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ADAMS COUNTY SHOOTING
Co-worker voiced fear of deputy’s behavior after fatal shooting of Yantis Adams County Sheriff’s Lt. Steve Phillips went to his boss and law enforcement authorities in McCall, Valley County and Ada County to express concern about colleague Brian Wood, one of the deputies who killed rancher Jack Yantis. Wood called Phillips’ statements “slander” and “lies.”
BY CYNTHIA SEWELL
csewell@idahostatesman.com
A co-worker of one of two sheriff’s deputies who killed Adams County rancher Jack Yantis last November told state
investigators in January that he thought the deputy’s behavior and mental state two months after the shooting threatened his and others’ safety. Adams County Sheriff’s Lt. Steve Phillips told Idaho State Police detectives that he was frightened by Deputy Brian Wood’s comments, actions and
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expert marksmanship, and that he feared for his life and his family’s. Phillips, a seasoned law enforcement Brian Wood officer, said he ultimately left both his job and Adams County to distance himself from Wood. In late December and January, Wood contemplated suicide and threatened to shoot any law enforcement officers who tried to take his gun or detain him, Phillips told the detectives on Jan. 22. “He’s one of those guys that if he goes off his rocker, he’s gonna be somethin’ to handle,” Phillips said. Phillips’ concerns led the Ada
County Sheriff’s Office to alert local law enforcement officers that Wood posed a possible threat. No incidents involving Wood were reported then or since. The Idaho Statesman obtained a transcript of the detectives’ interview with Phillips through an open-records request. The transcript and subsequent claims by Phillips and Wood tell a complicated tale of friends turned adversaries. Finding the truth is difficult, because Phillips, Wood and other authorities will say little on the record. But Phillips’ interview with ISP made clear that he and some other Idaho law enforcement officers SEE SHOOTING, 6A
DEPTH: IN CRISIS - IDAHO’S MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM
Seeking hospitalization, they got jail, and tragedy BIG SEPTEMBER CALENDAR
OUTDOOR FUN KEEPS COMING IN AUTUMN From the Hyde Park Street Fair to Art in the Park, from hot air balloons to beer festivals, stay busy outside. EXPLORE, 6-8D
TIM WOODWARD
BACK FROM AFRICA, COUNTING BLESSINGS A Kenya trip is an eye-opening experience in many ways. Mainly you become more thankful for what you have. EXPLORE, 1D
TERRORISM
ISLAMIC STATE TAKEN DOWN A NOTCH Victories in both Iraq and Syria have brought optimism about the effort to diminish ISIS, but it still can attack. NEWS, 13A DARIN OSWALD doswald@idahostatesman.com
Mark and Sharon Youngberg, of Emmett, have left their son Nigel’s bedroom unchanged since his death last spring. After a longtime battle with mental illness, Nigel’s schizophrenia led to a psychotic episode. He was confronted by Gem County sheriff’s deputies on April 10 but fled into the hills in the dark of night, wearing a bathrobe. Sixteen days later, his body was found 11 miles away, near Montour. The Youngbergs say they asked law enforcement officers multiple times that week to take Nigel to a hospital, under Idaho’s mentalhold law, but were denied. Instead he wound up in jail for a few hours. Now they’re fighting to change Idaho’s practices when it comes to dealing with the mentally ill. Audrey Dutton has their story. DEPTH, 1C IDAHO HISTORY
GUEST OPINION
Welsh-born residents helped shape state in 20th century 9A
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Depth EYES ON IDAHO BY ROBERT EHLERT
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COMMENTARY WHERE ARE THE PROMINENT, SERIOUS CHRISTIAN POLITICAL COMMENTATORS? 4C
Lincoln’s words expose present political drama’s shallowness The level of demonizing and name-calling by the major party presidential candidates has driven me to seek solace in history. Early this week, at the urging of David Leroy, a President Abraham Lincoln scholar, I immersed myself in the deep, wide and soothing pools of Lincoln wisdom. Figuring wings
of our contemporary political system have surely lost their way, I focused on some of these words — many still debated and some condemned — as my reset button. Turns out my personal quest may soon have a formal option and location, because Leroy, former Idaho lieutenant governor and attorney general, is
working to create the Idaho Lincoln Institute, a nonprofit that would do “opinion research, public education and political presentations on modern issues and Lincoln’s views.” Leroy says to look for more information on this project after Labor Day. Lincoln, our 16th president, was elected with less than 40
percent of the vote. He was nonetheless a lightning rod who accomplished much from 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He is someone most of the modern GOP claims as one of its own, and a man the leaders of both parties revere. He freed the slaves, yes, but in the process suffered the Civil War, with a bloody toll and scar that prompted his Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, SEE EHLERT, 3C
U.S. GOVERNMENT
Push to alter Constitution by rallying the states BY MICHAEL WINES
New York Times News Service
DARIN OSWALD doswald@idahostatesman.com
Mark Youngberg, left, offers a prayer before dinner with his wife, Sharon, and sons Malcolm, center left, and Marcus. The family is still coming to terms with Nigel Youngberg’s death in April. They asked police repeatedly for help and feel they were shortchanged.
IN CRISIS: IDAHO’S MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM
Family of mentally ill man who died cites a lack of help Nigel Youngberg wandered into the hills of Gem County. His family says his death could have been prevented, and they want state and local authorities to change their rules and practices when it comes to the forced hospitalization of people experiencing a severe mental health crisis. BY AUDREY DUTTON
adutton@idahostatesman.com
N
igel Youngberg was in the upstairs bathroom for seven hours straight the weekend he went missing. A late-night shower always made him feel better. His mother thought of it like the hug machine invented by Temple Grandin to soothe herself when autism made life too stressful. Nigel would hug himself with the warm water when his schizophrenia became too painful. But this was an unusually long shower. Nigel’s father, Mark Youngberg, woke at 9 a.m. that Saturday to find water coming through the kitchen ceiling. The deluge stopped when Mark turned off the water to the whole house. By then,
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Average number of 24-hour mental holds by Gem County police and sheriff’s deputies each year, from fiscal 2011 to 2016, ending with longer-term involuntary hospitalization in about a third of cases
Nigel had barricaded himself in the bathroom. He left the water running because — he later told his mother — he thought it would clean up the germs. He could tell his parents were upset about the water, so he hid in the bathroom. Then he ran. He climbed out the window and grabbed a bicycle with two flat tires from the shed of the family home, just outside Emmett’s city limits. He took off down the road. When he returned later that day, he was drenched and covered in sand. His temper was flaring. Sharon thought, as she often did, “If a police officer would come and just see how he was acting, they would know he wasn’t well.” Mark and Sharon Youngberg knew their 30-year-old son’s patterns by that April day, 15 years after he was first diagnosed with a severe mental illness. For a while, his bipolar and schizoaffective disorders responded to medications. He excelled in school and took a shine to physics. He attended Boise State University for two years and had a 3.9 grade point average, according to his obituary. He got back the
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ARE THEY HARMFUL TO THEMSELVES, OR ARE THEY HARMFUL TO SOMEONE ELSE? … ARE THEY ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES WITHOUT SUPERVISION? Gem County Sheriff Chuck Rolland on questions his deputies should ask when considering a mental hold gleaming eyes of his childhood, when his favorite things included video games and Lagoon, an amusement park near Salt Lake City. Nigel had shelter, a close family and health insurance coverage from his mother’s job, as well as from Medicaid and Medicare. He had access to prescriptions, which many Idahoans with mental illness do not. He was religious — a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and found solace in prayer, his mother said. His family said he never drank or turned to drugs. But in recent years, the medications didn’t work as
Provided by Youngberg family
Nigel Youngberg, then 29, took a trip to Redondo Beach in Southern California last summer with his father, Mark. It was one of the last times Nigel was “clear,” his father said. The family made the same trip during Nigel’s childhood, but he missed out on seeing the beach because of behavioral issues they later learned were caused by his mental illness.
well as they once did. Nigel didn’t like the side effects, either. So, like many people who need medications for a mental illness, he stopped taking them as soon as he felt better. It was a cycle: Go off his meds in the winter, be very sick by spring, spend two months in the hospital, come home to recover during the summer, feel “normal” in the fall. April often was the worst month, when everything came to a head. This year, April was the month Nigel Youngberg died after wandering the hills of Gem County in a bathrobe, windbreaker and tennis shoes. His parents and siblings say SEE NIGEL, 2C
Taking advantage of almost a decade of political victories in state legislatures across the country, conservative advocacy groups are quietly marshaling support for an event unprecedented in the nation’s history: a convention of the 50 states, summoned to consider amending the Constitution. The groups are an amalgam of free-market, low-tax and small-government proponents, often funded by corporations and deeply conservative supporters such as the billionaire Koch brothers and Donors Trust, whose contributors are mostly anonymous. They want an amendment to require a balanced federal budget, an idea many conservatives have embraced, many economists disdain and Congress has failed to endorse for decades. But as the groups near their goal, critics and some skeptical constitutional scholars are warning that holding an amendment-writing meeting with no historical parallel and no written rules could open a Pandora’s box of constitutional mischief. The process, which is playing out largely beyond public notice, rests on a clause in Article 5 of the Constitution that allows the states to sidestep Congress and draft their own constitutional amendments whenever two-thirds of their legislatures demand it. That will by no means be easy. Even if the two-thirds threshold were reached, a convention would probably face a court battle over whether the legislatures’ calls for a convention were sufficiently similar. And as with any amendment that Congress proposes, statewritten amendments would need approval by three-quarters of the states — either by their legislatures or by state conventions — to take effect. But as Republicans have surged to control of state legislatures and moved sharply rightward during the Obama years, what was once a pet SEE CONSTITUTION, 3C
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ONCE YOU HAVE A CONVENTION, THEN IN SOME RESPECTS IT BECOMES A FREE-FOR-ALL. ALL BETS ARE OFF. Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor and scholar in residence at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia
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Depth
SUNDAY AUGUST 28 2016 IDAHOSTATESMAN.COM
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OUR LAW PROTECTS THE MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IN OUR COMMUNITY FROM UNWARRANTED INTRUSION INTO THEIR LIVES AND GIVES OUR POLICE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DEAL WITH MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES WHEN THEY ARISE.
IT WOULD BE LIKE IF YOUR SON HAD CANCER, AND HE HAD TO GO TO JAIL FOR IT. Sharon Youngberg, Nigel’s mother
Gem County Prosecutor Richard Linville
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FROM PAGE 1C
NIGEL his death could have been avoided if police had heeded their requests to take him into custody and get him to a hospital earlier in the week, as his psychosis worsened. His brother Malcolm wrote in a Facebook post: “Afflictions of the mind come in all degrees and varieties, but my brother was only 15 years old when he was struck with a harrowing loss of something we take for granted every day: the ability to experience reality through a clear lens, and to engage in it with the full joy humans were intended to.” ‘HE WAS THE WORST I’VE EVER SEEN HIM’ Nigel Youngberg’s family hopes his death will illuminate the cracks in Idaho’s psychiatric commitment laws, which Emmett’s police chief says are vague, subjective and taxing to carry out in rural communities. The death also highlights the problem of law enforcement officers who lack mental health training but are expected to act as first responders in a crisis, when it can be hard to tell violent psychosis from garden-variety criminal behavior. Gem County Sheriff Chuck Rolland told the Statesman that Nigel Youngberg did not meet the criteria to be taken to a hospital. Rolland and Gem County Prosecutor Richard Linville say Idaho also has broader problems with its mental health system: a lack of funding and, especially in rural areas, a scarcity of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. Linville wants more options beyond hospitalization. He wants a crisis center or a place for psychiatric patients to go during the day, where someone can monitor them and catch the red flags when they become ill again. “In my opinion, the mental health system needs to be relooked at,” he said in an interview. “I’m going to a mental health summit in September, and I’m going to talk about Nigel and the things that went on with him that I know about.” Nigel Youngberg had been cycling between calm and erratic behavior all week by the time he flooded the bathroom April 9. When he got like that, even his eyes changed, said his sister, Rachel Millburn. She could tell Sick Nigel from Healthy Nigel based on whether his pupils were dilated. “When he gets shark eyes, you know he’s not there anymore,” said Millburn, who lives in Virginia. “The last time I saw him was in February, and he was not there. He was just being weird. He was the worst I’ve ever seen him.” His parents did not know what he might do next — whether he would be the gentle, childlike Nigel who wanted hugs or the paranoid Nigel who once ripped a telephone from the wall when someone used it to call 911. Nigel was edging into
that dark territory where his mind would mistake his loved ones for devils. Sharon was scared for his safety and theirs. She wanted someone to put him on a “mental hold” — to take him into protective custody and get him to a hospital until he could be evaluated by a “designated examiner” for court-ordered commitment. Sharon called the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Region 3 crisis line for help on Thursday, April 7, hoping a mental health professional could respond. The crisis worker called Gem County sheriff’s dispatch. “[He has a] history of mental health problems, and his family called concerned. He’s acting paranoid and potentially violent and potentially gravely disabled due to mental illness,” the worker said, according to a tape of the call obtained by the Idaho Statesman. “They’re concerned about him and would like to see if he can be placed on a hold. … When she left for work this morning, she was concerned that he was acting paranoid and violent.” Someone who is “gravely disabled” by a mental illness can be put on a mental hold in Idaho. When a sheriff’s deputy showed up at the door that day — three days before he went missing — Nigel was calmer. He put on the nothing-to-seehere persona that he often could muster when dealing with people outside the family, Sharon said. He hated going to the hospital and knew it was a possibility that day. Taking Nigel to the hospital themselves was not an option. Sharon and Mark tried not to drive long distances with Nigel when he was sick, because he might grab the steering wheel or worse. Rolland told the Statesman that his deputy found Nigel “very easy to get along with. Talked about he didn’t like his medication.” The deputy told Sharon and Mark their son did not qualify for the mental hold. Sharon responded, “We’ll call you when somebody’s dead.” A DRIVE TO THE POLICE STATION The weekend Nigel flooded the kitchen, he came home after what his family assumes was one of the many dips he took in a nearby canal. He yelled at his parents, called them profanities and accused his father of abusing him. Sharon coaxed Nigel outside, into the front yard, where he tried to get her to sit on the lawn with him but got too rough with her. She jumped into her truck and locked the doors, then decided it would be best to leave. Nigel grabbed the truck bed as she was driving away, dragging his bare feet on the road. He climbed into the truck bed and tried to get into the cab as Sharon called 911, saying she was driving to the police station and to be ready for them. An Emmett police offi-
I THINK WE NEED TO HAVE A LITTLE MORE LENIENCY ON WHO WE PUT ON MENTAL HOLDS. Emmett Police Chief Gary Scheihing
Provided by Youngberg family
Sharon and Mark Youngberg visit the grave of their son earlier this month in Bountiful, Utah. It was the first time they saw his headstone. “It’s not easy seeing his name on that, but we are very grateful we could find his body and honor him as best as we could,” Mark said. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If someone you know is in crisis Call 2-1-1 for the Idaho Careline or 9-1-1 for emergencies. Call the Idaho Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. Click here for your local mental health crisis line. The crisis line for Ada, Boise, Elmore, Valley counties is (208) 334-0808. The crisis line for Adams, Canyon, Gem, Owyhee, Payette and Washington counties is (208) 459-0092. .................................................................................................................
cer and a Gem County sheriff’s deputy met them outside. “Sharon stated that Nigel goes through times of being sane and then will go through stages of being unmanageable,” said a report by the Emmett officer, Charmaine Williams. “Sharon stated that Nigel is 30 years old and still lives with them, because he can’t take care of himself due to his illness.” The family asked Williams and the sheriff’s deputy to put Nigel on a mental hold at that point. Williams phoned Emmett Police Deputy Chief Steve Kunka for guidance. “My take was that there was not the elements that you needed for a mental hold,” Kunka told the Statesman. “He did not have a plan of committing suicide, so the two elements were not met.” But Kunka concluded that Nigel had committed a crime — battery on his mother — so he could be jailed. “I did feel like it was very important for the family to be on board with the decision,” Kunka said. Emmett police typically use mental holds for people who are contemplating suicide, according to Kunka and Police Chief Gary Scheihing. When someone does need to go on a mental hold, it is not unusual for a city officer to be taken off the streets for six to eight hours, waiting until a hospital can take the person. On the graveyard shift, that leaves one officer of the 13-member force to patrol the city of 6,600 people. Rolland said his deputies can spend eight to 24 hours sitting in the hospital during a mental hold. “It’s not easy to get them into a bed,” he said. “We have to wait until they tell us they have someplace for us.” Nigel had received emergency psychiatric care at West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Intermountain Hospital in Boise and a Saint Alphonsus center in Boise.
Scheihing said his force now takes people who need mental holds to hospitals in Canyon County. They are farther away but better equipped than the small Emmett hospital — the former Walter Knox Memorial Hospital, now Valor Health — to deal with uncooperative patients. “A mental hold is not an easy thing in Emmett,” Scheihing said. “It’s just a pain in the butt to do it, and it shouldn’t be that way. … It should be easy in Gem County. We shouldn’t have to haul them to Nampa. We don’t even have a designated examiner in this area.” Kunka moved to Idaho from Nebraska. There, he said, a mental health professional would meet the police officer on the scene during crisis cases. “That was really beneficial and helpful,” he said. “That helped cut down on sending people out of town.” There is no true counterpart to the Nebraska system in Gem County, he said. A mobile crisis unit in Ada County sends clinicians along with police officers out on 911 calls that involve a mental health issue. The unit closest to Gem County is based in Caldwell. In Boise, the police department has a crisis intervention team of officers specially trained to deal with mental illness. ‘GRAVELY DISABLED ... IMMINENT DANGER’ Nigel Youngberg’s parents could not force him to keep taking his medication. They tried a toughlove approach for a while, making his room and board at home contingent on taking his meds. But it felt demeaning, Sharon said. The Youngbergs say Nigel died because the law was not properly carried out. They cite a section of Idaho code that reads, “… A person may be taken into custody by a peace officer and placed in a facility … if the peace officer … has reason to
believe that the person is gravely disabled due to mental illness or the person’s continued liberty poses an imminent danger to that person or others, as evidenced by a threat of substantial physical harm … .” Rolland said he is “not in a position to say the law’s fair or unfair.” Scheihing said the law’s wording is too vague and subjective. “Gravely mentally ill. What the hell does that mean? It means something different to me than it does to you,” Scheihing said. “The law needs to be more specific, I think. … Making an arrest on somebody, it’s clear cut what you can arrest about.” And the people trying to interpret the law are law enforcement officers, not trained mental health professionals. The Emmett Police Department has sent one officer to the same kind of training that is used by the Boise Police Department’s crisis intervention team. The department’s goal is to get everyone better trained in mental health. According to Sharon, Mark and their son Marcus, the family also asked Deputy Kirk Weber to take Nigel to a hospital on the Saturday that he and Sharon ended up at the police station in the truck. Weber refused. The Gem County sheriff’s manual states the law, then lists criteria deputies can use to figure out whether a mental hold is appropriate: A Observations by deputies, including a person’s statements, injuries, emotional state, “apparent means to carry out the threat” and a history of depression and/or suicide attempts. A Witness observations and statements. A A medical professional’s observations and opinions. A Recommendations of the Mobile Crisis Unit. The county does not have a mobile crisis unit of its own. The Youngbergs saw their options as taking Nigel home, trying to drive him to a hospital, or pressing charges to get him into a place with security. The law did give them a fourth option: They could have asked the court for a mental hold themselves. Families rarely use that process, which takes up to two weeks. The Youngbergs didn’t know it was an option, Mark said. “While speaking with
Sharon, her husband Mark and son Marcus came to our location,” the police report said. “Mark was very hesitant for Sharon to agree to press charges on Nigel for battery but later agreed it was the safest thing for both of them if Nigel was arrested.” Within hours, Nigel was released on bail and walked home. A bail company posted a bond for him. His parents do not know where he got bail money. “After he came home … I felt so bad because his feet were all scraped up, and I told him, ‘Nigel, you go take a bath and soak your feet,’ ” Sharon said. “And after I bandaged them, he gave me a big hug, and he was so sweet. … I said, ‘Don’t worry, I will drop the charges.’ ” Marcus, who is friends with Sheriff Rolland’s son, went to the sheriff’s home that night to ask why his deputies refused to take Nigel in a police car to a hospital. Rolland told the Statesman that he did not recall the Youngbergs ever complaining about how the Sheriff’s Office handled incidents with Nigel. However, he remembered Marcus’s visit when asked about it. He said he told Marcus the criteria for a mental hold, which he thought Nigel had failed to meet. That wasn’t the first time Nigel went to jail. He had been arrested in 2009 in a similar incident when he destroyed the home phone and hit his father. He pleaded guilty and was placed on probation. A couple of months later, his father went to the Sheriff’s Office asking for help again. When deputies arrived at the house, Nigel’s parents remember him showing his baptismal certificate when the officers asked for identification. The deputies took him away on a mental hold. He ended up in the state psychiatric hospital in Orofino. According to the family, law enforcement officers this year told them to continue to call 911 and to press charges when Nigel acted up, and that eventually a judge would see how sick Nigel was. So Mark Youngberg kept notes of the events each day, including that Sunday when Nigel went missing: “4/10/16: Had a belated birthday dinner for Marcus and almost made it through the meal without a fight. Poor Nigel is very paranoid and believes everything is directed at him. Later in the evening he started bullying me and got a little bit physical ... and when SEE NIGEL, 3C
Depth
SUNDAY AUGUST 28 2016 IDAHOSTATESMAN.COM
FROM PAGE 1C
CONSTITUTION project of the party’s fringe has become a proposal with a plausible chance of success. Some of the former Republican presidential candidates, including comparative moderates like John Kasich and Jeb Bush, have endorsed a state amendment convention. So far, 28 states have adopted resolutions calling for a convention on a balanced-budget amendment, including 10 in the past three years, and two, Oklahoma and West Virginia, this spring. That is just six states short of the 34 needed to invoke the Article 5 clause. “I think the prospect is very good in 2017,” said Gary Banz, a Republican who is the majority whip in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. “You can look at any number of states that are not on board yet, and they’re controlled by very conservative elements.’’ Including nominally nonpartisan Nebraska, Republicans now control 31 state assemblies — more than double the number in 2010. Of the 11 states advocacy groups have targeted for proconvention lobbying next year, Republicans control both houses of the Legislature in seven. Representative Banz is among those leading the charge. In addition to his statehouse job, he is the national secretary of the
American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit financed by corporate and private donors, including the Kochs, that is at the center of the convention effort. At ALEC’s annual meeting, in Indianapolis last month, another leading advocacy group, the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, staged a seminar for legislators on an amendment convention. Citizens for Self-Governance, a Texas-based group with tea party roots, has ALEC backing for a more sweeping goal: an amendment that would “impose fiscal restraints” on the federal government, reduce its authority and limit the terms of federal elected officials. The juggernaut nature of the convention movement has almost overshadowed the longstanding debate about its motivation: to imbue the Constitution with a binding limit on federal spending. Supporters say the philosophy that state governments and ordinary people usually adhere to — that it is wrong and destructive to spend beyond one’s income — should apply to the federal government as well. In that view, the $19.4 trillion national debt threatens to destroy Americans’ future prosperity. “It’s immoral for one generation to borrow and
NICK OXFORD The New York Times
Oklahoma state Rep. Gary Banz, a Republican, shown at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City, thinks the time may indeed be ripe for a constitutional convention.
ARTICLE 5 STATES THAT PROPOSALS TO CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION AREN’T VALID UNLESS THEY’RE RATIFIED BY THREE-FOURTHS OF THE STATES. spend beyond its means and leave the bill to the next generation,” said Scott Rogers, the director of the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force. But opponents say an amendment, not the deficit, is the threat. A government that could not run deficits, they argue, would not be able to stimulate the economy during recessions, when jobcreating spending is most needed. And it would not be able to elude budget ceilings for benefits such as Social Security, or for job-creating projects such as highways that are financed with debt. In truth, they say, debt
is a fact of life for both states and ordinary households — in bond issues that finance revenue generators such as convention centers and bridges, and for ordinary necessities such as cars, kitchen remodelings and homes. Banning deficit spending, they say, would bring the economy to a halt. But the basic argument for federal frugality has broad appeal. Polls generally indicate strong support for a balanced-budget amendment, and advocates persuaded 32 state legislatures to back an amendment convention during the Reagan administration.
FROM PAGE 2C
Congress defused the movement by passing the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, which pledged — toothlessly, it turned out — to eliminate annual federal deficits within six years. Over the next three decades, many legislatures rescinded their convention calls. Only recently has the movement seen a revival. Amendment conventions are not exclusively a conservative cause. With liberals’ backing, four states have passed resolutions advocating a convention to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling on campaign finance. Yet debate over an amendment’s merits has taken a back seat to a more fundamental question: whether delegates to a convention could be trusted not to tinker with other parts of the Constitution. Article 5 places no limits on a convention’s power. Some experts note that the Constitution itself arose from a convention called to amend its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation — and tore up the document and started from scratch. That convention even scrapped the Articles’ terms of ratification — unanimous approval by the states — and substituted a lower barrier, three-fourths of states. (Some pro-amendment conservatives argue that the delegates to Philadelphia did not go rogue, but always planned
FROM PAGE 1C
NIGEL
EHLERT
Marcus confronted him he slugged Marcus in the arm. Signaled Marcus to call 911. I told Nigel to put some pants on but he continued to walk around the house and yard in his bathrobe. He walked up the street towards the canal and Marcus followed him on foot. I caught up to him in the car and we followed Nigel across the highway towards the cycle park. (He casually crossed the highway and was almost hit). Kept him in sight until two sheriffs units arrived. As Sgt. Martin attempted to cuff him he yelled ‘No’, struggled free, pushed Officer Lindstrom into a ditch and ran into the darkness. Marcus was barefoot and I’m recovering from surgery so we couldn’t help trail him. Eventually, 6+ units were involved searching the hillsides.” A deputy later came to the Youngbergs’ house to take a statement. Marcus again asked why Nigel did not qualify for a mental hold. “Without answering the question, Lindstrom said he wasn’t sure about the manual but was just following standard procedure,” Mark’s notes said. “It got down in the 40s before daylight. And all he’s wearing is a bathrobe and some tennis shoes.”
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. . .” LooktoLincoln.org, Leroy’s website, serves up a number of issues Lincoln considered that we still wrestle with today. There are 17 “guideposts” right now, and Leroy says it will be expanded to 24 soon.
THE SEARCH CONTINUES Nigel’s family and many others combed the wilderness around Gem County and searched for him as far away as Salt Lake City. Local TV stations and the Emmett newspaper ran notices asking people to keep an eye out for the man who fled police. His family argues that the Sheriff’s Office dragged its feet searching for Nigel. They say Rolland was too quick to assume that Nigel would surface — as he had last year, when an officer
Provided by Youngberg family
Nigel Youngberg was the middle child of the family. Here, 7-year-old Nigel springs up from a couch between his two younger brothers, left, and older sister and brother, right. Their mother, Sharon, is in the background.
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WE HAD A MOM AND DAD AND TWO LITTLE BROTHERS COME AND SAY, ‘WE NEED HELP.’ THEY SAID THE LAW WASN’T ON OUR SIDE, BUT WE DISAGREE. Rachel Millburn, Nigel’s sister found him cold and wet after wandering the hills for a few days. “My biggest fear was that he would do that again, but he had told one of his brothers that he knew he would never have to go to the jail or hospital again, and he was not going to let that happen,” Sharon Youngberg said in an interview. Rolland said everyone, including the family, thought Nigel would come home. Mark Youngberg said he had to press the Sheriff’s Office to bring in the Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue team and to add Nigel to the database of missing persons. An undated summary by Chief Deputy Donnie Wunder, who was in charge of Nigel’s missing-persons case, says he first spoke with Mark Youngberg on April 12, two days after Nigel went missing. Over the next few days, law enforce-
ment, a search posse, the fire department and an airplane looked for Nigel, the summary says. Search and rescue was called in April 18, eight days after Nigel went missing, to search with dogs. “There were also many, many people in the public that helped in the search that had their own horses, ATVs, motorcycles and personal vehicles that helped in the search,” Wunder wrote. “100s of man hours were used looking for Nigel.” Nigel was found April 26 by a family exploring near the Payette River. He had died in an old train tunnel 11 miles from home. The coroner has not completed the autopsy, but the Youngbergs think Nigel probably died of hypothermia. The temperature dropped to 37 at night while he was gone. Malcolm, another brother, remembers opening a
bedroom window one night, thinking how impossible it would be to survive in a bathrobe. “This case has brought this whole community to its knees,” Rolland said. “A loss like this affects us all.” Nigel’s death brought the siblings closer together. His younger brothers, Marcus and Malcolm, have become outspoken about what they believe was a fatal error by law enforcement. Rachel Millburn, the sister in Virginia, has visited Emmett twice since she last saw Nigel — once to help search for him, once to mourn his loss with her family. She looked through Nigel’s computer after he died, hoping to find pieces of his personality still living there. She thought she might find a blog. She found his to-do list. On the top was a reminder to himself: “Do the big things first, and then the smaller things.” 1. Go to college 2. Get a degree 3. Find a girl 4. Get married 5. Invent a teleporter 6. Make a lot of money 7. Donate to mental health causes 8. Go to Lagoon Audrey Dutton: 208-377-6448, @IDS_Audrey
ON POLITICS “If the people remain right, your public men can never betray you. Cultivate and protect (the principles of liberty) and your ambitious leaders will be reduced to the position of servants instead of masters.” ON IMMIGRATION “I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration. There is still a great deficiency of laborers in many fields of industry, especially in agriculture.” ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION “I do not propose to destroy or alter or disregard the Constitution. I stand to it, fairly, fully and firmly.” ON A WAR AGAINST ‘TERROR’ “Still let us be sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own time, will give us the rightful result.” ON THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE “In leaving the people’s business in their own hands, we cannot be wrong.” “Their will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all.” ON EDUCATION “Education is the most important subject which we as people can be engaged in.” Lincoln, who had less than one year of formal schooling, characterized educa-
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to rewrite the Articles.) So what rules would an amendments convention follow? “The answer to almost every question you could ask is ‘We don’t know,’ ” said Michael Klarman, a constitutional law expert at Harvard whose book on that convention, “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution,” will be published in October. “I think a convention can do anything they want — re-establish slavery, establish a national church. I just don’t think there’s any limit.” Advocates scoff at the hand-wringing. Conventions of states, they say, are nothing new: About three dozen met from the 1700s to 1922 — most before the Constitution was drafted — considering everything from trade to slavery to divvying up the Colorado River’s water. Most did not include every state, but each generally followed a preset agenda. A convention to draft amendments, they say, would be no different. “There’s never been a convention where the delegates went wild,” said Rob Natelson, a former University of Montana constitutional scholar who wrote an amendment convention handbook for ALEC and is now a fellow at the conservative Independence Institute in Denver. “They all negotiated a deal, came to an agreement or didn’t, and went home,” he said.
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LooktoLincoln.org disclaimer “It is NOT appropriate to take any quotation that Lincoln made during his life and assert that it would necessarily be his position on complex, modern issues which his world never faced. However, certain elements of his simplicity, morality, logic and instinct are timeless. All of his words are useful to supply perspective and prompt dialog on the various topics offered. In this way, we can ‘Look to Lincoln,’ even in this day when his wisdom and wording are remarkably insightful on the issues facing America.” ........................................................
tion as “an object of vital importance.” In 1862’s Morrill Act, “Lincoln and Congress combined to provide land grants to establish a nationwide network of over 70 state-run colleges and universities. His national encouragement of locally controlled schools and policies succeeded for Lincoln and the United States.” ON THE DUTY OF CONGRESS “As a rule, I think it better that Congress should originate as well as perfect its measures without external bias.” “I should desire the legislation of the country to rest with Congress, uninfluenced by the Executive in its origin of progress, and undisturbed by the veto, unless in very special and clear cases.” ON FREEDOM “Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let all Americans — let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only save the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and keep it forever worthy of the saving.” Robert Ehlert: 208-377-6437, rehlert@ idahostatesman.com, @IDS_HelloIdaho