How Can America Condemn Children to Die in Prison?

[Brewman_Jax]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/154561/ho...n_prison_/

From the article:

Quote:Those of us who haven’t blocked out our memories of middle school probably recall agonizing over things like what to wear or feeling inexplicably moody or depressed. And with good reason. The emotional instability and intense pressures that characterize adolescence are so significant that the US Supreme Court has said children require different treatment under the Constitution when they are convicted of even the most serious crimes.

In Roper v. Simmons, which ruled out the death penalty for under-age offenders in 2005, the Court reasoned that “juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders” because they are less mature and their sense of responsibility has not fully developed. They are more vulnerable to negative internal and external influences, including peer pressure. Unlike adults, they can’t control or escape dysfunctional homes and dangerous neighborhoods—two major contributing factors to youth crime. They also have a greater chance for rehabilitation. Thus, as the Court said, “from a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult.”

In 2010, the Court applied the same guiding logic in its decision in Graham v. Florida, concluding that children convicted of non-homicide crimes cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. As Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, “Juveniles are more capable of change than are adults, and their actions are less likely to be evidence of ‘irretrievably depraved character’ than are the actions of adults.”

On March 20, the Court will hear oral arguments in two cases, Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, that ask whether it’s ever constitutional to condemn a child to die in prison. The petitioners, Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson, both of whom were convicted of murders committed when they were just 14, argue that, by the Court’s own logic, it is not. As attorney Bryan Stevenson argues in a summary of the Miller argument: “To wholly disregard a 14-year-old offender’s age and age-related characteristics in sentencing him to be imprisoned for the remainer of his existence makes a mockery” of the precedent set by the Court in Roper and Graham.


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Given the need of the MSM to over-sensationalize unusual crimes, the racist nature of law enforcement and justice and its regular disregard for its own rules, this trend is disgraceful.

[jaxx]

I have never agreed with kids being tried, and sentenced, as adults. They just don't think like an adult.