Do Some Kids Deserve To Die Behind Bars?

Kids Locked Down For Life
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By Carl C. Chancellor

At what age is it appropriate to determine a child irredeemable and therefore prudent to lock them up and throw away the key?

That is the question the U.S. Supreme Court will take up on Monday, Nov.9, when it hears two Florida cases involving teenagers given life sentences with no chance of parole despite that fact they didn’t kill anyone.

Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman when he was only 13 years old.

A Florida judge told Terrance Graham he had “thrown away his life” before sentencing him to life. Graham had been convicted of armed robbery committed when he was 17 and on parole for another felony.

It will up to the Court to decide if the life without parole sentences handed out to Sullivan, now 33, and Graham, 22, are cruel and unusual and therefore, unconstitutional. Both men are currently in Florida prisons.

The United States is one of only a few countries that allows juveniles to receive life sentences and the only country that currently has teens serving life sentences. According to figures compiled by human rights agencies, there are about 2,500 juveniles doing life behind bars.

Lawyers for Sullivan and Graham note that draconian sentences for juveniles fail to take into account that children’s brains and bodies are not fully formed and that the possibility for reform and rehabilitation exists. They also point out that every state in the nation restricts young adolescents from certain activities seen as requiring mature judgment, including voting, buying alcohol, driving, entering into contracts, and consenting to sexual activity.

However, the attorneys for the state of Florida argue that it and other states need flexibility in sentencing to address the “particularly heinous” nature of certain series crimes. Offenders they say, even children, need to be held accountable for their actions.

In 2005, when the Supreme last took up the issue of how to punish young criminals, it ruled that the death penalty couldn’t be applied to anyone younger that 18. In that case –Roper v. Simmons–the justices decreed that the juvenile death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The court noted that “it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.”

It is past time that the United States fall in line with the rest of the world and admit that passing final judgment on a child is morally repugnant and legally indefensible.

But, unless the Supreme Court sees it that way, Sullivan and Graham are likely to die in prison.