[Pnews] Minors remain jailed for life despite US supreme court ban

[Prisoner News]

  Minors remain jailed for life despite US supreme court ban on such
  sentences

Many US states have done nothing to amend laws despite ruling that 
banned mandatory life sentences for people under 18

*http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jun/24/minors-life-sentences-despite-us-supreme-court-ban*

. Quantel Lotts: jailed for life at aged 14 
<http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/mar/19/supreme-court-juvenile-life-sentences>

Two years after the US supreme court banned mandatory sentences of life 
without parole for people under 18 years old, most of the states that 
carry the brutal punishment have done nothing to change their ways, 
leaving the vast majority of the prisoners already on the sentence still 
facing the prospect of spending the rest of their natural life in a cell.

A report 
<http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=v851EHi2nSprGqN7FH6lalO5DW3Lq3J7> 
from the Washington-based justice reform body, the Sentencing Project, 
underlines what has become a legal paradox. In 2012, the highest 
judicial panel ruled in Miller v Alabama that mandatory life without 
parole for juveniles was a violation of the eighth amendment that 
forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Yet since then only 13 of the 28 
states that carry the sentence have amended their laws.

Even many among those 13 have failed to meet the spirit of the supreme 
court's ruling by replacing full-life sentences with exceptionally harsh 
terms that will still see prisoners who were convicted as teenagers -- 
some as young as 13 -- languish in prison until their elder years. 
Nebraska has introduced a minimum 40 years in custody for juveniles 
convicted of homicide before a parole review can even be contemplated.

In Iowa, the governor went even further and commuted all the state's 
juvenile life without parole sentences to minimum terms of 60 years.

In a criminal justice system renowned for its toughness -- the US has 
the highest incarceration rate in the world -- the locking away of 
children for their entire lives is widely considered to be singularly 
harsh. America is the only country in the world, bar none, that allows 
kids to be sentenced to die in prison with no chance of rehabilitation.

Yet as Justice Elena Kagan spelled out in Miller v Alabama, advances in 
scientific knowledge of the brain has highlighted differences between 
the adult and juvenile brain. She concluded that such differences both 
"lessened a child's 'moral culpability' and enhanced the prospect that, 
as the years go by and neurological development occurs, his 
'deficiencies will be reformed'."

The paradox is especially severe for as many as 2,000 who had already 
been sentenced as juveniles to life without parole before the supreme 
court issued its ban. The ruling left unstated whether or not the 
prohibition should be retroactive, leaving those prisoners caught in a 
form of judicial stasis.

Only ten of the 28 states affected by Miller v Alabama have, either 
through legislation or court order, decided that the ruling is 
retroactive and allowed for resentencing hearings. But that still leaves 
the vast majority of the 2,000 in a state of legal limbo.

Among them is Quantel Lotts, who the Guardian interviewed in 2012 
<http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/mar/19/supreme-court-juvenile-life-sentences> 
shortly before the supreme court issued its ban.

Lotts killed his step-brother during a play session that turned into a 
fight. He was 14 years and 21 days old at the time -- an age he would be 
deemed under the law of his state, Missouri, to be too young to leave 
school, donate blood, or have a tattoo without parental approval. Yet he 
was tried as an adult and sentenced to the most extreme punishment short 
of the death penalty.

In the interview, Lotts talked about his remorse at killing his 
step-brother, his conviction that he had changed, and his despair at his 
sentence: "It's hard. I can't accept that I'll be here for the rest of 
my life. They might as well have given me the death penalty, it's just 
the same."

Today, Lotts remains 
<https://web.mo.gov/doc/offSearchWeb/searchOffender.do> on life without 
parole.

"Children are uniquely capable of change and require a second look down 
the road," the Sentencing Project says. "Juveniles have a capacity for 
rehabilitation that should not be ignored."

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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