SHARANDA JONES' LIFE SENTENCE COMMUTED BY OBAMA; WHAT ABOUT BLACK MEN??

SHARANDA JONES' LIFE SENTENCE COMMUTED BY OBAMA:

BUT WHAT ABOUT BLACK MEN??

After serving 16 years in Federal Prison as a first-time, non-violent drug offender, SHARANDA JONES 48, was finally released from Incarceration by Pres OBAMA.

Ms Jones was given a life sentence under former President BILL CLINTON'S Mandatory Drug Sentencing Guidelines which targeted Sellers of CRACK Cocaine versus sellers of Powdered Cocaine.

Since Pres OBAMA has known about SHARANDA'S sentence for 7 years, why is he just NOW releasing her?

And what about all the BLACK Men who were also thrown into Federal prisons under BILL CLINTON'S Mandatory Sentencing guidelines?

Why does it appear that prior to the 2016 election, DEMOCRATS are only trying to help BLACK Women and not BLACK Men?

~ President Obama commutes sentences of 95 federal drug offenders

President Obama commuted the sentences of 95 drug offenders Friday, more than double the number he granted this summer, in an effort to give relief to drug offenders who were harshly sentenced in the nation’s war on drugs.

It is the third time this year that the president has used his unique clemency power to release federal drug offenders, whose harsh sentences have contributed to the phenomenon of mass incarceration.

The commutations are a centerpiece of the president’s effort to make the most significant changes­ in the nation’s criminal justice system in decades. He and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. have spoken passionately about the need to fix what they say is a broken system — one they argue has subjected too many nonviolent inmates to decades behind bars, disproportionately hurting minority communities.

“I commuted the sentences of 95 men and women who had served their debt to society, another step forward in upholding our ideals of justice and fairness,” Obama said.

One of the inmates Obama granted clemency was Sharanda Jones, a 48-year-old Texas woman who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a single cocaine offense.

She was a first-time, nonviolent offender.

The Washington Post highlighted Jones’s story in July as an example of the tens of thousands of inmates in crowded federal prisons who received severe mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses­ during the crack-cocaine epidemic. Jones has spent 16 years behind bars, leaving an 8-year-old daughter to grow up without her mother.

Her daughter, now 24, broke down in tears when she heard that her mother will be coming home April 16.

“I’m so happy,” said Clenesha Garland, who lives in Dallas. “This is the best Christmas present for the rest of my life.”

Brittany Byrd, the Dallas attorney who first heard of Jones’s case when she wrote about Jones for a law school class, filed the clemency petition two years ago that Obama signed.

“Yesterday, Sharanda was set to die in prison as a first-time non­violent offender,” Byrd said. “The president literally saved her life. She has more than paid her debt to society and is truly deserving of the mercy she was given today.”

Byrd said she called Jones from her car with the news shortly before Obama made his announcement.

“You’re coming home!” she told Jones, who is in Carswell women’s prison in Fort Worth.

Byrd said Jones seemed in shock at first. She was quiet on the other end of the line and then started crying softly.

“Thank you, Jesus, thank you,” Jones said on the phone with her attorney. “It’s been so long.”

In spring 2014, then-Attorney General Holder — who once called the harsh mandatory-minimum drug sentences “draconian” — started an initiative to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders in federal prison.

To qualify, prisoners had to have served at least 10 years of their sentence, and have no significant criminal history and no connection to gangs, cartels or organized crime. They must have demonstrated good conduct in prison. And they also must be inmates who probably would have received a “substantially lower sentence” if convicted of the same offense today.

“This is precisely the kind of case for which our reform efforts are designed,” Holder said in an interview Friday about Jones’s commutation. “We must use our limited resources in more appropriate, more just ways. The president has acted in a significant way today. Now Congress must act and pass meaningful criminal justice reform legislation.”

Lawmakers are debating several bipartisan bills to change sentencing laws.

In his last news conference before leaving for Hawaii for the holidays, Obama said he supported the Senate bill on criminal justice reform and hoped the House would pass a similar piece of legislation.

“There have been sincere negotiations and efforts by Republicans and Democrats to create a criminal justice system that is more fair and even-handed,” Obama said. “There is a good bill in the Senate. My hope is that it gets to the floor and gets paired with a bill in the House.”

After Holder announced the new criteria last year to open up the clemency process to more federal inmates, a massive number — about 33,000 — applied for relief.

The response was overwhelming and enthusiastic and elevated the level of hope in prison that they may not actually die there,” said Julie Stewart, president and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

But it also created a logistical nightmare for a new group of private attorneys and law school students that had formed, with the encouragement of the Justice Department, to help find inmates who met the criteria set out by Holder.

The group, called Clemency Project 2014, includes Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The extensive number of applications and the complicated review process by the outside lawyers, the Justice Department and the White House has slowed the effort, advocates say.

It took about a year for the group to get organized and train lawyers for the massive effort, included locating old legal documents, contacting prosecutors and judges who imposed the sentences, and trying to get pre-sentencing reports and sentencing transcripts, some of which had not been transcribed.

Of the 33,000 inmates who applied and asked for help from attorneys, the clemency project weeded out about 18,000 applications that did not meet the criteria, according to Cynthia W. Roseberry, the project manager.

James E. Felman, an attorney and one of the leaders of CP14 who visited prisons to help find inmates who met the criteria, said the process is much more streamlined now. 

The group of lawyers has sent 263 petitions to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney to be considered.

Of the commutations Obama granted on Friday, 27 were prepared by pro-bono lawyers across the country and students in 24 law schools working with the clemency project.

Once the pardon attorney reviews the petitions, she sends them to Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates to be reviewed.

“While the clemency initiative is just one prong in the larger effort to reform sentencing practices, it is one to which we are strongly committed,” Yates said in a statement Friday.

Yates then sends the petitions and her recommendations to White House Counsel Neil Eggleston. More than 9,000 clemency petitions are pending, either at the Justice Department or the White House.

“It remains the case that with a year left in his term, the president has already commuted the sentences of more individuals than the past five presidents combined, and we expect that the president will grant more commutations and pardons to deserving individuals in his final year in office,” Eggleston said Friday.

But several advocates interviewed Friday said that the comparison with other presidents is not a meaningful one because no other president has launched a clemency initiative to grant an early release to drug offenders who meet criteria laid out by the Justice Department.

NYU Law Professor Rachel Barkow, an advocate for clemency reform, called the current clemency process with so many prisoner petitions backlogged “a disaster.”

“Once the president lays out the criteria for the cases­ he wants to grant clemency, the measure of success for that program is: Have you processed all the people who meet those criteria?” she said.

By the end of this year, Obama will have commuted the sentences of 184 federal inmates.

“American presidents have had the power to show mercy since the founding of our republic,” said Stewart, of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “President Obama is the first president in decades to use it as the Founders intended. For that reason, we commend him for showing more mercy than his predecessors. But his work is not done.”

Sources:  Washington Post, Clemency Report, YouTube

SCOTUS Rules Defendants & Indigents Have Constitutional Right To Good, Effective Legal Counsel (Plea Bargains)

Justices’ Ruling Expands Rights of Accused in Plea Bargains


Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to effective lawyers during plea negotiations, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in a pair of 5-to-4 decisions.

Because about 95 percent of criminal convictions arise from guilty pleas, the decisions represent a vast expansion of judicial supervision of the criminal justice system.

“Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The right to adequate assistance of counsel cannot be defined or enforced without taking account of the central role plea bargaining takes in securing convictions and determining sentences.”

Justice Antonin Scalia took the unusual step of summarizing his dissents from the bench. “Today’s opinions open a whole new field of constitutionalized criminal procedure: federal plea-bargaining law,” he said.

Scholars who welcomed that development agreed about its significance.

“The Supreme Court’s decision in these two cases constitute the single greatest revolution in the criminal justice process since Gideon v. Wainwright provided indigents the right to counsel,” said Wesley M. Oliver, a law professor at Widener University.

It has long been established that defendants are entitled to new trials if they can show that incompetent work by their lawyers probably affected the verdicts in their cases. The Supreme Court has also required lawyers to offer competent advice in urging defendants to give up their right to a trial by accepting a guilty plea.

The cases decided Wednesday answered a harder question: What is to be done in cases in which a lawyer’s incompetence caused the client to reject a favorable plea bargain?

Justice Kennedy, who wrote both majority opinions and was joined both times by the court’s four more liberal members, acknowledged that allowing the possibility of reopening cases involving rejected pleas that were followed by convictions presented all sorts of knotty problems. But he said the realities of American criminal justice required the court to take action.

One of the cases, Missouri v. Frye, No 10-444, involved Galin E. Frye, who was charged with driving without a license in 2007. A prosecutor offered to let him plead guilty in exchange for a 90-day sentence.

But Mr. Frye’s lawyer at the time, Michael Coles, failed to tell his client about the offer. After it expired, Mr. Frye pleaded guilty without a deal in place, and a judge sentenced him to three years.

The second case, Lafler v. Cooper, No. 10-209, concerned Anthony Cooper, who shot a woman in Detroit in 2003 and then received bad legal advice. Because all four of his bullets struck the victim below her waist, his lawyer said, Mr. Cooper could not be convicted of assault with intent to murder.

Based on that advice, Mr. Cooper rejected a plea bargain that called for a sentence of four to seven years. He was convicted, and is serving 15 to 30 years.


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Sources: NY Times, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

NC Judge Orders 2 Inmates Convicted Of Murder Released

NC Judge: Lifers should be Freed


NC Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand has ruled that two inmates sentenced to life in the 1970s should be freed.

His order comes less than a week after Alford Jones and Faye Brown, both convicted of murder, argued that they were being illegally detained by North Carolina prison officials, Mandy Locke reports.

The state's highest courts have ruled that life sentences imposed between 1974 and 1978 amounted to 80 years. Brown and Jones argued that credits earned for good behavior, working while in prison and earning degrees made them eligible for release now.

Prison officials argued that they never awarded credits to these inmates for anything other than consideration of parole or changing their grade of custody.

In his order, Rand acknowledged the prison system's method of awarding credits but said that policy has been wrong.

"The Court concludes that the Department of Correction's interpretation of its regulations regarding the award of sentence reduction credits is clearly erroneous, and that a different reading is compelled by the plain language of the regulations," he wrote.



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, News & Observer, Wikipedia, CDCR, Google Maps

High Court Examines Life Imprisonment For Juveniles Who Commit Non-Homocidal Crimes

(Part 1 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing the seriousness of the new federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. This video is targeted towards urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in Boston by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace, Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)



(Part 2 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing The seriousness of the new Federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)











High court looks at life in prison for juveniles


A seemingly divided Supreme Court wrestled Monday with whether teenagers can be locked away forever for their crimes. The question arose in two cases involving Florida men who are serving life prison terms with no chance of parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. Their lawyers argue that the sentences for people so young are cruel and unusual, in violation of the Constitution, because young people have greater capacity to change.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the Supreme Court opinion four years ago that ruled out the death penalty for people under 18, judging them less responsible than adults. So most eyes were on him Monday as the court considered whether to extend that rationale to life without parole sentences.

But Kennedy offered little hint of his position, at one point suggesting it might be difficult to distinguish between juveniles and adults in cases that do not involve the death penalty.

"Why does a juvenile have a constitutional right to hope, but an adult does not?" he asked.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg provided a possible answer, wondering whether teenagers can be accurately evaluated at the time they are sentenced. It may be possible that only after some years have passed that the state can determine, "Has this person overcome those youthful disabilities?" she said.

A second chance?

On the other side of the issue, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether every last juvenile offender had to be given a second chance. "Some of the actual cases in which this sentence has been imposed in Florida involve factual situations that are so horrible that I couldn't have imagined them if I hadn't actually seen them," Alito said, recounting two that involved the rape of children.

In the two cases before the court, Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman when he was 13 and Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17.

Graham, now 22, and Sullivan, now 34, are in Florida prisons, which hold more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

The justices could distinguish between the two based on the difference in their ages at the time of the crimes: It could rule that someone as young as Sullivan was must eventually be considered for parole without granting Graham any relief from his sentence.

Sullivan's lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, stated his basic argument simply: "To say to any child of 13 that you are only fit to die in prison is cruel." Sullivan would be resentenced to 40 years in prison if he were to win his case at the high court, he said.

Kennedy's opinion in 2005 was rooted in two principles — that death is different from other punishments and that children are less culpable than adults.

Following that ruling, Stevenson noted that juveniles on death row in Florida — all convicted of murder — "got a better sentence than Joe Sullivan," life prison terms with the possibility of parole.






US Supreme Court Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.

It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.

Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . 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."

Sullivan is represented by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, who said his client's sentence is no different from the punishment the court found unconstitutional.

"They are both effectively death sentences," Stevenson said in an interview. "One is death by execution, and the other is death by incarceration, but they are both terminal sentences."

Only two 13-year-olds in the country have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes that were not homicides, Stevenson said, and both of them are held in Florida.

Florida officials would not discuss Sullivan's case before the November arguments, but their brief to the court said states are within their rights to lock up forever those thought to pose a perpetual threat to society.

"There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery," Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar wrote.

Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

A range of issues

In accepting both cases and deciding to hear them separately, the court gives itself a wide range of issues to ponder. The justices may rule that such sentences are acceptable for 17-year-olds, for instance, but not 13-year-olds. They could look at the relative seriousness of the crimes, or differentiate the non-homicides in both cases with crimes in which someone is killed.

Sullivan, who his lawyer said had been living on the streets since he was 10, had a troubled history with the law. He had 17 offenses before the crime at issue. In 1989, he and two friends burglarized the home of a 72-year-old woman one day while she was away, then returned later. The woman was raped by one of the juveniles; she never saw his face, identifying him only as a "dark, colored boy." But she remembered that he said something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."

At the one-day trial, Sullivan was made to say the words over and over. The victim listened and said: "It's been six months. It's hard, but it does sound similar."

The other boys singled out Sullivan as committing the rape.

"The conviction itself was very questionable," Stevenson said. "We do think he's innocent."

But that is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court. Stevenson only seeks to have Sullivan, now 33, resentenced so that at some point he becomes eligible for release.

Stevenson contends that Florida made no conscious policy decision that 13-year-olds should be eligible for life without parole for a non-homicide. No state that has debated the question has set the age that low. Instead, he said, Sullivan and others were caught up in a legislative reaction to escalating crime.

"What happened is we lowered the minimum age for trying kids as adults and brought them into the adult system, and we expanded the range of very harsh sentences for an adult, and these two things have collided," he said.

Besides the two Floridians serving life sentences for non-homicides committed at 13, seven others have received that sentence for crimes resulting in a death, Stevenson said.

An Index of Mercy

But the state of Florida and its supporters said that is evidence that the sentences are carefully applied to the worst of the worst.

"It is a rare and agonizing decision to sentence a juvenile to life-without-parole," said a brief filed by Louisiana and 18 other states. "But rare does not mean unconstitutional. Rather, rarity is an index of mercy -- of reluctance to take this severe step."

The National District Attorneys Association, supporting Florida, said that while life without parole for juveniles might be unusual, "permanent incarceration for the most violent, hardened juvenile offenders is by no means 'cruel.' "

Sullivan and Graham are supported by a wide-ranging group of organizations: the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and academics and social scientists who argue that juveniles cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. For the same reason, they say, younger teenagers are not entrusted with decisions such as voting, marrying or drinking.

A group of educators and social scientists told the court that such research was crucial to the 2005 decision that juveniles should not be subject to the death penalty. "The principal purposes of sentencing -- punishing the culpable and deterring the rational -- are not furthered by denying the possibility of parole to adolescents," the group said.

Graham and Sullivan are also supported in an unusual friend-of-the-court brief by former juvenile offenders such as Simpson, director and actor Charles Dutton, and a poet, a software executive and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"At some point, you have to look at them again and ask, 'What have you done with your life?' " said Simpson, who said that as a youth he burned down an abandoned federal building, destroyed property and fought with a police officer. "Maybe 90 percent of them you throw back in, but what about the other 10 percent?"



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Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, US Probation Department, 4Peace, Stop Handgun Violence Inc., Google Maps

Life Sentences For Youth Violates Constitutional Rights...US Supreme Court To Decide

(Part 1 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing the seriousness of the new federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. This video is targeted towards urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in Boston by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace, Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)



(Part 2 of Mandatory Sentence a short narrative video dramatizing The seriousness of the new Federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for urban youth who maybe involved in the criminal justice system. Produced in by The US Probation Department, Boston super group 4Peace Performers of the peace anthem "Start Peace" and Stop Handgun Violence inc.)





US Supreme Court Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths

"He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to try to send him away for as long as I can."

And then Geeker sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time, Sullivan was 13 years old.

Now, 20 years after that sentencing in a courtroom in Pensacola, Fla., the Supreme Court will consider whether Sullivan's prison term -- and what his supporters say is an only-in-America phenomenon of extreme sentences for juveniles -- violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

The case -- which has drawn widespread notice and briefs from former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and others describing their own youthful crimes -- is likely to be a cardinal criminal justice decision for the court this term.

It is a natural outgrowth of the court's bitterly divided ruling in 2005 that juveniles cannot be executed for murders they commit.

Those challenging sentences of life without parole for teenagers base their optimism on words in Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion in that case: "The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. . . . 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."

Sullivan is represented by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, who said his client's sentence is no different from the punishment the court found unconstitutional.

"They are both effectively death sentences," Stevenson said in an interview. "One is death by execution, and the other is death by incarceration, but they are both terminal sentences."

Only two 13-year-olds in the country have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes that were not homicides, Stevenson said, and both of them are held in Florida.

Florida officials would not discuss Sullivan's case before the November arguments, but their brief to the court said states are within their rights to lock up forever those thought to pose a perpetual threat to society.

"There is no consensus against life sentences for juveniles, particularly for heinous crimes such as sexual battery," Florida Solicitor General Scott Makar wrote.

Across the country, 111 people are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles that did not result in a death, according to one report; 77 of them are locked up in Florida, for crimes including armed robbery and carjacking. The state took a get-tough approach in the 1990s in response to a crime wave that was "compromising the safety of residents, visitors, and international tourists, and threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's brief to the court states.

That brief came in the case of Terrance Jamar Graham, a second petition the court accepted. Graham, of Jacksonville, received a life sentence after being part of a group that robbed a barbecue restaurant when he was 16; while on probation a year later, he was part of an armed burglary. Again, a judge doubted Graham's ability to ever change his ways; his accomplices served short sentences.

A range of issues

In accepting both cases and deciding to hear them separately, the court gives itself a wide range of issues to ponder. The justices may rule that such sentences are acceptable for 17-year-olds, for instance, but not 13-year-olds. They could look at the relative seriousness of the crimes, or differentiate the non-homicides in both cases with crimes in which someone is killed.

Sullivan, who his lawyer said had been living on the streets since he was 10, had a troubled history with the law. He had 17 offenses before the crime at issue. In 1989, he and two friends burglarized the home of a 72-year-old woman one day while she was away, then returned later. The woman was raped by one of the juveniles; she never saw his face, identifying him only as a "dark, colored boy." But she remembered that he said something like, "If you can't identify me, I may not have to kill you."

At the one-day trial, Sullivan was made to say the words over and over. The victim listened and said: "It's been six months. It's hard, but it does sound similar."

The other boys singled out Sullivan as committing the rape.

"The conviction itself was very questionable," Stevenson said. "We do think he's innocent."

But that is not at issue in the case before the Supreme Court. Stevenson only seeks to have Sullivan, now 33, resentenced so that at some point he becomes eligible for release.

Stevenson contends that Florida made no conscious policy decision that 13-year-olds should be eligible for life without parole for a non-homicide. No state that has debated the question has set the age that low. Instead, he said, Sullivan and others were caught up in a legislative reaction to escalating crime.

"What happened is we lowered the minimum age for trying kids as adults and brought them into the adult system, and we expanded the range of very harsh sentences for an adult, and these two things have collided," he said.

Besides the two Floridians serving life sentences for non-homicides committed at 13, seven others have received that sentence for crimes resulting in a death, Stevenson said.

An Index of Mercy

But the state of Florida and its supporters said that is evidence that the sentences are carefully applied to the worst of the worst.

"It is a rare and agonizing decision to sentence a juvenile to life-without-parole," said a brief filed by Louisiana and 18 other states. "But rare does not mean unconstitutional. Rather, rarity is an index of mercy -- of reluctance to take this severe step."

The National District Attorneys Association, supporting Florida, said that while life without parole for juveniles might be unusual, "permanent incarceration for the most violent, hardened juvenile offenders is by no means 'cruel.' "

Sullivan and Graham are supported by a wide-ranging group of organizations: the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and academics and social scientists who argue that juveniles cannot be held responsible for their actions in the same way adults are. For the same reason, they say, younger teenagers are not entrusted with decisions such as voting, marrying or drinking.

A group of educators and social scientists told the court that such research was crucial to the 2005 decision that juveniles should not be subject to the death penalty. "The principal purposes of sentencing -- punishing the culpable and deterring the rational -- are not furthered by denying the possibility of parole to adolescents," the group said.

Graham and Sullivan are also supported in an unusual friend-of-the-court brief by former juvenile offenders such as Simpson, director and actor Charles Dutton, and a poet, a software executive and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

"At some point, you have to look at them again and ask, 'What have you done with your life?' " said Simpson, who said that as a youth he burned down an abandoned federal building, destroyed property and fought with a police officer. "Maybe 90 percent of them you throw back in, but what about the other 10 percent?"



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Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, US Probation Department, 4Peace, Stop Handgun Violence Inc., Google Maps