he works out in the field. The calls are very harassing because they are often rude and have even resorted to calling me names because of my refusal to take these kinds of messages. What can be done to stop these calls?
A. Based on what you say, my opinion is the debt collector is violating federal law. First, until a consumer tells a debt collector he or she is not allowed to receive calls at work, the collector has the right to call. You don't say whether the employee told the collector to stop, so the mere act of calling migtht not be wrongful. Federal law, however, prohibits debt collectors from discussing a consumer's debt with anyone else, harassing anyone, or even telling third parties they are calling about a debt. I suggest the employee send a certified letter demanding the debt collector stop this conduct, and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. He might even want to speak with a private attorney about a lawsuit under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
Q. Can I withhold rent if my air conditioning is not working properly? It broke down as soon as it started getting warm.
A. As a general rule, a tenant must continue to pay rent even when there is a problem with the apartment. In no event does a tenant have the right to simply refuse to pay rent. There are a few situations, however, when a tenant may deduct from the rent and have the apartment repaired.
Repairs and deductions may be made only when the problem is extremely serious and you have given the landlords proper written notice to repair the condition, letting them know that if they do not make the repairs, you will. According to Texas law, the problem must involve either the backup or overflow of raw sewage, the termination of water, or the failure to provide heat or cooled air after the landlord has received written notice from a local building or health official. In other words, for you to withhold rent you must first send the landlords written notice by certified mail, telling them your air conditioning does not work and asking them to repair it. You then must wait a "reasonable" time. In addition, the local health or building official should be informed so it may give the landlord the appropriate notice. Only after all of these requirements are met may you repair the problem yourself and deduct the costs from the rent. Hopefully, once the landlords receive your notice, they will remedy the condition.
Do you want to know more about your legal rights? Check out my Web site, www.peopleslawyer.net.


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Diagnosing coronary artery disease after a positive coronary computed tomography angiography: the Dan-NICAD open label, parallel, head to head, randomized controlled diagnostic accuracy trial of cardiovascular magnetic resonance and myocardial perfusion scintigraphy.
Aims: Perfusion scans after coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) in patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) may reduce unnecessary invasive coronary angiographies (ICAs). However, the diagnostic ...


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Including exercise and healthy eating habits in your daily routine takes a positive mental attitude
Battling excess weight produces both gains and losses on the road that leads to a healthier life style. Choose your battles wisely. Diet enemies such as aging and gravity can't be defeated, but you CAN stop being lazy and controlled by poor eating habits and hunger cravings
Eat less and crave less with the Hoodia Ice Cube Diet.
You want to lose weight and lead a healthier life, but staying focused on this goal when you're hungry is hard. We can make it easier with our fresh-frozen Hoodia Ice Cube Diet. It's based on a potent, 100% natural appetite suppressant that helps you eat less.
The Hoodia Ice Cube Diet works with your brain to decrease hunger and boost energy
Follow our healthy two week cycle meal plan, repeat as often as needed to reach your target weight. The plan not only achieves short term weight loss goals, it also helps you develop and maintain a long term commitment to healthier food and portion choices.
Carpe Diem – Seize the Day – and join those who are winning the battle of the bulge and leading healthier lives with the Hoodia Ice Cube Diet
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Take this first step now. Join in the success of the many that are eating less and becoming happier and healthier people.
Good luck and please let us know how you are doing


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Ensuring mobility is one of the big challenges in our society. For this Siemens offers the latest integrated transport and logistics solutions – for improved safety, efficiency and environmental sustainability: from infrastructure equipment for rail and road traffic, rail vehicles through to airport logistics and parcel and postal automation.
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Get Personalized Skin Care Advice Here
Take this skin analysis quiz to figure out what your skin type is from sensitive skin to oily to dry and get your ideal skin care regimen
Skin type changes over time. Weather, hormones, traveling -- even products -- can disguise your true skin type, says New York City dermatologist Dr. Debra Wattenberg. Diagnose your true type here, then find out how to correctly care for it.
Question 1 of 10
Right after I wash my face, it feels:


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Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited disorder that affects the brain. HD causes slow, progressive degeneration of nerve cells in certain areas of the brain. Eventually, HD results in:
- Abnormal body movements
- Gradual deterioration or loss of intellectual abilities
- Behavior problems
A faulty gene on chromosome #4 causes HD. All people who inherit the faulty gene may eventually develop HD.
Risk Factors
Having family members with HD increases your chance of developing HD. Each person whose parent has HD has a 50% chance of inheriting the disorder.
Symptoms most often develop between the ages of 30-50 years. Symptoms are mild at first and are often barely noticeable, but usually worsen over 15-20 years.
Abnormal body movements that worsen over time, may include:
- Sudden jerks or uncontrolled movements of the limbs or trunk
- Facial grimacing
- Continuous need to turn head and shift gaze
- Walking that is unsteady or dance-like
Gradual deterioration or loss of intellectual abilities may include:
- Difficulty with eating and swallowing, which may result in weight loss
- Difficulty dressing, sitting, and caring for oneself
- Grunting or poor articulation of speech
Mental function and behavior problems may include:
- Trouble with attention and awareness
- Confusion or disorientation
- Loss of memory
- Loss of judgment
- Loss of ability to think rationally
- Irritability and moodiness
- Depression (common)
- Anxiety
- Social withdrawal or antisocial behavior
- Irresponsible behavior
- Personality changes
- Psychosis—a severe emotional and behavioral disorder that often interferes with a person's ability to relate to others and to function in daily life
- Paranoia—a mental disorder that involves feelings of being watched, followed, or harmed by others
- Hallucinations—the perception of a thing or person that is not present
Ultimately, HD can:
- Cause the loss of the physical and mental ability to care for oneself
- Cause severe disability, making full-time or nursing home care necessary
- Result in death, often due to a fall or pneumonia
You will be asked about your symptoms and medical history (including family medical history). A physical exam will be done.
Your bodily fluids may be tested. This can be done with blood tests.
Images may be taken of your bodily structures. This can be done with:
There is a test that can determine if a person has inherited the gene for HD. This test may help to make the diagnosis of HD. It may also help to determine if a person has inherited the HD gene before symptoms appear. Genetic counseling is advised before taking this test to review risks and benefits.
There is no cure for HD. Treatment aims to help control symptoms.
Drugs can help control abnormal movements and emotional symptoms of HD. These include:
- Tetrabenazine
- Antipsychotics
- Antidepressants
Physical Fitness
Staying physically active helps people with HD to function better and longer. Often, physical and occupational therapy may be of some benefit.
Psychological Support
Consider joining a support group for people with HD. It will help to learn how others are learning to live with the challenges of HD.
There is no way to prevent the onset of HD if a person has inherited the gene for the disorder. If you have a family history of HD, talk with a genetic counselor.
Revision Information
- Reviewer: EBSCO Medical Review Board Rimas Lukas, MD
- Review Date: 09/2018 -
- Update Date: 09/30/2014 -


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Starbucks Pay-it-forward-gate: A Pyramid Scheme of Good Cheer
Posted by TheShot on 20 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Starbucks
This year we've made a point of avoiding self-indulgent Starbucks posts. For one, there's a lot more to say about the future of good espresso than there is to rehash about its past — and Starbucks clearly represents its past. (Starbucks hasn't been relevant to good espresso for almost a decade.) For another, Starbucks gets far too much press and attention as it is, and we'd rather not flatter their navel-gazing PR staff any further.
However, there are occasional stories that rise above the ordinary Starbucks tedium and, after several days of droning, we just have to chime in. This time it's Starbucks' "Pass the Cheer" national ad campaign — and their accompanying hired play actors who help execute on the plan: Starbucks Pay-it-forward-gate.
The short of it is that gullible, underpaid newspaper reporters have recently picked up on "phenomena" at various Starbucks: random acts of double-tall, four-pump vanilla caramel macchiato kindness, with one customer buying for the other and passing it along the chain. Cynics have suspected some underhand corporate manipulation all along, and now the evidence is starting to spill out that Starbucks has opted for Viral Marketing 101 tactics in the hopes of re-inflating their flaccid stock price.
Given recent concerns over Starbucks' nasty case of stock price ED, I half-wondered if their viral marketers really should have instead considered passing along shares of Starbucks common stock. Clearly, no one wants to buy them. However, Starbucks' could get into serious hot gingerbread latte with the SEC over such a practice. So it looks like Starbucks' only legal pyramid scheme recourse had to be of the good will/press coverage variety. But a big Christmas good cheer to Starbucks' marketing department for hoping that the legal kind will help pass along the chain to become the illegal kind.
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[…] certainly wouldn't be the first time Starbucks had such allegations levelled at it. This blog uses a frightening amount of phallic metaphors to suggest that several years back, Starbucks was […]


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You hear the statistic all the time--so often, in fact, that it becomes noise: A laptop is stolen every 53 seconds. According to the FBI, 97 percent of them are never recovered.
I was content to labor blissfully away in the belief that laptop thefts happen to other people--until, in January, I became one of those other people. The crime itself was brazen: I was in the middle of typing an email when a young man snatched my laptop from beneath my fingertips, ran out the door of the Starbucks where I was seated, and jumped into a waiting car.
Frankly, I had let my guard down. I was a regular patron of the place, it was three o'clock in the afternoon, and plenty of witnesses were around. But it was all over in about 30 seconds.
The phenomenon is called "Apple picking," and it's an epidemic in major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York--as well as in Southern California suburbs, as it turned out. I later learned that in the course of just three days, thieves had picked off unsuspecting Apple users in at least 24 Starbucks locations around the region known as the Inland Empire.
Apple: Helpful to a point
When a thief absconds with your phone, tablet, or computer, naturally you call the police. But what should you do while you wait for law enforcement?
Apple's solution is the "Find My Mac" or "Find My iPhone" service. In both cases, the location tracking functions only if you've enabled the device's location services. (Find My Mac works only with Macs running OS X Lion or later.) Even then, police say, simply turning off the device easily defeats the feature. The advantage, however, is that users may be able to lock or delete the contents of their device remotely, thereby securing their data and making it harder for thieves to resell the machine.
My MacBook Pro was less than a month old. It was untethered, uninsured, and--as I realized a few minutes after the theft occurred--unconnected. Within a few minutes after my laptop was stolen, I launched my iPhone's Find My Phone app, which keeps track of all of my registered devices. For whatever reason, I had either forgotten to enable or absentmindedly disabled the location services on the MacBook. (The Find My Mac service does have its potential drawbacks, as Wired's Mat Honan learned--someone who cracks your password could theoretically use it to erase your computer.)
The good news is that even without location services, you can still lock or erase the machine remotely, but only when the device connects to the Internet. Weeks after my incident, the remote-erase action for my laptop still shows up as "pending" in Find My iPhone.
Apple itself is of little help in such cases. AppleCare's extended warranty doesn't cover theft or damage from crime. Visiting Apple's support page is a dead end. Clicking "product has been lost or stolen" gets you a curt reply: "If you have lost or found an Apple product, please contact your local law enforcement agency to report it. Choose another support topic to continue this online session."
At the encouragement of the local police officers investigating my theft, I called Apple's toll-free number and spoke with a customer service representative. After explaining my situation, and noting that the police had advised me to call, I spent a few minutes on hold as the representative conferred with a supervisor.
When the rep returned to the line, he said that he would make a note of the crime and my machine's serial number. He also gave me a "case number," before adding apologetically, "We don't really have any way in the system to flag stolen items."
Given the rise in Apple-related thefts--16,000 in New York last year alone--one would think the company would be keen on being more helpful to law enforcement, by, for example, creating and maintaining a database that could flag stolen goods that end up at an Apple Store Genius Bar.
Parties of the third part
Several third-party applications promise superior theft protection. All of them provide variations on the same service: When you report your equipment missing through a Web-based control panel, the software will attempt to locate your device using its geolocation features, if the device is connected to the Internet. All of these programs can also take surreptitious screenshots and photos using the device's iSight camera, and all include features that allow remote monitoring, locking, and deletion.
Flipcode's Hidden "boasts the most advanced theft tracking software for your Mac." I tested Hidden on my desktop computer, an iMac. Using nearby Wi-Fi points, the app placed my computer about a block and a half south of where I actually live. Close enough for government work? I tried a second test, which successfully located the machine. You can also enable the computer to take photos of the illicit user. Hidden's basic plan starts at $15 a year for one machine, with up to five licenses costing $45 annually.
Prey is a free, open-source alternative--and it was quite a bit more accurate than Hidden on my first go-round. Not only did Prey pinpoint my computer's exact location, but it also took a screenshot and a clandestine photo of me using the machine, and wrapped up all that data in an online report I could access from the Web. The "pro" version starts at $5 a month for up to three devices, and provides up to 100 reports, "on demand" activation, and an "active mode" that lets you keep track of your devices at all times, not just when they're missing.
Orbicule's Undercover 5 costs $49 a year for a single license, and $59 to protect up to five Macs. Undercover allows you to set up a theft report, which can deliver periodic photos, keylogs, and locations directly to your local police department if you happen to have your investigating officer's email address. But the app also offers a clever "Plan B" feature, which simulates a hardware failure on the device. Because most thieves aren't exactly criminal masterminds, they might be inclined to take the computer in for repair. When that happens, Undercover allows you to display a message notifying the user--or the repair technician, in this case--that the machine is stolen and locked.
Absolute Software's LoJack for Laptops uses a combination of software and human intelligence to locate your stolen device. If your Mac is stolen, the onus is on Absolute's recovery team to work with police to track down the system. The service comes in standard and premium editions, with the latter including a $1000 guarantee for $50 a year.
Safeguard your data
With your laptop in the hands of thieves, your other immediate concern is recovering any lost data. The fact is, police say, most thieves aren't interested in your data or personal information. They're looking for a quick and easy score, with the going rate for a stolen MacBook about $100.
Because my laptop was new, I didn't lose much data. Also, I use Dropbox's cloud-storage service. With plans starting at $10 a month (or $99 a year up front) for 100GB of storage, Dropbox provides a convenient way to sync and share files among several devices. Google Drive supplies 100GB for $5 a month, but, unlike Dropbox, limits file sizes to 10GB. Apple's own iCloud premium service offers quite a bit less for quite a lot more--20GB for $40 a year, or just 50GB for $100 a year. But iCloud, of course, includes other features, such as space to back up your iOS devices.
Lock it down
Within a week, I had my replacement MacBook Pro. The same day the new laptop arrived, a police detective notified me that he had several subjects in custody "on unrelated crimes."
Even if the culprits are off the streets, however, there's no point in taking chances. So I invested in a good laptop lock. Unfortunately, while the older MacBook Pro models still have a security slot, the marvelously slim and lightweight MacBook Airs and the new Retina-display MacBook Pros do not.
Kensington, which makes a variety of locks, appears to have a solution for almost everything. Its laptop locks range in price from $30 to $60, and come with keys or use combinations. Wrap the 6-foot steel cable around a secure table leg, and all but the most obtuse thieves should leave you alone. Most Apple Stores sell Kensington's $30 combination-lock model, but it isn't displayed on the floor; you have to ask for it.
Kensington also offers the SafeDock Air for 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models. Both retail for $90. As the name suggests, the SafeDock is a dock: Slide your in Air, flip up a security gate, and your machine is locked in. You still need a cable, though, to tie it down. The SafeDock is also ergonomic, providing a 4-inch lift for the laptop "for proper viewing."
Whereas Kensington locks use a MacBook's own security slot, Computer Security Products' Stop-Lock system requires attaching a security plate to the laptop's lid. At $44, Stop-Lock is competitive with Kensington's locks. Aesthetically, the Stop-Lock system might make Steve Jobs turn over in his grave, but it provides a double deterrent: a tight, keyed lock, plus a means of tracking and identifying the stolen computer if a thief somehow makes off with it. The plate is bar-coded; users register the ID number at Computer Security's website. Beneath the plate is a chemically bonded "tattoo" that says "stolen property" in bright, nonremovable red lettering.
Finally, for Apple's new Retina MacBooks, which lack the old security slot, Maclocks sells the $70 Security Clear Case Bundle. This clear, rigid polymer shell fixes to the bottom of the computer and incorporates the security slot to which you attach the included cable lock. The Clear Case also comes with a top clear polymer skin to help guard against scratches and wear and tear.
An ounce of prevention...
Perhaps one of the most important things to remember when you're securing your device is that thieves are less likely to steal what they cannot easily sell. Through a combination of software and hardware products, it's not hard to protect your MacBook from the scourge of Apple picking.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - To both critics and supporters, it was "classic" John Kerry.
A day before the formal end of Kerry's quixotic, nine-month effort to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, the Secretary of State was surreptitiously taped making a comment that provoked a political firestorm in Washington.
In a closed meeting with foreign policy experts, Kerry said that if there is no two-state solution soon, Israel risked becoming "an apartheid state." Kerry was apparently referring to an argument made by liberal Israelis and European critics that if two states are not created and current demographic trends continue, Palestinians will outnumber Israelis.
"A unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens," Kerry said on Friday, according to the Daily Beast. "Or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state."
The comment played into longtime caricatures of the former Senator. To skeptics, it was Kerry, the egotistical former presidential candidate, committing yet another gaffe. After months of pursuing an ambitious Middle East peace settlement, Kerry was blaming Israel for his own failure.
Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, called Kerry's statement "nonsensical and ridiculous." Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called for Kerry to resign.
To Kerry's defenders, it was a high-risk, high reward Secretary of State speaking the truth about the need for a two-state solution. On Monday night, Kerry said in a statement that he never said, or suggested, that Israel was currently an apartheid state.
And on Tuesday, his aides stood by the remarks, which they said was nothing more than Kerry reiterating a warning voiced by liberal Israeli politicians such as Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak for years.
"He said what Livni, Olmert and Barak all said," a senior State Department official close to Kerry said on Tuesday.
And instead of admitting failure, aides said Kerry would continue his Mideast negotiations after a pause of several months. After an initial domestic political boost, the aide predicted, Israeli and Palestinian officials would be forced back to the table by the long-term need for a two-state solution.
"It's a matter of time before they all come back," the aide predicted, "and want to have negotiations."
Bravado aside, the stakes for Kerry are vast. He has devoted more time and prestige to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks than any other foreign policy issue during his first year as Secretary of State.
Foreign policy experts say Kerry may be stretching himself too thin. In his first year, he has traveled more than any previous Secretary of State and thrown himself at multiple complex foreign policy issues, from Syria to Russia to South Sudan.
George Perkovich, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, said Kerry's work ethic was admirable but he needs to narrow his focus and rely more on others.
"You have to admire his willingness to risk his prestige and reputation in taking on the hardest challenges," Perkovich said. "At some point, you have to make strategic priorities and realize that solving big problems requires real sustained campaigns and mobilizing parts of the government. You can't just get on a plane and do it yourself."
The continued pursuit of fruitless Middle East peace talks could undermine his credibility in other parts of the world and eventually even could scuttle his tenure as secretary, experts say.
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. State Department peace negotiator now at the Wilson Center in Washington, said a separate danger was that the Israelis and Palestinians will use Kerry.
He said both sides appear unwilling to make the difficult compromises needed for a final settlement. But they were happy to drag on the talks for their own reasons. They allow Israel to avoid international condemnation, Miller said. And they allow the Palestinians to retain a degree of support from the United States.
"If, in fact, there is no real traction on the substance, he (Kerry) starts to become part of the political furniture for the Israelis and Palestinians," Miller said. "They start to take him for granted and they start to use his presence."
Ghaith Al-Omari, executive director of the Washington-based American Task Force on Palestine, said the failure of the talks was not due to missteps by Kerry. Instead, it was the result of complex Israeli and Palestinian domestic political dynamics that make historic concessions difficult. Regional powers Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also distracted by their struggles with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood and less likely to give political cover to the Palestinians.
"I think it was less of a failure of negotiations, more of when we came to the moment of decision," he said. "The leaders weren't ready and their political environments weren't ready."
Al-Omari also played down fears of renewed violence. He said that there were several differences between the current situation, and the collapse of talks in 2000.
Among the differences are Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' long-stated opposition to using violence as a tool to advance the Palestinian cause and that the United States, so far, has not blamed either side for the unraveling of the process.
In contrast, former U.S. President Bill Clinton made no secret of his view in 2000 that the Palestinian side had been the more intransigent. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat was more willing to employ, tolerate or encourage violence.
"Clinton did not create an exit ramp for anybody," Al-Omari said. "He did not leave any exit ramps."
Al-Omari added that he believed a return to talks was possible.
"It is not dead yet and therefore I would not exclude the possibility of some revival of the negotiations," he said. "Although the old challenges would remain - the regional and the political challenges."
Kerry, for his part, left Washington on Tuesday night for a week-long trip to Africa. An aide said he was showing "strategic patience" when it comes to the Middle East and "very serene and sanguine about it all."
Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Jason Szep and Grant McCool


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Hatefuck My Hippie AssholeFavorites [+]
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DRM-free downloads offer content that is not limited by standard Digital Rights Management (DRM) access technologies. These technologies allow hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to limit the usage of digital content.
When you purchase DRM-free downloadable content, that content is available for you to download on any computer and save to a disk whenever you like. You can also download to multiple computers. There is no timeframe associated with your purchase and the content will not expire.
Running Time: 36 minutes
Studio Name: Assylum
Categories: Anal All Sex Ass-to-mouth Rough Sex High Definition Redhead
Description: Alexa likes free love, so Dr. M freely assfucked her until her little butthole was spent and sore. He gave her a slobbery facefucking using her peace pendant as a choker-like handle around her neck. And he made her eat his ass and feet. Then he filled her peace pipe with his cum and made her suck it down her gullet.
2 Scenes from Hatefuck My Hippie Asshole
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Starring: Dr. Mercies Alexa Nova ... More Details
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Studio: Assylum
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I'm trying to copy a verse from the NET Bible using the Copy Center, and I want the export to include the NET notes. Clicking on "Format Options" allows me to select to include "Translator Notes." Click ok, click copy > the verse copies, but there are not any notes.
Am I missing something? Thanks for any help.
(I also tried it on NRS verse where there are verse notes, and it similarly only copied the verse without notes)
(BW 6.0.010z on WinXP)


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Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Lead Pipe. Do you remember Clue?
I'd like to play a game of Clue, sort of. But let's just do the juicy bit: the murder.
Person, place, weapon. If you are writing mystery, those three elements are an integral part of the plot and story. Even if you are writing the mystery as high-concept, at some point, someone is going to die at the hands of someone else.
I think now is a good time to explore the sister arts of shuffling someone prematurely off this mortal coil and deceiving the authorities. After prolonged exposure to family over the holidays, writers' thoughts must inevitably turn to murder... at least on paper.
So, tell me how you would 'kill' some of your 'favourite' relatives. Pseudonyms are encouraged to protect sweet old aunties who surf blogs from slicing you out of the will!
Rules are, it should be a relative (in honour of the Christmas season); details on how you would deceive the authorities are required; and, finally, give us a great setting!
Comment, and we will vote for the most creative, evil, funny or just plain shocking dispatch & cover.
Winner will receive a free copy of The Ophelia Trap, in a format of your choosing (up to and including a signed paperback). Why? Because I am out of chocolates and wrapping paper, that's why.
Voting will depend upon participation, as will date of announcement of the winner.
Kate Burns


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Dear Dr. Don,
I'm planning to buy a house. Which is the best mortgage loan option?
-- Johnny Judgment
Dear Johnny,
Start out by asking yourself how much house you can comfortably afford, given your income and what you have available for a down payment. Bankrate's "How much house can you afford?" calculator will help you answer that question.
If you don't have much money for a down payment, then you'll want to look into Federal Housing Administration, or FHA, loans. This mortgage option allows you to get a loan with just a 3.5 percent down payment. Veterans can follow a similar path with a Veterans Affairs mortgage.
Conventional financing requires private mortgage insurance if the loan-to-value is greater than 80 percent. That means you'd need to make a 20 percent down payment to avoid PMI. Paying PMI isn't the end of the world, but it is an added monthly expense in the early years of a mortgage. PMI typically goes away over time as you pay down your mortgage and build equity in your home.
If you plan on being in the home for a relatively short time, there's another mortgage loan option to consider. I'd suggest a hybrid loan that roughly matches the time you expect to be in the home. A 5/1 adjustable-rate mortgage has a fixed rate for the first five years, and then the interest rate resets annually. As I write this, Bankrate's national average for a 5/1 ARM is 2.72 percent, versus a 3.57 percent rate for a conventional 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Don't lock into a 30-year rate if you expect to be a short-timer in the loan.
Get more news, money-saving tips and expert advice by signing up for a free Bankrate newsletter.
Ask the adviser
To ask a question of Dr. Don, go to the "Ask the Experts" page and select one of these topics: "Financing a home," "Saving & Investing" or "Money." Read more Dr. Don columns for additional personal finance advice.
Bankrate's content, including the guidance of its advice-and-expert columns and this website, is intended only to assist you with financial decisions. The content is broad in scope and does not consider your personal financial situation. Bankrate recommends that you seek the advice of advisers who are fully aware of your individual circumstances before making any final decisions or implementing any financial strategy. Please remember that your use of this website is governed by Bankrate's Terms of Use.
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Recent News
December 21, 2010
State health department offers advice on how to reduce your risk from carbon monoxide poisoning
Home heating systems help ward off winter's chill, but faulty systems also increase the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services urges Missourians to ensure their furnaces and other heat sources are working properly to prevent carbon monoxide from seeping into their homes.
"Carbon monoxide is an invisible, odorless and tasteless gas that can make you sick," said Margaret Donnelly, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. "In high quantities, it can kill."
Last year, 90 people in Missouri died from carbon monoxide exposure and more than 289 others were sent to hospital emergency departments.
Carbon monoxide is released when fuels - including gasoline, natural gas, propane, kerosene, charcoal and wood - are burned. Carbon monoxide poisoning can come from a variety of sources including furnaces, space heaters, stoves, generators, hot water heaters, clothes dryers, kerosene heaters, wood stoves and fireplaces. Cars, trucks and boats can also produce high levels of carbon monoxide.
Because the gas can easily go unnoticed, the department recommends using carbon monoxide detectors, which are similar to smoke detectors. They are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased at department or hardware stores and online. The detectors will alert residents to the presence of carbon monoxide before symptoms of poisoning appear.
"By the time you experience symptoms, it may be too late to call for help," Donnelly said. "If you suspect carbon monoxide in your home or vehicle, you need to exit your house or car and seek fresh air immediately."
Early symptoms of carbon monoxide exposure include:
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Weakness
- Sleepiness
- Nausea
- Vomiting
Carbon monoxide can also cause people with heart disease to develop an irregular heartbeat. Exposure to higher concentrations of the gas can cause disorientation, coma and convulsions, eventually concluding in death.
Anyone who suspects they are suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning should get fresh air immediately and seek medical help.
Additional precautions to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning include:
- Install and operate natural gas-fueled appliances according to the manufacturer's instructions;
- Have your home heating and ventilation systems inspected annually;
- Do not use natural gas-fueled appliances such as an oven, cooking stove or clothes dryer to heat your home, even for a short time;
- Do not burn charcoal inside a house, garage, vehicle, or tent or in a fireplace for heating or cooking;
- Do not use unvented gas or kerosene heaters in closed spaces, especially near or in sleeping areas; Opening a door or window does not allow enough fresh air to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning;
- Never leave an automobile running in a closed garage or in a garage attached to the house even with the garage door open;
- Do not use any gasoline-powered engines, such as mowers, weed trimmers, chainsaws, power washers or generators, in enclosed spaces;
- Be aware that all boat motors are a source of carbon monoxide. Do not allow any swimming near the exhaust and keep children away from the boat motor;
- Do not leave the rear window or back door of a vehicle open while driving, and repair leaking exhaust pipes and mufflers on automobiles.
Click here for more information about preventing carbon monoxide poisoning.