Monday
Aug172009
Legal Analysts Defend Life Sentences For Juvenile Offenders
Monday, August 17, 2009 at 3:37PM
By Laura Woodhead - Talk Radio News Service
Life sentences without parole for juvenile murderers are justified and constitutional, a panel of legal experts said Monday during a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation. The discussion coincided with the release of the right-leaning think tank's report "Adult Time for Adult Crimes: Exposing the Movement to Set Free Juvenile Killers and Violent Offenders," a study former Attorney General Edwin Meese III said aims to "set straight the record on this subject and to educate the public" on serious juvenile offenders' sentences.
"[The study finds that] Juvenile life without possibility of parole is reasonable, constitutional and appropriately rare," Meese said. "Contrary to what many have contended, the United States has no international obligation to ban the life without parole sentence for serious juvenile criminals."
The 2 1/2 year long study's release comes before the Supreme Court hears two cases from Florida surrounding the sentencing of juveniles.
Groups that advocate parole for juvenile offenders argue their case using "carefully crafted lies," Meese asserted. Paul Wallace, Chief of Appeals at the Delaware Department of Justice, said that the opposing view usually revolved around 8th Amendment arguments, that life without parole is a "cruel and unusual punishment" for a juvenile criminal.
"The Supreme Court has always said that you don't even look at the 8th amendment unless... the sentence is grossly disproportionate and grossly disproportionate to the crime," said Wallace.
"Outside the death penalty context, [the Supreme Court] has never found a sentence of incarceration to be disproportionate," Wallace noted."The Supreme Court has kept the line between death penalty cases and incarceration, even life without parole incarceration. The disturbing part in the current discussion is this: that certain people want to blur that line, they want to take down that wall between those sentences."
"[The blurring of this line" would give offenders] a right which [would] jeopardize all non capital sentences," said co- author of the report, Charles Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Stimson said that these lobbying campaigns were filled with misleading statistics and misreadings of Supreme Court precedent that did not represent the truth behind juvenile sentencing.
"[There needs to be a debate] that is framed by a forthright, honest and direct discussion of the facts," Stimson argued.
"Most juveniles deserve to be treated in the juvenile justice system," he said. However, the juvenile offenders who received life without parole "deserved a fair trial, got a fair trial and were justly sentenced."
Life sentences without parole for juvenile murderers are justified and constitutional, a panel of legal experts said Monday during a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation. The discussion coincided with the release of the right-leaning think tank's report "Adult Time for Adult Crimes: Exposing the Movement to Set Free Juvenile Killers and Violent Offenders," a study former Attorney General Edwin Meese III said aims to "set straight the record on this subject and to educate the public" on serious juvenile offenders' sentences.
"[The study finds that] Juvenile life without possibility of parole is reasonable, constitutional and appropriately rare," Meese said. "Contrary to what many have contended, the United States has no international obligation to ban the life without parole sentence for serious juvenile criminals."
The 2 1/2 year long study's release comes before the Supreme Court hears two cases from Florida surrounding the sentencing of juveniles.
Groups that advocate parole for juvenile offenders argue their case using "carefully crafted lies," Meese asserted. Paul Wallace, Chief of Appeals at the Delaware Department of Justice, said that the opposing view usually revolved around 8th Amendment arguments, that life without parole is a "cruel and unusual punishment" for a juvenile criminal.
"The Supreme Court has always said that you don't even look at the 8th amendment unless... the sentence is grossly disproportionate and grossly disproportionate to the crime," said Wallace.
"Outside the death penalty context, [the Supreme Court] has never found a sentence of incarceration to be disproportionate," Wallace noted."The Supreme Court has kept the line between death penalty cases and incarceration, even life without parole incarceration. The disturbing part in the current discussion is this: that certain people want to blur that line, they want to take down that wall between those sentences."
"[The blurring of this line" would give offenders] a right which [would] jeopardize all non capital sentences," said co- author of the report, Charles Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Stimson said that these lobbying campaigns were filled with misleading statistics and misreadings of Supreme Court precedent that did not represent the truth behind juvenile sentencing.
"[There needs to be a debate] that is framed by a forthright, honest and direct discussion of the facts," Stimson argued.
"Most juveniles deserve to be treated in the juvenile justice system," he said. However, the juvenile offenders who received life without parole "deserved a fair trial, got a fair trial and were justly sentenced."
Reader Comments (3)
As someone who has been blogging about juvenile cases for a long time, I am always interested by new studies about the subject matter. The problem is that they always are reactive in nature and approach the subject from a twisted perspective - liberal as well as conservative.
The Heritage Foundation is known for its so-called conservative bent, but it is anything but conservative when it comes to juvenile offenders. The reality is that they do not support the capacity defense under common law - something which protected children from overzealous prosecutors for centuries. Under this notion, prosecutors had to overcome a rebuttable presumption of incapacity to prove to a jury that a child understood the nature and consequences of his actions. If the capacity defense were still in play, more than two-thirds of juvenile crime - especially in cases involving children less than 12 - would disappear. It would be impossible to find a jury to convict a child less than 12 except in the most severe cases, and capacity would doom cases where jury nulification is in play. But that would likewise require the very conservative notion of providing children with the right to a jury trial when they are accused of a crime - something that is not permitted in most states.
We do not have a juvenile system in this nation to help children - it is a system in place for the convenience of the state. A person under 18 is considered a child when it benefits the particular political needs of someone - young adults can be handcuffed, shackled and imprisoned indefinately for disobedience, staying out late and a number of other status offenses. In fact, even today in this modern world, most juveniles arrested face mere status offenses.
Legal - or faux civil penalties can be inflicted without our most cherished of rights - a jury trial. But when a prosecutor wants to use a child for political purposes, and he knows there is a strong case or blood in the water, the so-called child is no longer a child - he or she is an adult. A child cannot consent to sex, but he or she can be prosecuted for prostitution. A child cannot consent to sex, but he or she can be prosecuted for a sex crime. Under this theory, there are "innocent kids" and non-innocents, but all kids are innocent when the laws are applied against adults. Likewise, a girl cannot consent to sex, but if she posts her naked picture on the internet, a politically-minded prosecutor will see to it that she faces jail time.
Consider felony murder statutes - it is bad enough that they are applied to right thinking adults who simply wandered into a bad situation - but imagine being a youngster with no sense that your friend will do something wrong - and then paying the price with your life. In fact, a large number of juveniles sentenced for murder are in fact guilty of felony murder - something which also is not conservative in nature - it is an idea that has no roots in common law.
Already, the United States has the lowest bar of criminal responsibility in the world - 7 - and lately, we have the highest number of very young children sentenced as "adults" for "adult crimes." (whatever an "adult crime" is - since kids have killed since antiquity). We have people who have served thirty or more years in prison for crimes committed at age 12, 13, and 14. Yes. It is true. They exist in Florida (in large numbers, and often for non-murder offenses. But they also exist in Texas, New York and the liberal Commonwealth of Mass. And of course there is PA, with the highest number of juveniles sentenced as adults. They gave us the treat twenty years ago of putting a nine year old child named Cameron Kocher on trial as adult for murder. More recently, prosecutors there have confined their brutality to 11, 12 and 13 year olds.
The system is broken. Prosecutors must charge younger and younger children with more grossly inflated offenses in order to garner headlines. It won't do to go after one bad 15 year old. In Peoria, a prosecutor has to charge a 13 year old as an adult for one armed robbery (where no bullets were used) and a prosecutor in Idaho has to go after a 12 year old for attempted murder. Still, they lag behind Florida, which has treated us to the Internet video of five year olds being dragged from school in handcuffs.
At some point, we really need to drop the pretense. As a group of corrupt judges in PA taught us, there's plenty of money to be made in the juvenile system and everyone from drug makers to prison guards to prison owners are not doing good - they are doing very well. In the meantime, studies clearly show that kids are being destroyed by contact with the system, not helped, and we shuttle off small children to be used as rape fodder in our adult prison system.
Let's put the juvenile system out of its misery and return to our true conservative roots. It will no longer be against the law for a child to commit a status offense and whining, annoying parents who screw up will no longer be allowed to sic the law on their frustrated 17 year old. Let these young people be emancipated at 14 if they want and move on. Let them quit school and go to work. Let's give kids equal rights to protection under the law - prosecutors will no longer be allowed to use a child's avoidance of discipline as a motive in a criminal case where a child assaulted or killed an adult, rather, the child will be permitted to claim self defense whenever an adult is on the striking end. So cases like the infamous Christopher Pittman case would become defunct - who cares what drugs he was taking - if an adult had been held against his will in a room without food and water and threatened with beatings, he would have had the right to kill his captors to escape, no?
And let's remember the capacity defense - all those kids who are clueless about life and death - those under 14 who have no notion of what it means to carry through on an act - let's have a hoot and a hollar and make those prosecutors actually prove their case to a jury of 12. Hung jury anyone? Murder rates involving kids under 14 will almost disappear.
Get rid of the juvenile system. Bring back equal rights for all citizens under the law and let's dispose of those laws that were enacted by liberals as a measure of social control. We can save millions - and probably the kids will do much better. And don't think that I am kidding - I believe that we should get rid of the juvenile system, social control or status laws, and provide jury trials for all children. If we want to maintain our youth prisons for younger prisoners, and have a graduated scale of penalties based on youth fine, but only after a jury trial and all the other constitutional trimmings are provided in a real court of law, that is open to inspection by the media.
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Very Interesting post about the hypocrisy of the heritage foundation and how it is more ideological rather than following a train of thought such as in conservatism, many of their positions are not really conservative at all from a legal perspective if you analyze it very close. I like how you pointed the capacity defense, there are many other heritage foundation positions which aren't really conservative from a perspective but more ideological influenced from lobbying and biases. Of course they are entitled to their opinion, but its great and helpful to point out these issues from a legal persepective.