For the Love of Nathan

The secrets of Nathan Ybanezs home life began spilling out in late 1997.

The 15-year-old told friends his dad was beating him. Parents of a schoolmate alerted police that they believed he was being abused. And one night, Nathan called the Douglas County Sheriff's Office himself after wandering the streets for two days.

"Nathan said he is unable to live at home with his parents," an officer wrote in a report, adding that the teenager wouldn't explain why he had run away. "Nathan requested social services be contacted for relocation."

The deputy instead returned Nathan to his mother, but the Sheriff's Office refuses to say whether child welfare workers were called. Eight months later, the boy beat and strangled his mother, Julie, with a fireplace tool in their Highlands Ranch apartment.

"I had to kill my mom so she wouldn't hurt me anymore," Nathan later told friends.

He was tried right after Columbine and received a 3-day trial, in which abuse was never mentioned. Nathan has been behind bars approximately 7 years now. The Douglas County district attorney exercised his discretion to bypass the juvenile justice system, filing first-degree murder charges in adult criminal court. At trial, Nathans defense attorney, hired by his father, didn't call a single witness on his behalf and at one point remarked to jurors that his client may have a "hole" in his soul.

The verdict was guilty, carrying the mandatory maximum sentence: life without parole.

Yet jurors and the public never heard Nathans story of abuse. They never heard testimony from relatives who witnessed his father, Roger Ybanez, handling him violently. They never saw the sheriff's report containing his plea for help. They never heard his testimony about being raped by his parents.

And they never heard scientific research or expert testimony that could have shown he fits the profile of a battered kid whose inner turmoil reached a breaking point. That evidence could have built a foundation for a self-defense or crime- of-passion strategy.

To child-advocacy organizations, Nathans conviction symbolizes how the state's judicial system has moved from rehabilitation to extreme punishment.

Nathan was brutally abused by both his parents. We as a society created Nathan and we as a society failed him.

We ask that Governor Owens grant a commutation of sentence for time served.