C O L U M N S

WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court will on Monday wrestle with the merits of convicting juveniles who have not committed murder to life in prison without the possibility of parole — a fate shared by 109 US prisoners, all of whom are non-white.

The nine justices will consider two separate cases to determine whether handing out sentences that effectively leave a juvenile to die in prison violates the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

The first case is that of Joe Sullivan, described as mentally retarded by his lawyers, who has been languishing on life imprisonment without chance of release for raping an older woman in 1989, when he was just 13 years old.

In the second case, Terrance Graham has been serving the same sentence since 2005 for his involvement in an armed burglary at the age of 17, while on parole after a robbery conviction.

For Graham, the sentencing judge appeared to waive any possibility of the young man’s rehabilitation.

“The only thing that I can rationalise is that you decided that this is how you were going to lead your life and there is nothing that we can do for you,” the judge said.

Both Sullivan and Graham are serving their sentences in the state of Florida, which holds 70 per cent of juveniles behind bars for life, for crimes not involving murder.

Randy Hertz, professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law, said the Supreme Court needs on Monday to consider the same arguments as when it ruled in 2005 to outlaw the death penalty for juveniles.

“Life without the possibility of parole is like capital punishment,” he said, because it is a “one time irrevocable determination of the offender’s final fate.” Almost 2,500 American prisoners are currently serving a life sentence for a crime committed when they were teenagers, including murder.

Israel is the only other country in the world to practice the same punishment, but on a smaller scale, according to a 2007 study from the University of San Francisco.

In some US states, said Hertz, legislation is on the books that could see a child as young as eight or nine-years-old transferred to an adult court and be eligible to life without parole, although 13-years-old is the youngest that someone has been handed such a punishment.

Sentencing juveniles to life behind bars, he lamented, is determined “at a time when the offender is a child and so there is no way to predict what he or she would be like as an adult.” Beatriz Luna, a researcher of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, noted that the young human brain is “immature” in the processes that control behavior — unlike adult brains that have a greater recognition of actions.

“Because the adolescent brain is still maturing, it is more plastic,” Luna told said, meaning a younger brain that is still growing is much more responsive to rehabilitation than an adult.

In the 2005 ruling the highest US court upheld an earlier ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court banning the execution of people convicted of crimes they committed before turning 18.

The court had ruled in 1988 that the execution of offenders who were younger than 16 when they committed their crimes was unconstitutional, but a few US states - including Alabama and Texas - still allowed execution for perpetrators of crimes committed at 16 or 17.—AFP