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Court to decide if permanently locking up youths who never killed is cruel and unusual punishment
By Adam Liptak
New York Times
Published on Sunday, Nov 08, 2009
TALLAHASSEE, FLA.: There are just over 100 people in the world serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole for crimes in which no one was killed and which they committed as juveniles. All are in the United States. And 77 of them are in Florida.
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear appeals from two such juvenile offenders: Joe Sullivan, who raped a woman when he was 13, and Terrance Graham, who committed armed burglary at 16. They claim that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids sentencing them to die in prison for crimes other than homicide.
Outside the context of the death penalty, the Supreme Court has generally allowed states to decide for themselves what punishments fit what crimes. But the court barred the execution of juvenile offenders in 2005 by a vote of 5-4, saying people younger than 18 are immature, irresponsible, susceptible to peer pressure and often capable of change.
A ruling extending that reasoning beyond capital cases ''could be the Brown v. Board of Education of juvenile law,'' said Paolo G. Annino, director of the Children's Advocacy Clinic at Florida State University's law school. Judges, legislators and prosecutors in Florida agree that the state takes an exceptionally tough line on juvenile crime.
But they are deeply divided about when sentences of life without the possibility of release are warranted.
''Sometimes a 15-year-old has a tremendous appreciation for right and wrong,'' said state Rep. William D. Snyder, a Republican who is chairman of the House's Criminal and Civil Justice Policy Council. ''I think it would be wrong for the Supreme Court to say that it was patently illegal or improper to send a youthful offender to life without parole. At a certain point, juveniles cross the line, and they have to be treated as adults and punished as adults.''
Several factors — some legal, some historical, some cultural — help account for the disproportionate number of juvenile lifers in Florida.
The state's attorney general, Bill McCollum, explained the roots of the state's approach in the first paragraph of his brief in Graham's case: ''By the 1990s, violent juvenile crime rates had reached unprecedented high levels throughout the nation. Florida's problem was particularly dire, compromising the safety of residents, visitors and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry.'' Nine foreign tourists were killed over 11 months in 1992 and 1993, one of them by a 14-year-old.
In response, the state moved more juveniles into adult courts, increased sentences and eliminated parole for capital crimes.
There are, according to a brief filed in the cases by human-rights groups and foreign bar associations, more than 2,500 juvenile offenders in the United States serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole, mostly for murder. This country is alone, the brief said, in imposing the punishment for juvenile offenses. (The maximum sentence in Germany, for instance, for any crime by a juvenile is 10 years. In Italy, it is 24 years.)
Florida is one of eight states with juvenile offenders serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes that weren't homicides, according to a report by Annino and two colleagues. Louisiana has 17 such prisoners; California, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina have the rest.
TALLAHASSEE, FLA.: There are just over 100 people in the world serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole for crimes in which no one was killed and which they committed as juveniles. All are in the United States. And 77 of them are in Florida.
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear appeals from two such juvenile offenders: Joe Sullivan, who raped a woman when he was 13, and Terrance Graham, who committed armed burglary at 16. They claim that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids sentencing them to die in prison for crimes other than homicide.
Outside the context of the death penalty, the Supreme Court has generally allowed states to decide for themselves what punishments fit what crimes. But the court barred the execution of juvenile offenders in 2005 by a vote of 5-4, saying people younger than 18 are immature, irresponsible, susceptible to peer pressure and often capable of change.
A ruling extending that reasoning beyond capital cases ''could be the Brown v. Board of Education of juvenile law,'' said Paolo G. Annino, director of the Children's Advocacy Clinic at Florida State University's law school. Judges, legislators and prosecutors in Florida agree that the state takes an exceptionally tough line on juvenile crime.
But they are deeply divided about when sentences of life without the possibility of release are warranted.
''Sometimes a 15-year-old has a tremendous appreciation for right and wrong,'' said state Rep. William D. Snyder, a Republican who is chairman of the House's Criminal and Civil Justice Policy Council. ''I think it would be wrong for the Supreme Court to say that it was patently illegal or improper to send a youthful offender to life without parole. At a certain point, juveniles cross the line, and they have to be treated as adults and punished as adults.''
Several factors — some legal, some historical, some cultural — help account for the disproportionate number of juvenile lifers in Florida.
The state's attorney general, Bill McCollum, explained the roots of the state's approach in the first paragraph of his brief in Graham's case: ''By the 1990s, violent juvenile crime rates had reached unprecedented high levels throughout the nation. Florida's problem was particularly dire, compromising the safety of residents, visitors and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry.'' Nine foreign tourists were killed over 11 months in 1992 and 1993, one of them by a 14-year-old.
In response, the state moved more juveniles into adult courts, increased sentences and eliminated parole for capital crimes.
There are, according to a brief filed in the cases by human-rights groups and foreign bar associations, more than 2,500 juvenile offenders in the United States serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole, mostly for murder. This country is alone, the brief said, in imposing the punishment for juvenile offenses. (The maximum sentence in Germany, for instance, for any crime by a juvenile is 10 years. In Italy, it is 24 years.)
Florida is one of eight states with juvenile offenders serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes that weren't homicides, according to a report by Annino and two colleagues. Louisiana has 17 such prisoners; California, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina have the rest.
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