While I view this judicial development as a positive step in the right
direction, I still don't think that the justices have gone far enough. The
notion of sentencing a juvenile to life imprisonment -- even if it does
include the possibility of parole -- does not sit well with me. Furthermore,
even if there is a possibility of parole, that certainly doesn't mean that
the state will really ever consider it or grant it.

Please note that I am referring to cases where homocide was not an issue. If
they have committed violent, premeditated murder, that is another issue.

I think we all need to think back to what we were like at that age, insofar
as our mental, emotional and spiritual maturity was concerned. The fact of
the matter is that most of us were probably stupid, young, immature kids who
made stupid decisions which we later regretted. We may have thought
ourselves to be mature at the time, but as we get older, we tend to view
ourselves a lot differently. We realize that wisdom truly does come with age
-- and experience. True or not?

I would dare say that most people really don't start maturing -- and gaining
some real wisdom -- until they are at least in their thirties, if not later
in life.

While I think that these issues should be judged on a case-by-case basis,
generally-speaking, I just think that locking up a teenager for life --
whethere there is a chance of parole or not -- is bad news. It leaves them
with absolutely no hope; it probably hardens them even further; it makes
them hate life and society; and it takes away any reason for living. Most
importantly, if they sense that man has lost any hope of redemption in them,
imagine how it would affect their faith in God's redemptive qualities as
well.

I am not saying that the wicked should go unpunished for their evil acts,
but locking up a minor for life is simply too harsh. Living without any
degree of hope is a death sentence in itself -- at least mentally and
emotionally.

On a final note, as I have mentioned before, I think that it is interesting
to note that when God punished the ancient Israelites due to their lack of
faith, and made them wander in the desert for forty years before allowing
them to enter the Promised Land, only those who were twenty years or younger
at the time the sentence was passed, were allowed to live through those
years in the desert. We can theorize then that God may have been setting the
age of responsibility at 20 at the time.


Justices Limit Life Sentences for Juveniles

By ADAM LIPTAK - NYT

May 17, 2010


WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that juveniles who commit
crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.

Five justices, in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, agreed that the
Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids such
sentences as a categorical matter.

"A state need not guarantee the offender eventual release," Justice Kennedy
wrote, "but if it imposes the sentence of life, it must provide him or her
with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that
term."

The ruling marked the first time that the court excluded an entire class of
offenders from a given form of punishment outside the context of the death
penalty. " 'Death is different' no longer," Justice Clarence
Thomas wrote in
dissent.

The overall vote was 6-to-3, though that is a little misleading. Chief
Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the majority in saying that the
inmate who brought the appeal had received a sentence so harsh that it
violated the Constitution. But the chief justice endorsed only a
case-by-case approach, saying that an offender's age could be considered in
deciding whether a life sentence was so disproportionate to the crime as to
violate the Eighth Amendment.

The case involved Terrance Graham, who in 2003, at age 16, helped rob a
Jacksonville restaurant, during which an accomplice beat the manager with a
steel bar. Mr. Graham was sentenced to a year in jail and three years'
probation for that crime.

The next year, at 17, Mr. Graham and two 20-year-old accomplices committed a
home invasion robbery. In 2005, a judge sentenced Mr. Graham to life for
violating his probation.

The Supreme Court has carved out categories of offenders and crimes that are
not subject to the death penalty, including juvenile offenders and those who
do not take a life. Monday's decision applied those two decisions to
life-without-parole sentences.

Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, said both national and
international practices supported the court's ruling.

Justice Thomas said the majority was wrong about the facts in the United
States and abroad and wrong as a matter of principle to take account of
international opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia joined all of Justice Thomas's
dissent and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. most of it.

Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia and the federal government
have laws allowing life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of
non-homicide offenses. That represents, Justice Thomas said, a
super-majority of states in favor of the punishment.

Justice Kennedy responded that a study relied on by Mr. Graham and
supplemented by the court's own research had located only 129 juvenile
offenders convicted under such laws. Seventy-seven were in Florida, the rest
in 10 other states. Those numbers, Justice Kennedy said, make the sentence
"exceedingly rare" and demonstrate that "a national
consensus has developed
against it."

Justice Thomas drew a different conclusion from the same numbers. "That a
punishment is rarely imposed demonstrates nothing more than a general
consensus that it should be just that -- rarely imposed," he wrote. "It is
not proof that the punishment is one the nation abhors."

Justice Kennedy added that the sentences at issue had been "rejected the
world over." Indeed, only the United States and perhaps Israel, he said,
impose the punishment even for homicides committed by juveniles.

"The judgment of the world's nations that a particular sentencing practice
is inconsistent with basic principles of decency," Justice Kennedy wrote,
"demonstrates that the court's rationale has respected reasoning to support
it."

Justice Thomas disputed Justice Kennedy's math, saying 11 nations seem to
allow the punishment in theory. More important, he said, "foreign laws and
sentencing practices" are "irrelevant to the meaning of our
Constitution."

He added that most democracies around the world remain free to adopt the
punishment should they wish to. "Starting today," Justice Thomas wrote,
"ours can count itself among the few in which judicial decree prevents
voters from making that choice."

Although the majority limited its decision to non-homicide offenses,
advocates may try to apply its logic more broadly to the some 2,000 inmates
serving life-without-parole sentences in the United States for participating
in killings at 17 or younger.

Justice Thomas questioned the distinction drawn by the majority between
killings and other sorts of violent crimes. "The court is quite willing to
accept that a 17-year-old who pulls the trigger on a firearm can demonstrate
sufficient depravity and irredeemability to be denied re-entry into
society," he wrote, "but insists that a 17-year-old who rapes an 8-year-old
and leaves her for dead does not."

Justice Alito, in a separate dissent that seemed directed to sentencing
judges, said the majority's opinion did nothing to affect even quite long
fixed sentences.

Justice Thomas predicted that Monday's ruling would give rise to years of
litigation about just what sort of parole or other processes states must
provide to provide the required "meaningful opportunity to obtain release."

The case decided Monday, Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, was argued in
November along with a companion case, Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621. The
court declined to decide the second case, which involved Joe Sullivan, who
raped a woman when he was 13.

Instead, the court dismissed the case as improvidently granted, probably
because it was beset with procedural difficulties. Mr. Sullivan's lawyer,
Bryan Stevenson, said his client and everyone else in his situation would be
entitled to challenge their sentences under the Graham decision.

As usual in cases involving the Eighth Amendment, the justices debated
whether the Constitution should consider, in a one common formulation, "the
evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."

Justice Thomas said the court should look to the practices at the time the
Bill of Rights was adopted. Given that capital punishment could be imposed
on people as young as 7 in the 18th century, he said, Mr. Graham's
punishment would almost certainly have been deemed acceptable back then.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in a concurrence joined by Justices Ginsburg and
Sotomayor, said Justice Thomas's "static approach to the law" did not allow
for societal progress and would entail unacceptable human consequences.

"Justice Thomas would apparently not rule out a death sentence for a $50
theft by a 7-year-old," Justice Stevens wrote. "Knowledge
accumulates," he
wrote. "We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes."



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