Giving up too soon on juveniles

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Florida’s ‘life without parole’ punishments need to be reined in

Published: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 3:58 p.m.

Society cannot afford – and should not accept — criminal justice disparities like those detailed Sunday in a Herald-Tribune article, “Florida Justice: Tough on Youths.”

The story, by Capital Bureau reporter Lloyd Dunkelberger, noted that “Florida has handed out more life sentences to juveniles for non-murder crimes than have all other states combined.”

These “life without parole” punishments slam the door forever on teenagers — sometimes before they’ve even finished middle school.

That is far too soon to give up on young people whose minds and morals are still in the formative stage.

Some of these youths probably could be rehabilitated with education and therapy while in prison. But when there is no hope of ever getting out, there is little incentive for self-improvement or good behavior.

Another disturbing aspect to the punishment is that, often, it is not meted out in an even-handed fashion. As Dunkelberger detailed, one youth involved in a robbery got life without parole, while another in the same crime was sentenced to three years.

That violates the principle of fairness in sentencing.

Perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear lawsuits against Florida’s harsh juvenile punishment policy, will rein in the practice.

If not, advocates can look to congressional legislation. HR2289 was introduced this spring.

According to a summary by the Congressional Research Service, the bill would require states to enact laws that give juveniles a “meaningful opportunity for parole or supervised release at least once during their first 15 years of incarceration and at least once every three years thereafter …” The individuals would be reviewed to see if they still pose a threat.

Clearly, there are young killers so hardened to a life of crime that they test the limits of society’s compassion. But for those juveniles convicted of far lesser violence, a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” sentence is simply too destructive.

Florida and the nation must find a better way to deal with these offenders.

This story appeared in print on page A8

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Florida Justice: Tough on Youths

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By LLOYD DUNKELBERGER H-T Capital Bureau

Published: Sunday, August 9, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 9, 2009 at 12:18 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE – While other young men were heading to college or finding their first jobs, Terrance Graham entered a state prison at the age of 19 where he will spend the rest of his life.

The Jacksonville man, in the words of his own attorney, was “no angel.” At 16, he was convicted of armed burglary. He violated his probation at 17 by fleeing police after a home invasion robbery.

Everyone agreed that Graham should be punished. Corrections officials recommended a four-year sentence. Prosecutors demanded a 30-year term. But a judge imposed the harshest sentence a juvenile criminal could face in the United States: life without parole.

Outside of Florida, no other prisoner in the nation is serving a life sentence without parole for a juvenile burglary conviction.

But in Florida, Graham’s case is not rare. Records show that Florida has handed out more life sentences to juveniles for non-murder crimes than have all other states combined.

Florida’s sentencing raises questions about cruelty as well as concerns about racial bias. While blacks represent about 16 percent of Florida’s population, and about half its prison population, 84 percent of juveniles sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide offenses were African-American.

Florida has sentenced 77 young men to spend their lives in prison, without any chance of release, based on non-homicide crimes they committed when they were 17 years old or younger, according to a preliminary study by Florida State University researchers. Six of those prisoners were 13 or 14 at the time of their crimes.

A Herald-Tribune review of state records shows that some juveniles were given life without parole for as few as one or two convictions of non-homicide crimes.

Florida’s stance has generated protests from human rights groups and a lawsuit heading to the U.S. Supreme Court, which contends such sentences violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But the state shows little sign of stopping judges from imposing life sentences on juveniles or providing a path to freedom for those already in prison. Lawmakers rejected a bill last spring that would have allowed juveniles in some non-homicide cases to eventually become eligible for parole.

The controversy in Florida stands out because it differs so greatly from policies elsewhere. Florida prisoners represent 69 percent of the 111 inmates reported nationally to be serving life without parole for their non-homicide juvenile crimes. Thirty-six states have no non-homicide juvenile lifers. Researchers are still awaiting data from six states, but they do not expect Florida’s standing to change.

Other findings:

• Only Florida has sent juvenile criminals away for life for burglary, battery and carjacking. Graham is among 24 juveniles sentenced to life for burglary.

• Forty-six juveniles in Florida were given life for armed robbery.

“Florida’s practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole for non-homicide cases is unique among American states,” said the preliminary research report directed by Paolo Annino, an FSU law professor who heads the school’s Public Interest Law Center.

“It stands alone in its willingness to condemn young people for non-homicide offenses to life in prison, without a chance of a reassessment of their lives in some future time,” the report said.

Why Florida?

The Florida juveniles have been caught in two converging criminal justice trends.

The state has made it easier to try juveniles as adults at the same time it has increased the potential penalties for many crimes. Currently, Florida judges have the power to impose a life sentence without parole for more than 50 crimes.

Many of the changes came in the 1990s, when Florida was hit with a highly publicized crime wave, including the killings of nine tourists in 1992 and 1993. A British tourist was killed by a group of juveniles at an Interstate 10 rest stop in 1993 in a robbery that drew international press attention.

Since that time, Florida has sentenced 65 of the 77 non-homicide juvenile criminals to life without parole, according to the FSU researchers.

Other states are sending more juveniles into the adult prison system, too, although none of them have embraced the use of life without parole for non-homicide juvenile offenses as aggressively as Florida.

“It’s a national problem that has just taken on very dramatic examples in Florida,” said Bryan Stevenson, the director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal aid group based in Montgomery, Ala., and a lawyer for one of the juvenile offenders in the court case.

But Stevenson said the imposition of a sentence that should be reserved for unredeemable criminals is highly inappropriate for many minors given the large body of scientific evidence showing that young people are developmentally different from adults.

“Our argument is not that these kids can’t be punished, can’t be sent to prison for a very long time,” Stevenson said. “But to make a judgment that their sentences can never be reviewed for possible release is inconsistent with how we deal with kids in virtually every other context.”

Supreme Court fight

Florida’s stance against young criminals has become the focal point of a potentially landmark U.S. Supreme Court case.

In November, the country’s highest court is scheduled to hear arguments in Graham’s case and the case of Joe Sullivan, a Pensacola man convicted of rape as a 13-year-old. The court is being asked whether a life sentence without parole for juvenile offenders not guilty of homicide violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juveniles was unconstitutional and that opinion — which underscored the physical and psychological differences between a juvenile and an adult — has provided much of the legal basis for the challenge of Florida’s life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.

Florida’s harsh sentencing for juvenile crimes has drawn criticism from a wide spectrum of groups, including the American Bar Association, Amnesty International, the NAACP and the American Psychiatric Association, which have all filed briefs in the case.

A group of former juvenile criminals, including an actor, writers, a former federal prosecutor, a business executive and former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., have joined the appeal, pointing out that they were able to rehabilitate their lives despite committing serious crimes as teenagers.

“I just can’t fathom sentencing juveniles to life without parole,” said Charles Dutton, who served prison time for manslaughter but went on to drama school at Yale University and became a successful Broadway and television actor. Dutton said he had talked to some of the Florida juvenile prisoners.

“They were kids and now they’re finished. There’s a heart-wrenching sadness on their faces and you can see the fight is out of them,” Dutton said in the brief. “If they were given a second chance, they’d be changed human beings.”

Florida opposes changes

Thus far, Florida’s legal establishment has yet to bend to the criticism of its juvenile sentencing, with Attorney General Bill McCollum opposing the appeal by Graham and Sullivan. And legislation to offer parole to some young criminals, who committed their crimes when they were 15 or younger, died in the spring legislative session.

McCollum’s office asserted “the facts of the case are straightforward.”

Sullivan was convicted in a one-day trial of raping a 72-year-old woman after he and two older friends had burglarized the woman’s house earlier in the day in 1989.

The attorney general cited a pre-sentencing report that concluded Sullivan met the guidelines for a life sentence based on his prior record, which said that Sullivan had been found guilty of 17 criminal offenses in the prior two years “including several serious felonies.”

But Sullivan’s attorney said there remains “a lot of doubt” about whether his then 13-year-old client raped the elderly woman or whether the crime was carried out by one of his accomplices. Sullivan’s lawyers had asked for DNA evidence in the case to be reviewed but the state said it had been destroyed in 1993.

“That’s been a great frustration,” Stevenson said.

In sentencing Terrance Graham to life in prison, Circuit Judge Lance M. Day of Duval County called it “a sad situation,” saying Graham had a chance to turn around his life after his initial burglary conviction.

“And I don’t understand why you would be given such a great opportunity to do something with your life and why you would throw it away,” the judge told him.

Day said Graham, who was accused of leading a home invasion robbery where he held a gun to the head of the homeowner, had exhibited an “escalating pattern of criminal conduct” that did not warrant any leniency.

“It is apparent to the court that you have decided that this is the way you are going to live your life and that the only thing I can do now is to try to protect the community from your actions,” Day said, before handing down the life sentence.

Bryan Gowdy, Graham’s lawyer, said Florida is alone in imposing such a harsh sentence for a non-homicide crime like burglary.

“If you are anywhere but in Florida, you would not get this sentence,” Gowdy said.

He also pointed the disparity in sentencing for many of the others involved in the same crimes as Graham.

A teenager who joined Graham in the restaurant burglary and hit the manager in the head with a steel pipe was later charged with the armed robbery of a gas station. He received a three-year sentence for the restaurant burglary and has since been released from prison, while Graham remains behind bars for the rest of his life.

Further, Gowdy said although Graham came from a troubled background, where his parents had drug problems, he had a relatively clean record before the restaurant burglary.

“This is what makes it, I think, shocking,” Gowdy said. “You have a juvenile who had no adjudication of delinquency in the juvenile system, had no prior conviction in the adult system, and for his first offense, which is a non-homicide, he gets life without parole.”

And, Gowdy said, as a young felon, Graham has struggled in the prison system, although he has earned a high-school equivalency degree.

“He’s no angel,” Gowdy said. “And we’re not saying he shouldn’t be punished. But he should be given a chance to prove he can reform himself.”

Judge regrets decision

Even some in the legal community regret the sentencing practices.

One is J. Rogers Padgett, a retired Hillsborough County circuit judge, who says he never intended to sentence a 15-year-old Tampa youth to four consecutive life sentences without parole for participating in armed robberies in the Tampa Bay area in 2000.

“I have always been opposed to mandatory minimum sentences, except in first-degree murder convictions, it being my belief that the Department of Corrections knows best about whether and when an inmate should be released on controlled supervision,” Padgett wrote to Gov. Charlie Crist and the other members of the state Clemency Board.

“This is especially true when the inmate was sentenced as a teenager,” Padgett said. “It was not my intent at the time of his sentencing that Mr. Young never be considered for release.”

Padgett was referring to the case of Kenneth R. Young, who was 14 when he got involved with a 25-year-old crack dealer who Young said coerced him into participating in a string of hotel robberies because the dealer said Young’s mother owed him money.

“I believed (the dealer) would harm my mother if I did not obey him and I knew I had to protect my family. So I got into his car,” Young said in a statement.

Young, who once dreamed about becoming an astronaut or weatherman but dropped out of school at 13, ended up helping the dealer in five robberies, where the teenager was responsible for grabbing the money while the dealer held a gun on the victims. No one was hurt in the robberies.

Young now says his “biggest regret” was the impact of his crimes on the victims.

“They did not deserve to have this happen to them,” said Young, 23, who has served eight years in state prison. “I did this to save my family but I did not think about the pain this would cause other families. I am sorry.”

And despite his sentence, Young, who now works as a prison barber in Lake County and has a largely blemish-free prison record, said he still hopes to have his own family.

“My goal is to one day have the opportunity to show the world that I have changed,” he said.
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Basu: Dreamers & Doers series - Nun seeks to free youths destined to die in prison

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REKHA BASU
rbasu@dmreg.com
Twenty years ago, Sister JoAnne Talarico stepped inside a women’s prison to visit someone she didn’t know, and embarked on a journey and a relationship that would become driving forces for her life’s work.

Talarico, 72, of Des Moines, is a nun with the Sisters of Humility of Mary in Davenport. Her commitment to social justice has taken her to El Salvador, seen her marching and speaking out for civil rights and advocating for homeless veterans.

But the relationship with a young female inmate named Christine Lockheart made her work personal, challenging basic assumptions about crime and punishment and giving her “the daughter I never had.”
Talarico met Lockheart when she took over visiting the Mitchellville inmate after a nun who had been doing it moved away. She had never before been in a prison or known a criminal, and assumed whatever the young woman had done warranted the life sentence she got.

Lockheart was convicted of murder four years earlier at age 17. The victim was a man for whom she had cleaned house. Talarico says Lockheart hadn’t anticipated the outcome when she accompanied her boyfriend to the victim’s house to ask for a loan. They left when he said no, but the boyfriend went back in the house and stabbed him.
Lockheart didn’t directly participate but also didn’t immediately turn her boyfriend in. Iowa law permits accomplices to be charged and punished the same as the killers. It also requires mandatory life sentences for Class A felonies committed from age 14 on.

Twenty years of weekly visits to Lockheart, now nearly 42, have convinced Talarico that’s wrong. People under 18 can’t even vote or drink or sign contracts, she notes. “They are children and should be treated as children in the criminal-justice system. They don’t always see the consequences of their actions and are highly susceptible to peer pressures.” And they can be reformed.

There are 44 people serving life sentences in Iowa who were under 18 when they committed their crimes. That’s out of 2,225 in the 42 states with such laws. Amnesty International says 59 percent were first-time offenders. Many of those laws were passed in the 1980s by lawmakers responding to gang violence and wanting to be tough on crime, says Talarico.

She has watched an uncertain young woman mature into an articulate, creative mentor to others, getting scholarships and taking courses through the University of Iowa. “I’m inspired by the fact that she stays so positive. Sometimes I think maybe she does it just for me, but I see all the beautiful things she does … I don’t know that I could be as positive.”

She adds, “My heart aches for her that one mistake just ruined her whole life.” So Talarico is determined to get the law changed.

Nearly three years ago, she attended an Amnesty International conference in Des Moines and met others who shared her concerns. They formed the Iowa Coalition to Oppose Life Without the Possibility of Parole for Youth. Talarico spent most of the last session at the Capitol lobbying for a bill (HF 43, SF 74) that would allow work or parole releases for Class A felons who committed their crimes before turning 18. They’d have to serve 15 years before the parole board could consider, among other things, their age, maturity and susceptibility to outside pressures when the crimes were committed.

The bill never made it out of committee. Talarico believes lawmakers fear being seen as soft on crime when they’re up for re-election, and 2010 is an election year.

Phyllis Stevens is the coalition’s board president. “She’s fabulous,” she said of Talarico. “She’s conversational. She brings a nice personal style to it, but she’s also knowledgeable, not just a ‘bleeding heart.'”

As a nun who believes in redemption, Talarico offers a compelling dimension to the debate, says Stevens. You wouldn’t know it to see her, since she doesn’t wear a habit. One legislator discovered it after his rather forceful outburst at a committee meeting, then apologized, red-faced, Stevens said. But Talarico wasn’t bothered.

Asked whether her faith drives her to this cause, Talarico says, “It’s a justice issue. In a way, I’m acting on my own but in accordance with our laws and beliefs and our mission to the world.”

She answered the call to service at a time when people were drawn into lifetime commitments, she says. “I said ‘forever’ at one time, but I don’t know that we live in a society where people want to do things forever.”

So, ironically, someone who pledged a lifetime commitment to a calling has found her cause in helping undo a lifetime commitment imposed on someone else.
For Lockheart, the only way out of prison now would be a grant of clemency by the governor. She applied, unsuccessfully, in 2003.

But she’s not giving up, and neither will Talarico, who hopes that as the coalition grows broader – especially with neurologists, psychologists and experts in the youthful brain – more lawmakers will listen.

“You just have to keep repeating over and over that we’re dealing with children,” says the former teacher. “Children sometimes do horrible things, but we cannot dispose of them.”
Call it idealism, call it spiritual, call it the instinctive, compassionate response of an older person to a younger one in trouble. Or call it the Lord’s work. Whatever you call it, Talarico’s message is both profound and profoundly simple: Our youth are our future. We cannot afford to give up on them.
Additional Facts
Get involved

  • Contact your legislator to support reviving the bill introduced last session to eliminate Iowa’s mandatory life sentences for youth. Or contact the bill’s sponsors, Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, D-Ames, in the House, and Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, in the Senate.
  • Join the Iowa Coalition to Oppose Life Without the Possibility of Parole for Youth. Sign up online through its Web site: http://www.ia4juvenilejustice.org/
  • Link here to view a video about a state of Missouri program to keep youthful offenders out of prison.

Mich. House committee hears testimony on bill to amend life-without-parole sentences for minors

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By Todd A. Heywood 5/26/09 2:36 PM
LANSING — The House Judiciary Committee heard nearly five hours of testimony on Tuesday about proposed legislation to change the way juveniles who commit murder are punished. Right now, juveniles age 17 and under who are charged with and convicted of first-degree murder face a life-without-parole sentence. The bill would change that, allowing a parole board to take testimony and consider releasing convicted youth after 15 years.

The hearing featured gut-wrenching testimony from family members of murder victims, as well as testimony of families of youth sentenced to life in prison.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy testified that the bill should not become law.

“I don’t think anyone is beyond redemption,” Worthy said. “But there is difference between redemption and the punishment for your crime.”

Worthy, joined by Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, testified that passing the bill into law would encourage gangs to continue to recruit youth to perpetrate violent crime on the hope of getting lighter sentences. Such a situation in Wayne County in the 1970s and ’80s lead to the state’s passage of the current juvenile life-without-parole law.

Diane Bukowski, a reporter for The Michigan Citizen, testified in favor the bill. Bukowski called on the Judiciary Committee to pass the law, and even expand it to include those prisoners convicted of crimes committed when they were 17.

“I think the bill should be passed,” she told the committee. “People should remember ‘vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.’ That is in the Bible for those vengeance seekers out there.”

The legislation did not receive a vote from the committee, as the hearing concluded at 1:40 p.m. and there was not a quorum of representatives present to vote.

Interfaith group seeks second chance for youths sentenced to life

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The coalition delivers a message of redemption in sermons at some 200 California churches, synagogues and mosques.
By Dana Parsons
May 25, 2009
The major faith traditions teach that the young are special in the eyes of the Almighty. So what does God do when one of them commits a horrible crime and is consigned to a life in prison?

He cries.

That was the message delivered over Memorial Day weekend at some 200 churches, synagogues and mosques around the state by an interfaith coalition trying to change people’s attitudes about long sentences for juveniles — especially those facing life without the possibility of parole.

“When children commit certain actions, we stop thinking of them as children,” Javier Stauring, director of Faith Communities for Families and Children, told a group of about 90 people Sunday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. “We start fearing them, we start demonizing them.”

The Bible virtually sanctifies children. That doesn’t change, Stauring suggested, when the legal system tries a young teenager as an adult. While not condoning their crimes, Stauring said a society with redemption in mind would not foreclose a second chance to someone so young.

“It’s a lot easier to lock up a problem and throw away the key and not have to think about it, and to think that’s going to make us safer,” he said. What will make society safer from young criminals, Stauring said, is going after the “layers of woundedness” that often afflict them — wounds that may stem from violence or abuse.

In an interview before he spoke Sunday, the 47-year-old Stauring said he met his first juvenile inmate 18 years ago while volunteering through his church. Now a lay chaplain, Stauring said he wasn’t particularly religious when he volunteered.

“I now consider that a blessing,” he said of the experience. “I formed my vision of God. We find him in the fringes. That’s where, if we look at Jesus as a model, that’s who he hung around with.”

Stauring shared the microphone Sunday with Elias Elizondo, who took a plea bargain 16 years ago on a murder charge that got him a sentence of 15 years to life instead of life without parole. Now 32 and living in Sun Valley, Elizondo was paroled four months ago and said he’s a different person than he was at 16.

“I don’t justify my actions,” he said, without explaining the details of the crime. He told the group that he not only deserved prison but that, at the time, he wasn’t sure he ever should be released. Only when he matured, he said, did he realize that he could change course. Instead of blaming other people or his education, which stopped at sixth grade, he set out to improve himself.

“I started thinking, ‘Is it possible I could turn my life around?’ ”

The answer, Elizondo said, was yes. “The parole board gave me a chance when it didn’t have to,” he said. “I was redeemable.”

Elizondo is the kind of person Stauring’s group wants to reach. The coalition is advocating for state Senate Bill 399, which would permit anyone under 18 sentenced to life without parole to ask for resentencing after serving 10 years. If the inmate met certain conditions, he or she could be eligible for a new sentence of 25 years to life.

Even that seemingly small window, Stauring said, would give hope to the still-young person.

The coalition’s efforts are aligned with Human Rights Watch, an international organization that has called on Congress to end life-without-parole sentencing for young offenders. “Sentencing juveniles to die in prison is cruel, costly and unnecessary,” the organization’s U.S. program director said this month.

The group reported that at least 2,574 inmates in the United States were sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before the age of 18. California has 250 of them. The United States is the only country that imposes such harsh sentences on juveniles.

Stauring knows the statistics but said the holy books of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are his references on the subject.

“This comes from our faith convictions,” he said, “that we should never ever give up on a child — children are always changing — and that we should not look at them and declare that the worst thing they did as a child is how we’re going to label them for the rest of their lives.”

Original link: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-juvenile-justice25-2009may25,0,7391881.story

Midlands Voices: There's nothing just about locking up juveniles for life

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Published Saturday May 23, 2009

BY MICHAEL NELSEN

The writer, of Omaha, is a lawyer.

Most people would agree that a juvenile offender should not be sentenced to life in prison without parole for violating his probation.

But that is exactly what happened to 17-year-old Terrance Graham of Florida. His case will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court (Graham v. Florida). The matter was reported on May 5 in the New York Times.

This case brings into sharp relief the sometimes hidden fact that quite often juveniles (those under 18) are sentenced to life without parole for offenses committed while under 18 (and sometimes as young as 13). Nebraska currently has such a law. Kansas has no such law. This situation is more prevalent than one might think. Recent studies show there are currently nationwide more than 2,000 juveniles serving life without parole. Michigan, for example, has 346 such cases. In one-third of those cases, the crime involved was a first offense. Recently, the Michigan Legislature has considered abolishing its statute, since it costs a fortune to warehouse a juvenile for the rest of his or her life.

In a survey done in 2005, Nebraska had 21 such cases. Nebraska now has 24. According to the Times article, the United States is the only country in the world to lock up juveniles for life without parole. One recent study showed that in a number of cases, the juveniles sentenced to life had been accessories or look-outs for the perpetrating adult criminals.

In no other area of the law are juveniles treated like adults. A juvenile cannot legally enter into a written contract. Nor can a juvenile sue in court in his or her own name. A juvenile cannot waive his or her rights to medical care.

The facts in Terrance Graham’s case are interesting. Graham had been previously convicted as a minor of armed robbery. He was put on probation. He later committed a home invasion robbery when he was 17. Without being convicted of the home invasion robbery itself, he was found in violation of his probation and sentenced to life without parole. He is now an adult.

His lawyer has been quoted as saying: “When our children make mistakes, are we going to lock them up and throw away the key for life?”

The Florida Appeals Court, which heard Graham’s in-state appeal, opined that “a true life sentence is typically reserved for juveniles guilty of more heinous crimes such as homicide.” But the court went on to say, Terrance Graham “rejected his second chances” and “chose to continue committing crimes at an escalating rate.”

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has cut back on the ability of states to punish juveniles. The Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that those committing capital crimes while younger than 18 years old could not be put to death. The majority held that teenagers were immature and easily influenced by peer pressures. Justice Anthony Kennedy stated, “Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile” is not “evidence of irretrievably depraved character.”

We will see if the Supreme Court applies the same principles to the Graham case.

Turning to Nebraska, there has been a recent effort in the Legislature to do away with life sentences like this. The proposed legislation would make the sentence 50 years to life for those 16 or 17 when the crime was committed. Juveniles would be parole-eligible after 25 years in prison. Those younger than 16 would face 40 years to life,and be parole-eligible after 20 years.

The legislation stands little chance of passing this year. The penalties would still be stiff, but at least there would be a possible end date.

The bottom-line question is: Do Nebraskans want to continue locking up juveniles for life, or are we content to wait until the U.S. Supreme Court tells us not to do it anymore?

Life Sentence for Juveniles? (Letter to the editor)

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To the Editor:

Re “Justices Agree to Take Up Life-Without-Parole Sentences for Young Offenders” (news article, May 5):

There are currently almost 2,500 people serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed before age 18. Fifty-nine percent received their sentences for their first-ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between 13 and 15 when they committed their crimes, and 26 percent were sentenced under a felony murder charge where their offenses did not involve carrying a weapon or pulling a trigger.

Our society recognizes that juveniles differ from adults in their thinking, reasoning and decision-making capacities. Research also demonstrates that adolescents actually use their brains in fundamentally different ways from adults. As a result, they are more likely to act on impulse, without fully considering the consequences of their actions.

This fall, the Supreme Court will decide if juvenile offenders should be eligible for life without parole. One hopes they will concur with the growing public sentiment that it’s time to stop sentencing young people to die in jail.

David Fassler
Burlington, Vt., May 5, 2009

The writer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont.

Original link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/l12juvenile.html

Young People Sentenced to Die in Prison (Letter to the editor)

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washingtonpost.com

The May 5 news story “High Court to Look at Life Sentences for Juveniles” may have left readers with the impression that the United States is not the only country that sentences youths to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but the sad fact is that it is.

While the rest of the world has recognized what science has told us — that adolescents aren’t fully developed or able to use adult reasoning — U.S. sentencing laws lag behind the times. The Supreme Court’s decision to review two cases in which youths were sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole will highlight the question of whether such sentences violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The cases the Supreme Court will consider shed light on the fact that there should be careful review of all life sentences given to youths, including the 2,574 people currently serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were under 18. No youth should be sentenced to die in prison, denied the opportunity to ever argue for his or her freedom, or stripped of all hope and the opportunity for rehabilitation.

JODY KENT
Coordinator
National Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth Washington

Another Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Teens

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by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Commentary
New America Media
May 6, 2009

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court took a big step toward righting a galling wrong. It joined nearly every other nation on the globe and banned teen executions. Now it should take the next big step and dump all laws that let states lock up juvenile offenders for the rest of their life.

There are lots of them. In a report last year, Human Rights Watch found that more than 2,000 juvenile offenders are serving life without possibility of parole sentences. The U.S. locks up more juveniles for life without the possibility of parole than all nations combined.

The Court will rule on two Florida cases, where juvenile offenders got no-parole life sentences. The two cases point to the often-appalling legal and racial inequities in the juvenile no-parole sentencing. The two men committed crimes when they were 17 years old. The crimes were violent crimes; a rape and an armed home invasion robbery. But in both case s, the evidence, testimony and witness identification were muddled and contradictory. They were still convicted and have spent more than a decade in prison.

As is the case with the death penalty, the no-parole sentences are far from race neutral. In the Florida case, both men are African American. Black teens are 10 times more likely to receive a no-parole life sentence than white youths. They are even more likely to get those sentences when their victims are white. This was the case in the Florida convictions, and they are often tried by all-white or mostly-white juries. Those same juries seldom consider their age as a mitigating factor.

A significant number of juveniles sentenced to no-parole sentences did not actually commit murder but were participants in a robbery or were at the scene of the crime when the death occurred. The majority of the teens slapped with the draconian sentence had no prior convictions, and a substantial number were age 15 or under.

Judges and juries say that violence is violence no matter the age of the perpetrator, and that punishment must be severe to deter crime. Prosecutors and courts in the 40 states that convict and impose no-parole life sentences on juvenile offenders — with California, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Michigan, and Florida leading the pack — have repeatedly rejected challenges that teen no-parole sentences are a violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Though murder rates have plunged to near record lows, the public remains anxious of violent crimes, especially young persons who commit them. Lawmakers are loath to do anything that will bring public heat on them that they are soft on crime. This is still considered the kiss of death for political careers.

Yet most experts agree that children don’t have the same maturity, judgment, or emotional development as adults. In a report on juveniles and the death penalty, Amnesty International found that a number of child offenders sentenced to death suffered severe physical or sexual abuse. Many others were alcohol or drug impaired, or suffered from acute mental illness or brain damage. Nearly all were below average intelligence.

Despite Hollywood sensationalism and media-driven myths about rampaging youth, most experts insist that children are not natural-born predators. If given proper treatment, counseling, skills training and education, most can be turned into productive adults.

An irony in the Supreme Court’s 2005 ban on executing teen killers was that the ban actually worked against no-parole reform efforts. Since states could no longer execute juvenile offenders, then the legal thinking was that it was far more humane to sentence them to life sentences. Victims’ rights advocacy groups claim that taking away the option of no- parole sentences for juveniles will weaken crime deterrents. This makes it even tougher to make the case that counseling, treatment, and education is the more effective way to redeem young people who commit crimes than harsh sentencing — but it is.

And there’s the gnawing question of race. The racial gap between black and white juvenile offenders is vast and troubling. The rush to toss the key on black juveniles has had terrible consequences in black communities. It has increased poverty, fractured families, and further criminalized a generation of young black men.

No matter what their age, those who commit crimes — especially murder — must be punished, but the punishment should not only fit the crime, it should also fit the age of the person who committed it, and the circumstances that drove them to commit their offenses. If juvenile offenders with the right help can turn their life around, they deserve that chance, and judges should be able to give it to them.

The Supreme Court in its decision to ban juvenile executions called teen executions “shameful.” They recognized that the practice cannot, and should not, be justified on moral or legal grounds, and that it was past time to put a stop to them. The court should recognize the same with the no-parole sentence for teens and outlaw it.

Source: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=599f7802903e64f19e26a96107c3a214

Court to review life sentences for young offenders

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By JESSE J. HOLLAND – 15 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Though it may be decades, Joe Harris Sullivan is waiting to die in prison for a crime he committed at age 13, one of thousands of children who have been sentenced to life terms without parole in the United States.

The Supreme Court on Monday announced that it will decide whether sentencing juveniles to spend the rest of their lives in prison without hope of ever being released can be considered a cruel and unusual punishment.

The justices are taking up two cases from Florida challenging life sentences for teenagers. In the first case, a judge determined that 17-year-old Terrance Graham took part in an armed home-invasion robbery while he was on probation for a violent crime.

Sullivan, now 33 and in prison at the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in Milton, Fla., was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for the rape of Lena Bruner in 1989. Bruner never saw her attacker, but she testified at trial that Sullivan’s voice sounded like that of her attacker. Two boys also testified against Sullivan, a police officer said she saw Sullivan run from Bruner’s house, and his handprint was found on a plaque on Bruner’s bed.

Sullivan had been found guilty of 17 criminal offenses, including several serious felonies, in the two previous years, officials said. The state destroyed the case’s DNA evidence in 1993.

Bryan A. Stevenson, Sullivan’s lawyer, said Sullivan was one of only two 13-year-old children sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime in the United States and only one of eight with that sentence for any crime in prison.

Times have changed people’s minds about sentencing juveniles, Stevenson said.

The Supreme Court in 2005 outlawed the death penalty for juvenile criminals in the case Roper v. Simmons, declaring there was a national consensus that such executions were unconstitutionally cruel and ending a practice that had brought international condemnation.

A 2008 report from Human Rights Watch said that there are 2,484 youth offenders serving life without parole in the United States, with Florida, California, Louisiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania having the highest number. The United States is the only country in the world that still sentences juveniles to life in prison without possibility of parole, Stevenson and other advocates said.

“I don’t think there has been a lot of awareness about the sentences some of these kids have received, and so I do think it presents a serious question,” Stevenson said.

Bill McCollum, Florida’s attorney general, filed court papers in Sullivan’s and Graham’s cases.

The Supreme Court “has recognized that a state is permitted to make ‘a societal decision that when a person who has previously committed a felony commits yet another felony, he should be subjected to the admittedly serious penalty of incarceration for life, subject only to the state’s judgment as to whether to grant him parole,'” McCollum said.

A Florida appeals court upheld the sentences of Sullivan and Graham.

This is not the first time this court has been confronted with the question of juveniles spending their lives in prison. Last year, the justices declined to consider an appeal of a 30-year prison sentence for a teen who was 12 when he killed his grandparents in their South Carolina home.

The cases will not be heard until the fall term. The Supreme Court is expected to have a new justice by October following the retirement of David Souter.

The cases are Sullivan v. Florida, 08-7621, and Graham v. Florida, 08-7412.

Original link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOidiFnz7D8brQtFxw0FGM9zAcbAD97VL80O0