"Justices Limit Life Sentences for Juveniles," is the title of Adam Liptak's report in the New York Times.
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.
Robert Barnes writes, "Supreme Court restricts life without parole for juveniles," for the Washington Post.
The decision follows the court's 2005 decision that, no matter what crime they commit, juveniles may not be executed. It also reinforced the court's view that the Eighth Amendment's protections against harsh punishment must be interpreted in light of the country's "evolving standards of decency."
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said states must provide juveniles who receive lengthy sentences a "meaningful" chance at some point to show they should be released.
"By denying the defendant the right to reenter the community, the state makes an irrevocable judgment about that person's value and place in society," Kennedy wrote. "This judgment is not appropriate in light of a juvenile nonhomicide offender's capacity for change and limited moral culpability."
The National Law Journal has, "Justices Rule on Prison Time for Juveniles, Sex Offenders," written by Tony Mauro and Marcia Coyle.
The ruling included a sharp exchange between retiring Justice Stevens and Justice Clarence Thomas. Writing separately, Stevens criticized Thomas for a "rigid" interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. "Society changes," wrote Stevens. "Knowledge accumulates. We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes. Punishments that did not seem cruel at one time may, in the light of reason and experience, be found cruel and unusual at a later time."
In a curt response, Thomas in his dissent wrote that he agreed with Stevens about learning from mistakes. "Perhaps one day the Court will learn from this one." Justice Antonin Scalia joined Thomas' dissent, and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote a separate dissent.
Another subtext of the dueling opinions was the debate over the importance of foreign law in Supreme Court decision-making. Kennedy wrote that life without parole for juveniles was "a sentencing practice rejected the world over." He added, "This observation does not control our decisions." But in dissent Thomas wrote that "such factors are irrelevant to the meaning of our Constitution or the Court's discernment of any long-standing determination in this nation."
"Supreme Court restricts life sentences without parole for juveniles," by David Savage for the Los Angeles Times.
A Washington lawyer representing the National District Attorneys Assn. denounced the ruling. The court's decision "creates a whole new category of constitutionally protected criminals, essentially a 'get out of jail free' card for underage criminals repeatedly convicted of adult heinous violent crimes," said attorney Gene Schaerr.
But others saw it as a step forward.
"None of us are the same people we were as teenagers," said Marsha Levick, deputy director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia. "When it comes to sentencing youth, we should not make irrevocable decisions."
Human Rights Watch says the United States has 2,574 inmates serving life terms for crimes they committed before age 18. The vast majority of young criminals who get life terms were involved in homicides.
Of the 129 prisoners directly affected by Monday's ruling, 77 are in Florida. In addition to California, the other states with at least a few such prisoners are Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Virginia.
"Court limits harsh terms for youths," by Joan Biskupic and Martha T. Moore in USA Today.
Baylor University criminal law professor Mark Osler said Monday's decision arises against the backdrop of a broader national re-examination of harsh sentences, but it is most significant in how it views offenders who are under age 18.
"It reinforces the idea that children are different," Osler said, adding, "We are at a point that some people are perceiving that the pendulum has swung too far" toward harsh sentences for young offenders.
Dissenting justices, led by Clarence Thomas, stressed that "states over the past 20 years have consistently increased the severity of punishments for juvenile offenders."
Yet Kennedy noted that most prosecutors and judges have not taken advantage of state laws that eliminated the chance of parole for juveniles whose crimes fall short of homicide. He said that of the 129 juvenile offenders serving life without parole for a non-homicide crime, 77 are behind bars in Florida. The other 52 criminals are in just 10 states and the federal system.
"Justices Restrict Life Terms for Youths," by Jess Bravin is in the Wall Street Journal. It's accompanied by a graphic.
The case came from Jacksonville, Fla., where Terrence Graham, then age 16, and three school-age accomplices attempted to rob a restaurant. As part of a plea bargain, he promised to turn his life around and received three years probation.
But a year after his plea, Mr. Graham was caught after allegedly joining two adult accomplices in a home-invasion robbery. He was found in violation of probation, which allowed a judge to sentence him for the earlier crime.
A presentencing report from the state Department of Corrections recommended a maximum of four years. The judge sentenced Mr. Graham to life in prison.
"The only thing I can do now is to try and protect the community from your actions," the judge said. Florida has no parole, meaning Mr. Graham would die in prison absent a pardon. State courts upheld the sentence.
For the past century, the court has interpreted the Eighth Amendment to reflect the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," as Chief Justice Earl Warren phrased it in 1958.
Justice Kennedy in recent years has led the court in refining that analysis. Although 37 states and the District of Columbia permit juvenile life-without-parole sentences, he wrote that in practice the sentence is highly disfavored.
By the court's count, only 11 states actually hold prisoners under such sentences. He said 77 of the 129 youths serving life without parole for nonhomicide offenses are in Florida.
That made the sentence unusual, Justice Kennedy said. It also was cruel, he wrote, because it lacked "any legitimate penological justification."
Some Florida Democrats praised the ruling. Gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, the state's chief financial officer, said "it was obvious that Florida was out of line with the rest of our country." The ruling means that states will have to resentence affected juvenile offenders serving life terms or at least provide them parole hearings.
Justice Kennedy's earlier rulings ending the death penalty for juvenile offenders and for nonhomicide crimes have been excoriated by conservatives, in part because they have cited the near-universal global consensus against such punishments as evidence of evolving standards of decency. Some conservatives say foreign practices are irrelevant to U.S. law.
Undaunted, Justice Kennedy used his opinion in Monday's case, Graham v. Florida, to reassert that approach to the Eighth Amendment. "[T]he judgment of the world's nations that a particular sentencing practice is inconsistent with basic principles of decency demonstrates that the court's rationale has respected reasoning to support it," he wrote.
"Supreme Court puts limits on life sentences for juveniles," by Warren Richey in the Christian Science Monitor.
Earlier coverage begins with the preceding post; the opinion is here.
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