Retired judge considers roots of imprisonment of teenager
By Chloe Murdock
BridgeTower Media Newswires
ST. LOUIS, MO — Bobby Bostic and his family planned to join retired Judge Evelyn Baker for Thanksgiving dinner as he adjusts to life outside of prison and she decides her next steps as a justice system advocate.
In December 1995, Bostic and an 18-year-old robbed a group of people while armed, and later robbed and detained a woman in her car that same day. When Baker sentenced Bostic to a 241-year sentence in the late 1990s, she said she had considered his arrogance during the trial as that of an adult, not a 16-year old’s bluster and bravado.
“When I sentenced Bobby, I expected him to be dead in five years,” Baker said.
Bostic survived his 21st birthday and managed to continue his education in prison. Baker was a former prosecutor who was the first Black woman to be appointed as a judge in Missouri in 1983. She changed, too, eventually retiring from the St. Louis Circuit Court bench in 2008. Baker realized her decision had gone too far after she learned the science of how the brain isn’t fully formed as a teenager.
“She went out of her way to make it right,” Tony Rothert, Bostic’s attorney, said.
The rest of the nation was watching Bostic sue for his freedom and waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on whether it would hear his case. So was Baker, though she also awaited a call from someone like Rothert, Bostic’s attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union in Missouri who left her a message asking for her support.
“How can I help?” Baker said when she called him back.
Within the week, she wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled, “I sentenced a teen to die in prison. I regret it.” By the time she visited Bostic for the first time in prison, Baker had signed a 2017 amicus brief of more than a hundred former judges, prosecutors and other justice system professionals asking the U.S. Supreme Court to accept Bostic’s case, although it denied his petition to be heard.
“I sentenced this kid to 241 years, and he greets me with a hug,” she said.
During that visit, Bostic also told Baker about his life before prison.
“Judge Baker was not the first person in government to treat him like he was a fully formed adult [as a child],” Rothert said.
As a kindergartener, Bostic’s school first started suspending him for fights that broke out over his school clothes. Bobby was ahead of his grade level in a school without advanced programs, and his family struggled to pay rent and other bills or have enough food to eat.
“I think if the family had gotten the necessary help way back when, Bobby wouldn’t have wound up in the situation he was in,” Baker said. “I don’t fault his mother, but I fault the system, which doesn’t provide adequate help to families, especially families with children.”
His suspensions turned into police calls to the school as Bostic got older, although he was still a child. Then the Dec. 12, 1995 robbery altered the next 27 years of his life.
Baker testified before the Missouri legislature in support of a bill inspired by Bostic’s case that would allow people sentenced as minors to apply for parole after serving 15 years. The bill became law in the summer of 2021, which meant Bostic and hundreds of other people imprisoned as minors could be freed from jail.
Parole hearings allow a single advocate to join a defendant, and Baker was the obvious choice for Bostic. It paid off to have the judge who sentenced him on his side. He was released on Nov. 9. In a press conference that day, he spoke about how he furthered his education and “reading, writing and helping others” while still in prison.
“I did these things not for the parole board — as my sentence did not allow me to even ask for parole until I turned 112 years old,” Bostic said. “Instead, I studied to improve myself, to start on the journey to become a better person than I was when I entered prison.”
Baker noted that day how she would have re-written her decision if she had known what she knows now.
“I think this should have happened 10 years ago or more,” Baker said.
Rothert drove Baker to and from Jefferson City for Bostic’s release, and he noticed a marked change.
“She looked like a different person when I dropped her off,” Rothert said. “She just told me she felt like she was floating.”
Hundreds more like Bostic in Missouri are now getting their own parole hearings.
“Fortunately, there are a lot of little Bobbies getting out,” Baker said.
Now 42, Bostic is mentoring minors in juvenile detention centers. While in prison, he lost several family members and couldn’t attend their funerals as a result. Bostic and his surviving family members planned to spend Thanksgiving with Baker, who was preparing a spread of turkey, ham, roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans and a mushroom dish for vegetarians in the family.
“Part of the future is looking out for Bobby, and again trying to prevent other Bobbies,” Baker said. “There were a lot of problems in the family that created that kid. But there were a lot of people in that family that created the man he is today.”
Family support has been a key part of Bostic’s safety net catching him after his release. As Bostic helps with a family business and his nieces and nephews teach him how to use the latest cell phone, Baker now wants to direct her energy toward restorative justice.
“The way the Department of Corrections, the way we sentence people, we need to factor in that people can change,” Baker said.
As of Nov. 17, she’s not sure yet what vehicle to take to tackle that. But she happens to align with the ACLU’s new focus on addressing the root issues of the school-to-prison pipeline that led to Bostic’s imprisonment.
“We need to stop criminalizing childhood behavior,” Baker said.
Baker noted the lack of rehabilitation opportunities for people in prison unless they, like Bostic, have the family support to provide educational and other resources to do that. She also noted there are more people in the Department of Corrections than there are people helped through state mental health services.
“Our whole system needs to be revamped,” Baker said.
