Why This Country is Backwards

This country has it's priorities backwards. Not only do we imprison more juveniles than any other nation, but we do it for LONGER than any other nation. Out of the 195 countries on the planet, we are the only one that imprisons CHILDREN for life without parole. That, to me, is ridiculous. We don't allow children to see violent movies, we don't allow them to smoke, we don't allow them to vote, and we don't allow them to have sex. Why is this? Because their mental capacities are less than adults, or so say many experts and the government. Their sense of right and wrong is inhibited, and their ability to realize their mistakes is lowered. Again, this is according to experts and the government. Then why does this same government allow children to be put away for life without parole? Children are still pliable. They are learning, and they are able to be influenced. Out of all criminals, children have the best hope of being rehabilitated. That is what we should be doing, rehabilitating them and teaching them. Instead of spending the money to incarcerate them, teach them and make them better people. Don't put them with felons who will do the opposite. All that does is create more victims, both their future victims, AND the children.

The situation is further compounded when the offender is African American. That is the great irony of the justice system. Justice is supposed to be blind, but frequently it is not. If you are African American, you're in trouble. It's not right, and it shouldn't be allowed, but it frequently is. Tell me this. How is a one day trial resulting in a 13 year old African American boy going to prison for life fair or just? Answer: It isn't. In this instance the lawyer was disbarred, but that is frequently not the case. Honestly, the kid was convicted based off a 72 year old woman's memory. That alone speaks volumes.

Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13

In 1989, someone raped a 72-year-old woman in Pensacola, Fla. Joe Sullivan was 13 at the time, and he admitted that he and two older friends had burglarized the woman’s home earlier that day. But he denied that he had returned to commit the rape.

The victim testified that her assailant was “a colored boy” who “had kinky hair and he was quite black and he was small.” She said she “did not see him full in the face” and so would not recognize him by sight. But she recalled her attacker saying something like, “If you can’t identify me, I may not have to kill you.”

At his trial, Mr. Sullivan was made to say those words several times.

“It’s been six months,” the woman said on the witness stand. “It’s hard, but it does sound similar.”

The trial lasted a day and ended in conviction. Then Judge Nicholas Geeker, of the circuit court in Escambia County, sentenced Mr. Sullivan to life without the possibility of parole.

Mr. Sullivan is 33 now, and his lawyers have asked the United States Supreme Court to consider the question of whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment extends to sentencing someone who was barely a teenager to die in prison for a crime that did not involve a killing.

According to court papers and a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, which now represents Mr. Sullivan, only eight people in the world are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 13. All are in the United States.

And there are only two people in that group whose crimes did not involve a killing. Both are in Florida, and both are black.

On the other hand, the question of whether life without parole for juveniles is constitutional is the logical next step following the court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, which struck down the death penalty for crimes committed by 16- and 17-year-olds. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that even older teenagers are different from adults. They are less mature, more impulsive, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better over time.

Mr. Sullivan’s trial, for instance, lasted a day. He was represented by a lawyer who made no opening statement and whose closing argument occupies about three double-spaced pages of the trial transcript. The lawyer was later suspended, and the Florida Bar’s Web site says he is “not eligible to practice in Florida.”

There was biological evidence from the rape, but it was not presented at the trial. When Mr. Sullivan’s new lawyers recently sought to conduct DNA testing on it, they were told that the state had destroyed it in 1993.

“I don’t think it’s possible to say that a 13-year-old will never change and that life without parole is an appropriate punishment,” Mr. Stevenson said.

Aside from Mr. Sullivan’s case, it seems there is only one other appeals court decision about whether young teenagers may be locked away forever for rape. It was issued 40 years ago in Kentucky, and it involved two 14-year-olds. The court struck down the part of the sentences precluding the possibility of parole.

Juveniles “are not permitted to vote, to contract, to purchase alcoholic beverages or to marry without the consent of their parents,” the court said. “It seems inconsistent that one be denied the fruits of the tree of the law, yet subjected to all of its thorns.”

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