Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths
Cases of two Florida juveniles raise questions about penalty for non-homicide crimes
By Robert Barnes
It did not take long for the judge to determine that the convicted rapist in front of him was irredeemable.
"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."


And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.
Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.
It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.
Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . It would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."
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James Morton
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4 comments:
That's an interesting story. Funny how little was said about the crime beyond the fact that the elderly lady who was raped by these boys (one or the other did it but both are responsible) had trouble identifying which one did the physical act and which one watched and helped. And funnier is how so many in Canada want us to defer to the wisdom of judges, especially when those judges agree with their particular ideological viewpoint, but decry an American judge's judgment when it doesn't.
This case describes a child, certainly, but one who has been severely damaged by life and one who had repeatedly shown an ability and willingness to commit crimes of escalating violence. To me the question isn't whether a life sentence is appropriate or not because I think it is given for the type of crime committed. The question should be whether or not a child can be rehabilitated.
Given that question, what if, as the judge says, the answer for this particular child is no? Do we have to release the child-now-young-adult and hope he doesn't rape or kill? Or should we be able to determine whether or not it is in the public interest, the public safety interest, to release him? And isn't that exactly what parole is for? Of course I don't mean Canadian-style automatic parole regardless of your rehabilitation, but real parole based on whether or not the child has been rehabilitated. It seems to me that in the case of a child committing serious violent crimes a life sentence with some possibility of parole is reasonable.
On a completely different subject, Mr. Morton, I would be interested in your take on this situation.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/10/29/f-man-hiebert-rearrest-greek.html#socialcomments
Regards,
S
How about addressing the massive societal flaws that promote rape in order to stop it from happening in the first place instead of just sending people to jail?
"How about addressing the massive societal flaws that promote rape in order to stop it from happening in the first place instead of just sending people to jail?"
There's the flaw in Liberal thinking in a nutshell. Sure, lets look at the societal flaws, lets fix them, lets do all that, but that does nothing to fix the flaws in this child. This child may be rehabilitated but also may not. We must not release him simply because we feel guilty about how he became a monster. Liberal thinking seems to want to give the monster a break, let him out early despite the fact that he is a serious danger to society. Yes, fix the problems, no we can't let him go because of them.
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