No End in Sight: America's Enduring Reliance on Life Imprisonment

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"Before America's era of mass incarceration took hold in the early 1970s, the number of individuals in prison was less than 200,000. Today, it's 1.4 million, and more than 200,000 people are serving life sentences - one out of every seven in prison. More people are sentenced to life in prison in America than there people in prison serving any sentence in 1970."

Only in America: 16-Year-Old Locked Up for the Rest of His Life

Juwan Wickware wasn't the shooter. But he and more than 2,500 others nationwide will enter prison as teenagers, grow into adults, and die – all behind bars.

This is not right. The sentence must fit the crime, and we cannot throw away kids' lives.
Here's Juwan's story: When he was 16, he and another young kid robbed a pizza deliveryman. Both kids were armed with guns. Tragically, his friend shot and killed the man. Although this was Juwan's first offense, and despite a documented learning disability, troubled home environment, and a psychological evaluation concluding that Juwan could be rehabilitated, the judge sentenced Juwan to life in prison with no possibility of parole (LWOP). The boy who pulled the trigger was acquitted because a witness could not identify him.

Juwan is one of over 350 people serving this sentence in Michigan alone—the second highest number among states in the U.S. Today, the ACLU is representing thirty-two of these Michigan prisoners in a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a Washington,
D.C.-based tribunal charged with examining allegations of human rights abuses committed by members of the Organization of American States, which includes the United States.

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The Roberts Court’s Liberal Turn on Juvenile Justice

THE Supreme Court’s decision this week to ban mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for offenders younger than 18 is an emphatic rejection of the “get tough” juvenile justice policies of the 1980s and 1990s, which punished children as if they were adults. Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan’s clear statement not only recognized the political and biological principle that children are different from adults but at last also inscribed it into constitutional law. 

Treating children differently from adults may be a radical idea, but it’s also an old one, predating the American Revolution. The political philosopher John Locke argued that children’s lack of reasoning capacity, which disqualified them from participating in government, also made them less culpable for their criminal acts. By the turn of the 20th century, progressive child advocates embedded the principle that children are different from adults — and thus require individualized handling of their cases — into the foundation of the world’s first juvenile courts. 

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This is an op-ed from the NYTimes.  Tom

Without Parole, Juveniles Face Bleak Life In Prison

We hear a lot about juvenile offenders when they commit a crime — and again, when they're sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison. But not much is known about what happens after the prison gates slam shut.

For the first time, researchers are starting to fill in the blanks — with a survey of nearly 1,600 young people serving life without the possibility of parole. They say the U.S. is the only country that sentences juveniles to life without the chance of release.

Ashley Nellis led the effort for the nonprofit group the Sentencing Project.

"You know, [these offenders are] more than just the worst mistake of their lives," Nellis says. "And it's important to find out what else was going on in their life, before and after."

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Follow the link and listen to the story. Tom

Ugly Truth: Most U.S. Kids Sentenced to Die In Prison Are Black

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted November 11, 2009.

The U.S. stands alone in the world in condemning thousands of juveniles to life without parole. And race is a huge factor. Will the Supreme Court even consider it?

This is the second in a two-part series on juvenile life without parole. Read Part One here.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases that could have major implications for the way juvenile offenders are treated in our criminal justice system. Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida both involve men who are serving life without the possibility of parole for crimes they were convicted of as teenagers -- crimes in which no one was killed.

Joe Sullivan was only 13 years old when he was accused of sexually assaulting a 72-year-old woman in her Pensacola, Fla., home, hours after he and a group of older teenagers robbed her house. Sullivan, who reportedly suffers from mental disabilities, insisted that, while he participated in the robbery, he did not commit the rape. But his co-defendants, 15-year-old Michael Gulley and 17-year-old Nathan McCants, 17 pinned the crime on him. Both were tried as juveniles; Sullivan was tried as an adult.

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Forever Young

By Dahlia LithwickPosted Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, at 5:02 PM ET



Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a case testing whether the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits sentencing a teen to life in prison without parole. Punishment is generally deemed "cruel" if it's more than "graduated and proportional." It is constitutionally "unusual" if imposed so infrequently "that a national consensus has developed against it." If those concepts sound squishy and vague to you, well, you can just imagine what Antonin Scalia is feeling right now.

The seeds for this particular constitutional battle were sown in Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in a 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, banning capital punishment for juveniles. That case hinged on the growing national consensus against executing teens, bolstered by scientific studies finding teenage brains to be underdeveloped in ways that make their owners less culpable than adults. The question for the court this time around is not just whether teens are really different from adults but whether being sentenced to die in prison is truly all that different from being sentenced to die there by lethal injection.

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Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13

By ADAM LIPTAKPublished: February 2, 2009

In 1989, someone raped a 72-year-old woman in Pensacola, Fla. Joe Sullivan was 13 at the time, and he admitted that he and two older friends had burglarized the woman’s home earlier that day. But he denied that he had returned to commit the rape.

The victim testified that her assailant was “a colored boy” who “had kinky hair and he was quite black and he was small.” She said she “did not see him full in the face” and so would not recognize him by sight. But she recalled her attacker saying something like, “If you can’t identify me, I may not have to kill you.”

At his trial, Mr. Sullivan was made to say those words several times.

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US: Michigan Moves to End Life Without Parole for Juveniles

Senate Committee Should Approve Historic Bills Passed by House

WASHINGTON - December 9 - Michigan's Senate Judiciary Committee should approve four bills abolishing life sentences without parole for juveniles in the state, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the committee. The practice is cruel, inappropriate, discriminatory, and a violation of human rights, Human Rights Watch said.

"Michigan has 321 young offenders sentenced to die in prison," said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US Program of Human Rights Watch. "Last week, the House rejected the notion that juveniles are beyond redemption. If these bills pass the Senate, they may be able to earn a chance at freedom."

On December 4, Michigan's 110-seat House of Representatives voted to pass the bills, by margins ranging from 12 to 61 votes, and the bills now move to the Senate. Michigan joins California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, and the federal government in taking steps toward ending the sentence of life without parole for offenders under age 18.

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Michigan has 321 young offenders sentenced to die in prison. Michigan has 321 young offenders sentenced to die in prison. Tom