A clemency review committee has rejected the request for a clemency hearing for Adam Bollenback, and says the next request can’t be submitted for almost three years.

Family for Bollenback, 20, of Inverness, received the news last week in a brief response from the Office of Executive Clemency in Tallahassee.

“This is to advise you that your request for a waiver of the rules of Executive Clemency has been denied,” the statement read, adding the earliest a hearing can be requested again is Jan. 3, 2009. By that time, Bollenback will have served almost seven years of a 10-year sentence he was given in August 2002 for stealing a six-pack of beer from a neighbor’s garage, and escaping from a police car after he was arrested.

Reached by cell phone Monday, John McCain, Bollenback’s grandfather, said his family is almost at a loss to do anything.

“At this point, I’m so floored by this decision,” McCain said. “I don’t believe a six-pack of beer can draw that kind of sentence.”

Since his sentence, Bollenback has remained at Florida State Prison in Raiford, housed with 1,426 other inmates at the maximum-security prison in Bradford County. He is in a special, “close monitor” security wing.

McCain and others appeared Dec. 15 before a clemency review committee to ask for Bollenback’s release from there. Given roughly five minutes each to speak, everyone, including his mother, pleaded that a hearing be considered.

They each talked of Bollenback’s mental history, which was previously said to include bipolar disorder, as a reason for his past trouble. At sentencing, a judge looked at previous felony arrests, including for assaulting a school official, as the reason for his sentence.

The four-person committee initially said any decision regarding a hearing would likely take up to a year to reach; so last week’s denial came as a surprise. Clemency office spokeswoman Jane Tillman said the committee and board aren’t required to disclose reasons for denying a request.

She could not comment further except to confirm the next time a clemency request can be made. According to information with the Clemency Board, 13 inmates have been granted clemency since 1999.

Meanwhile, others who have come to Bollenback’s defense are taking the latest news hard. Ron Lundberg, an advocate for the local branch of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill who also appeared before the review committee, said he is still trying to decide what the next step is.

“The shock quite frankly had to wear off a bit before I got my head back in this,” he said.

Lundberg said he will meet with Bollenback’s family to decide what should be done now.

McCain expressed frustration that so much time will have passed before their next clemency request. He pointed at state law that requires inmates, with the exception of those sentenced to life, to serve a minimum of 85 percent of their sentence.

In Bollenback’s case, that means 8.5 years, which McCain said would probably arrive before the clemency board makes its next decision. According to the Department of Corrections, Bollenback’s tentative release date is Dec. 23, 2011.

“I hope he makes it through that far,” McCain said.

Lundberg said he will keep trying for Bollenback’s release.

“Giving up is not an option,” he said. “I’m concerned we’re throwing another kid down the drain.”

Editor's note: On Thursday, worldwide emergency aid reached $280 million as the toll from last weekend's earthquake-tsunami catastrophe continues to rise. Many of the survivors are children orphaned and homeless. If you want to help with a money donation, contact www.savethechildren.org or call 1-800-SAVETHECHILDREN.

While we feel tremendous sympathy for the millions of fellow human beings who have been devastated by unforeseen tragedies like last week's earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, this column is about one troubled boy from Inverness.

This is an update on the boy I've written about before, the boy who stole beer from a neighbor's garage and who walked away from a policeman and who got 10 years in prison for these heinous crimes.

Circuit Court Judge Ric Howard said during his sentencing speech that he wanted to break the boy's spirit. In his homily, the judge also said he didn't want the boy to become hardened by a lifetime in prison. What a terrible irony there is in these conflicting messages.

The boy's crimes were blown out of proportion. He stole from a neighbor's garage. That was burglary. He walked away from a police car and that became escape. No violence, no blood, no tears or anguish except on the part of those who love this boy.

This is just the sort of thing Anthony Schembri, who heads Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice, has been complaining about: Instead of giving a second or third chance, we send kids to jail.

If the injustice and absurdity of this sentence (and others like it) doesn't touch you, do the numbers. Ten years in the slammer, at $17,286 a year, this travesty is going to cost us taxpayers an estimated $172,000 and change.

Adam Bollenback, an Inverness teen with a diagnosed mental illness (bipolar, also known as manic-depressive), a lad with a chip on his shoulder, was off his medications when these heinous crimes took place.

When people deny their illnesses, they don't take their pills.

Bollenback was packed off to jail Aug. 4, 2002, and since then has been shifted from pillar to post in Florida's antiquated correctional system. He has fended for himself in a self-contained world of adults with two distinct sets of rules: the ones set by jailers and the more vital unwritten rules of the prisoners themselves.

He was stabbed once in the neck but survived and has since been caught twice for having weapons in his cell. In such a violent sex-starved world, you would want a weapon, too.

Besides these, Department of Corrections officials say he has garnered 12 offenses against him, most having to do with a disrespectful noncompliant attitude toward authority.

Now Bollenback is being held at the Florida State Prison, a facility specializing in solitary confinement cells. Such places in other states are called Supermax prisons.

Since Dec. 19, this teen has been held under the highest security, a level reserved for extremely dangerous convicts.

He's 19 years old. Alone in his cell all day and all night. He exercises alone for two hours, three times a week. He showers three times a week. His meals are delivered in a sack every morning. Authorities will review his placement at least once every six months.

There are some of you who would say that's too bad. The boy should have thought about his actions before he stole that beer. To you I have no reply.

At any rate, there are stacks of studies that show that mental problems increase during protracted solitary confinement. Experts say that such isolation can be catastrophic for people with mental problems. Symptoms worsen. Studies show, for example, that mentally ill inmates who are placed in isolation are far more likely to attempt suicide.

Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the DOC, tells me that the DOC offers help to people with mental problems and that includes people in close management, i.e. solitary confinement. He sidestepped the question about the fact that many psychiatrists and penologists decry the practice of protracted isolation and that Amnesty International calls such treatment inhumane.

Before the sentencing, a representative of the Department of Juvenile Justice recommended Bollenback be sent to a juvenile correctional program.

A probation officer recommended he be put on house arrest. Instead, the judge threw the book at the boy.

Despite outcries at the national level, the judge has not relented. Last July, Judge Howard heard a plea for another trial for Bollenback based on inadequate legal representation. That plea was turned down.

Bollenback is scheduled to emerge from prison on Jan. 6, 2012. What's your bet that this young man will come out better, or bitter?

And tell me again, how does society benefit from all this suffering?

Steve Arthur, a Chronicle columnist, can be reached at 564-2923, or via e-mail at sarthur@chronicleonline.com.

Josh Wooten doesn't remember precisely when he met Adam Bollenback's mother, Cheryl. It was sometime in the 1990s. She repaired the upholstery of the used cars he sold at his shop near Inverness.

This was long before Wooten got into politics. And it was long before Adam Bollenback became a symbol of the way the courts often manhandle the mentally ill.

Bollenback, now 19, is downright famous. A cruel circuit judge in Citrus County, Ric Howard, made him so. Two years ago, Howard sentenced him to 10 years in prison for stealing a six-pack of beer from a neighbor's garage and then briefly slipping out of sheriff's custody.

The incident capped an adolescence of run-ins with authorities, said prosecutors privy to his juvenile record. Bollenback struck a teacher. He went after his mother with a baseball bat. He battered an employee of a juvenile facility. He stole from a school cafeteria. Then he stole the beer.

No doubt about it. Adam Bollenback was trouble. But maybe more important, he was troubled.

According to his mother, he suffered from the wild mental and emotional highs and lows of bipolar disorder. Having bipolar disorder is not a crime, although it can make you do crazy things. You do not get bipolar disorder because you have a character flaw or a bad upbringing or have made some lousy, malevolent choice in life.

Didn't any of that matter to Judge Howard?

Even juvenile authorities didn't want the judge to go hard on this kid. They recommended lesser punishments, as little as house arrest.

The judge insisted he wanted to keep Bollenback from a life of crime. He also said, most revealingly, that the sentence would break the young man's spirit.

Bollenback was back in court last Wednesday, seeking a new trial on grounds that his lawyer was incompetent. That's where Josh Wooten comes in. It is remarkable when a politician sticks his neck out on an issue that can't benefit him. Wooten is chairman of the Citrus County Commission, and he came to court to stand up for Adam Bollenback.

Wooten attended the hearing to honor his old tie to Bollenback's mother. But he also came because, since his election campaign four years ago, he has backed the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Citrus County, a passionate group of people who want the mentally ill to be better understood.

They are not criminal masterminds. But some act out, and break the law, when their illness flares.

The toughest law-and-order types will tell you that. Smart police departments - the ones that don't want to shoot people who are disturbed - know so and train their officers accordingly.

Law-and-order types also say that prisons are loaded with the mentally ill, because most of the old state hospitals that once treated them are gone.

So they land behind bars. But the same law-and-order types agree that's the last place the mentally ill belong. Prisons lack the facilities to treat them. Nevertheless, prison is where they go, and when they get into trouble again, prison is where they return.

"It doesn't matter if you're the most liberal person in the world and have compassion or if you're the most conservative person in the world and vote pocketbook issues," Wooten told me. "It's better to divert these young people so they quit going through the system."

Wooten takes victories where he can. (None was forthcoming from Judge Howard, who refused Bollenback's request for a new trial.) As of last week, Wooten said, the state gave Citrus and Marion counties money to house eight mentally ill kids - that's eight in two counties - rather than send them to prison.

Wooten was also pleased that Gov. Bush signed into law a bill that could keep more of the mentally ill out of prison by ordering them into outpatient treatment. It's worth noting that the bill was this year's top priority of the Florida Sheriffs Association.

According to his mother, Bollenback is getting psychiatric drugs in prison to control his bipolar disorder. But the question remains: Why did the system have to treat him like a criminal for him to get psychiatric help?

- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.