Driven by budget problems, states are trying to send juvenile delinquents back where they came from.
California, seeking to close a $26 billion deficit, and New York, with a $10 billion budget gap, are moving to close state youth prisons for good and instead let local governments lock up young offenders.
via www.usatoday.com
On March 4, 2011, EJI attorneys argued at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, on behalf of an EJI client who is serving life imprisonment without parole after being convicted of capital murder in Alabama for an offense at age sixteen.
The federal appeals court requested oral argument on the issue of whether the Shelby County prosecutor illegally commented on the defendant's right not to testify at trial. The record shows that the prosecutor told the jury in closing argument that it should believe the State's key witness, who was an accomplice to the crime, because "there’s a witness that you heard from but he didn’t come in here and talk to you from this witness stand."
The defense attorney objected and moved for a mistrial, asserting: "Let the record reflect that the district attorney pointed straight at the defendant when he said that. That is the most direct comment on a defendant’s failure to testify I have ever seen."
via eji.org
Government reformers and youth advocates have long called for the state to get out of the business of juvenile corrections.
Now they're backing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to eliminate the state Division of Juvenile Justice and give counties responsibility for the state's most serious young offenders.
Brown wants to eliminate the division in three years. High costs, poor treatment and other shortcomings have made the agency a target of critics.
via www.sacbee.com
Legal and public policies concerning youth gun violence tend to rely heavily on crime reports, survey data, and statistical methods. Rarely is attention given to the young voices belonging to those who carry high-powered semiautomatic handguns. In Language of the Gun, Bernard E. Harcourt recounts in-depth interviews with youths detained at an all-malecorrectional facility, exploring how they talk about guns and what meanings they ascribe to them in a broader attempt to understand some of the assumptions implicit in current handgun policies. In the process, Harcourt redraws the relationships among empirical research, law, and public policy. Home to over 150 repeat offenders ranging in age from twelve to seventeen, the Catalina Mountain School is made up of a particular stratum of boys-those who have committed the most offenses but will still be released upon reaching adulthood. In an effort to understand the symbolic and emotional language of guns and gun carrying, Harcourt interviewed dozens of these incarcerated Catalina boys. What do these youths see in guns? What draws them to handguns? Why do some of them carry and others not? For Harcourt, their often surprising answers unveil many of the presuppositions that influence our laws and policies.
[ A close examination of American youth's "fascination with guns, their attraction to firearms, their lust for the weapons..." ]
Change.org - "There are approximately 225 juveniles in California serving a life without parole sentence. California has the worst racial disparity rate in the nation for sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Black youth are given this sentence at 22 times the rate of white youth.
A number of California cases have recently been highlighted in the media due to the background of the juveniles who received the sentences, and the circumstances surrounding their crimes. One such case involves Sara Kruzan, now 28. She was raised in Riverside by her abusive, drug-addicted mother. Sara met her father only three times in her life because he was in prison.
Since the age of 9, Sara suffered from severe depression for which she was hospitalized several times. At the age of 11, she met a 31-year-old man named G.G. who molested her and began grooming her to become a prostitute. At age 13, she began working as a child prostitute for G.G. and was repeatedly molested by him. At age 16, Sara was convicted of killing him. She was sentenced to prison for the rest of her life despite her background and a finding by the California Youth Authority that she was amendable to treatment offered in the juvenile system. (See video of Sara Kruzan).
“Life without parole means absolutely no opportunity for release,” said Senator Yee. (of California) “It also means minors are often left without access to programs and rehabilitative services while in prison. This sentence was created for the worst of criminals that have no possibility of reform and it is not a humane way to handle children. While the crimes they committed caused undeniable suffering, these youth offenders are not the worst of the worst.”
“As a society we’ve learned a lot since the time we started using life without parole for children,” said Elizabeth Calvin, a children’s rights advocate with Human Rights Watch. “We now know that this sentence provides no deterrent effect. While children who commit serious crimes should be held accountable, public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible.”
To email the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, directly follow this link: http://gov.ca.gov/interact#email
Applying Roper v. Simmons in Juvenile Transfer and Waiver Proceedings: A Legal and Neuroscientific Inquiry (by John Matthew Fabian) first published on June 4, 2010
Abstract [free]: "In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held the death penalty unconstitutional as applied to juveniles in Roper v. Simmons. The Court reasoned that juveniles were less criminally culpable than adults because they lack maturity, they are more vulnerable to peer influence, and their character is not as well formed as that of adults. Although Roper addressed the imposition of the ultimate punishment of death within the context of a juvenile’s moral blameworthiness for a crime of murder, this article considers the application of the Court’s reasoning in Roper to the issue of juvenile waiver. Specifically, the author asks the question whether Roper’s ultimate language distinguishing juveniles from adults in capital cases should apply to the conventional practice of their trial and sentencing as adults. Despite the fact that juvenile transfer is a less serious sanction than the death penalty, this inquiry confronts the traditional objective of the juvenile court system, a system of punishment that was founded on rehabilitation rather than retribution. The author questions whether the punitive objectives of deterrence and retribution are satisfied by juvenile waiver and whether the mitigating effect of adolescence negates the trial of youth as adults." International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology XX(X) 1–24. © 2010 SAGE Publications DOI: 10.1177/0306624X10371283
"It is time for California, and our nation as a whole, to take the Supreme Court's decision [GRAHAM v. FLORIDA ( No. 08-7412 )] to its next logical step and join the rest of the world by revisiting inflexible life-without-parole sentences for young offenders...
"Let us hope that state legislators will see their way through the all-too-common "tough on crime" mantra and find a way, instead, to be smart, just and fair on crime."
(Youthful Offenders Deserve Second Chance, LATIMES via SENTENCING LAW & POLICY)
SCOTUS Syllabus: Petitioner Graham was 16 when he committed armed burglary and another crime. Under a plea agreement, the Florida trial court sentenced Graham to probation and withheld adjudication of guilt. Subsequently, the trial court found that Graham had violated the terms of his probation by committing additional crimes. The trial court adjudicated Graham guilty of the earlier charges, revoked his probation, and sentenced him to life in prison for the burglary. Because Florida has abolished its parole system, the life sentence left Graham no possibility of release except executive clemency. He challenged his sentence under the Eighth Amendment ’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, but the State First District Court of Appeal affirmed.
Held: The [Eighth Amendment ’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments] Clause does not permit a juvenile offender to be sentenced to life in prison without parole for a non homicide crime. [emphasis added]
GRAHAM v. FLORIDA ( No. 08-7412 ) - Decision and Syllabus at LII / Legal Information Institute
GRAHAM v. FLORIDA ( No. 08-7412) - Background at ScotusWiki
http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Graham_v._Florida#Decision
I join the thousands of blogs and news outlets breaking ....
news
[MSNBC] Justices rule that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete.
ABA Report: Representing Juvenile Status Offenders -
"This book is your guide to advocating for juvenile status offenders. They are an under served group, yet thousands enter the court system every year. They face sometimes insurmountable obstacles: abuse, neglect, high family conflict and domestic violence; desperately poor and violent neighborhoods; serious mental health needs, learning disabilities, emotional or behavioral problems; gangs; bad peer group choices; and poor educational and employment options. They are in need of strong advocacy to help them avoid deeper juvenile justice system involvement and detention. They and their families need help mending dysfunctional relationships and accessing community assistance. This book is your roadmap to representing status offenders. Each chapter, written by an expert in the field, gives you the tools to successfully engage and represent youth in status offense proceedings. "
Of course wehave it ... Permanent Link to this record @ http://antpac.lib.uci.edu:80/record=b3849359~S7
"Rethinking Juvenile Justice, by Columbia Univesity Professor Elizabeth Scott (Law) and Temple University Professor Laurence Steinberg (Psychology), has been awarded the 2010 Social Policy Best Authored Book Award from the Society for Research on Adolescence... [Via Faculty Lounge]
Maroney, Terry A., The False Promise of Adolescent Brain Science in Juvenile Justice (May 18, 2009). Gruter Institute Squaw Valley Conference 2009: Law, Behavior & the Brain; Notre Dame Law Review, Vol. 85, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1405367
"...[M]any believe that developmental neuroscience contributed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s elimination of the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons. Post-Roper, scholars assert that the developmentally normal attributes of the teen brain counsel differential treatment of young offenders, and advocates increasingly make such arguments before the courts..."
Scotusblog say | Monday is oral argument day for Graham v. Florida (08-7412) on the "constitutionality of life prison sentence for juvenile convicted of a non-homicide crime."
Justices Agree to Take Up Sentencing for Young Offenders
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 4, 2009- NY Times
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether the reasoning that led it to strike down the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago should also apply to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.
The court accepted two cases on the issue, both from Florida and neither involving a killing. In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to life without the possibility of release for raping a 72-year-old woman in 1989, when he was 13. In the other, Terrance Graham received the same sentence for participating in a home invasion robbery in 2004, when he was 17 and on probation for other crimes.
In the majority opinion in the death penalty case, Roper v. Simmons, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that teenagers were immature, unformed, irresponsible and susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure.
“Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile,” Justice Kennedy concluded, is not “evidence of irretrievably depraved character.”
Outside the context of the death penalty, however, the Supreme Court has not shown much interest in cases from prisoners claiming that the sentences they received were too harsh. But Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the factors cited by Justice Kennedy concerning juveniles might well apply in noncapital cases.
“The principles driving Roper,” Professor Berman said, “would seem to suggest that its impact does not stop at the execution chamber.”
The United States is alone in the world in making routine use of life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Human rights groups say more than 2,000 prisoners in the United States are serving such sentences for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger. A vast majority of those crimes involved a killing by the defendant or an accomplice.
At the argument of the Roper case in 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia said the rationales offered against the juvenile death penalty applied just as forcefully to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.
“I don’t see where there’s a logical line,” said Justice Scalia, who voted in dissent to retain the juvenile death penalty.
But Justice Kennedy wrote that life sentences would continue to deter young criminals after the death penalty became unavailable.
“The punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “is itself a severe sanction, in particular for a young person.”
Lawyers for the two Florida inmates cited international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits sentences of life without parole for juveniles. Justice Kennedy’s invoking foreign and international law in the Roper decision was controversial, and the new cases will reopen the question of how much attention the Supreme Court should pay to international law.
Bryan S. Gowdy, a lawyer for Mr. Graham, said in an interview that his client had never been convicted of the robbery that sent him to prison for the rest of his life. Though evidence was presented concerning the robbery, the trial judge found only that Mr. Graham had violated the terms of his probation after an earlier conviction for armed burglary and attempted armed robbery when he was 16.
“When our children make mistakes, are we going to lock them up and throw away the key for life?” Mr. Gowdy said. “If you follow the rationale of Roper, that’s not appropriate.”
In rejecting a challenge to Mr. Graham’s sentence last year, a Florida appeals court acknowledged that “a true life sentence is typically reserved for juveniles guilty of more heinous crimes such as homicide.” But the court added that Mr. Graham “rejected his second chance” in violating the terms of his probation “and chose to continue committing crimes at an escalating pace.”
A ruling in favor of the prisoners in the two cases — Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, and Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621 — could be quite narrow. The Supreme Court may leave for another day, for instance, the question of how murders committed by juveniles may be punished.
Last year, drawing a similar distinction, the court said in Kennedy v. Louisiana that crimes against individuals that do not involve killing, including the rape of a child by an adult, cannot be punished by death.
