Source: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/positions/life-without-parole-juveniles
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 02:25:17+00:00

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Mental Health America (MHA) opposes sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders. Such sentences are inconsistent with any of the purposes which ordinarily guide sentencing: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation or rehabilitation.
Our society recognizes that juveniles differ from adults in their decision-making capacities as reflected in laws regarding voting, driving, access to alcoholic beverages, and consent to treatment. Developments in psychology and neuroscience support this distinction and have continued to demonstrate fundamental differences between juveniles and adults. Adolescents consistently score lower than adults in both “impulse control” and “suppression of aggression.” In evaluating decisions, adolescences are less likely than adults to evaluate both risks and benefits, to understand long-term consequences, and to examine alternative options. Adolescents are also less “future oriented” than adults and have less of an “ability to see short and long term consequences” or to “take other people’s perspectives into account.” These findings along with the ever-growing body of research confirms that compared to adults, juveniles are less able to exercise self control, less capable of avoiding risky behaviors by considering alternative actions, and less attentive to the consequences of impulsive actions.
Biologically, adolescent brains are still developing, particularly in regions associated with higher-order functions including impulse control, planning ahead, and risk avoidance. Because their brains are still developing, a juvenile’s character and personality are not yet fully formed. Accordingly “[j]uveniles are more capable of change than are adults, and their actions are less likely to be evidence of ‘irretrievably depraved character.” In both Roper and Graham, the Supreme Court recognized the potential for adolescents to be reformed and outgrow antisocial behavior as “individual identity becomes settled.” Research supports that the majority of juvenile offenders with antisocial risk factors will not be criminal adults.
Over the past ten years, the Supreme Court has recognized that juveniles are inherently different from adults. First, in the Roper v. Simmons decision, the Court declared the juvenile death penalty to be unconstitutional. The Court’s reasoning was based, in part, on society’s evolving understanding of adolescent brain development and the increased potential for change and rehabilitation. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy said, “It would be misguided to equate the failing of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 1195 (2005). Following Roper, the court held in Graham v. Florida that life without parole could not be used as a sentence for minors convicted of non-homicide offenses. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy first noted that juvenile non-homicide defendants had “twice-diminished culpability” before concluding that “the Eight Amendment does not permit” the state to deny those defendants the “chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law.” Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 68, 79 (2010). Justice Kennedy further noted that the state must provide juvenile defendants “some meaningful opportunity for release.” Graham, 560 U.S. at 75.
The court returned to the issue of juvenile life without parole in Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012). In Miller, the court considered a challenge to mandatory sentences of juvenile life without parole for homicide offenses. The Miller court determined that mandatory sentences of life without parole were categorically unconstitutional as applied to juvenile defendants. Writing for the majority, Justice Kagan noted that mandatory life without parole for juveniles made “youth… irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence, such a scheme poses too great a risk of disproportionate punishment.” Miller, 132 S. Ct. at 2469. The Miller court did not reach the question of whether life without parole could ever be used for juveniles, though Justice Kagan warned that “appropriate occasions…will be uncommon.” Id.
Writing separately, Justice Breyer specifically addressed the question of felony murder, the charge for which one of the youths at issue in Miller had been convicted. Justice Breyer argued that “there is no basis for imposing a sentence of life without parole upon a juvenile who did not himself kill or intend to kill.” Miller, 132 S. Ct. at 2477 (Breyer, J concurring).
Miller, in addition to not addressing whether the 8th Amendment categorically forbids juvenile life without parole, did not address whether the Miller rule applied retroactively to juvenile offenders already imprisoned. It also did not address “de facto” sentences of life without parole, such as 70 years without parole. States are currently in the process of responding to Miller’s mandate forbidding mandatory juvenile life without parole. In Pennsylvania, the jurisdiction with the most juvenile offenders serving mandatory life without parole, the state supreme court announced that Miller did not apply retroactively. Commonwealth v. Cunningham, 81 A. 3d 1, 10 (2013). In California, on the other hand, the state supreme court found that all juvenile defendants sentenced to mandatory life without parole before Miller were entitled to petition for review of their sentence. People v. Caballero, 55 Cal. 4th 262, 291 (2012). The Caballero court also found that a sentence of 110 years to life was a de facto sentence of life without parole and the defendant was entitled to have his sentence revisited under Miller. Caballero, 55 Cal. 4th at 268.
A number of legislative responses to Miller have been introduced. After the Massachusetts Supreme Court stuck down all sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders, mandatory or not, in Diatchenko v. District Attorney for Suffolk District, 1 N.E.3d 270 (Mass 2013), the Massachusetts legislature offered a bill proposing juveniles convicted of murder serve at lease 35 years before being eligible for parole. Illinois has proposed legislation that would trigger parole eligibility after 15 years for life sentences or sentences of more than 40 years for juvenile offenders. Wyoming has enacted legislation that mandates an opportunity for parole for juveniles serving life sentences after 25 years. Unfortunately, some states, including Florida, have advanced, but not yet passed, legislation that would delay any opportunity for parole until after 50 years has passed. Indeed, as of April, 2014, only eleven states had brought their laws into compliance with Miller.
Sentencing, including sentencing to imprisonment, has long been guided by four considerations: deterrence, retribution, incapacitation and rehabilitation. None of these purposes is served by sentencing juveniles to life without parole.
The deterrent value of life without parole has yet to be demonstrated. It is particularly unlikely to deter adolescents from crime, as they tend to live in the present, think of themselves as invincible, and have difficulty contemplating the long-term consequences of their behavior. Indeed, research has shown that the threat of adult criminal sanctions has no measurable effect on juvenile crime.
Retribution is predicated on matching the harshness of the punishment to seriousness of the offense. The seriousness of the offense is measured not only by the acts done by the defendant and the harm caused by those acts, but also by the mental state of the defendant. We know that juveniles commonly do not have the maturity to understand the consequences of their acts. Thus, they ordinarily do not harbor the same intentions as adults even when they are performing the same acts and causing the same very bad consequences, including death. Furthermore, “[l]ife without parole is an especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,” who “will on average serve more years and a greater percentage of his life in prison than an adult offender.” As a result of the extended time in prison, youth sentenced to life in prison have a life expectancy of 50.6 years, 20 years less than the average expectancy of a African-American male. Because of the shortened life expectancy of juveniles in prison, any sentence that ensures imprisonment past age 50 can be considered a de facto life sentence because for all meaningful purposes the individual will likely spend the rest of their life in prison. Retributive considerations do not support life without parole.
Nor are the goals of incapacitation and rehabilitation served by life sentences. As the Supreme Court recognized in Roper v. Simmons, it is far more likely that a juvenile can be rehabilitated than an adult. This rehabilitation is likely possible due to the fact that adolescents’ brains continue to develop into late adolescence. During this time there are significant changes in brain structure and function, particularly in the executive functions of judgment, decision-making, weighing of risk and reward, and inhibition of impulses. Incapacitation serves no legitimate purpose once a defendant has been rehabilitated and no longer poses a threat to society. Because imprisonment is expensive, imprisonment beyond the point at which a defendant has been rehabilitated wastes scarce government resources without any public purpose.
MHA encourages its affiliates and allies to work to repeal laws in those states which permit a sentence of life without parole, to ensure that Miller is applied retroactively, and to prevent states from attempting to avoid Miller by imposing de facto sentences of life without parole.
In order to ensure juveniles have a “meaningful opportunity to obtain release,” MHA advocates a policy of periodic review of juveniles sentenced to life without parole. This review should apply retroactively to all juveniles currently sentenced to life without parole, as well as to juveniles who are serving de facto life sentences that would ensure their imprisonment past the age of 50. Juveniles should have a review of their sentence no later than age 30, by which time their brains and personality would be fully developed. This would allow for sentences of 10-15 years prior to a review, but would ensure that review is completed at a time when the individual was fully developed. Such a review is more likely to be an accurate representation of the individuals’ culpability and level of rehabilitation.
Mental health advocates, professionals and other service providers should work to ensure that juveniles are provided with appropriate services while incarcerated to identify and ameliorate those problems which may have led to the crime and which need to be addressed before release will be safe and appropriate. Mental health advocates should also work to insure that are appropriate services available in the community for those juvenile offenders who are released.
 See Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 80 (2010).
 Amnesty International: Human Rights Watch. "The Rest of Their Lives: Life Without the Possibility of Parole for Child Offenders in the United States" (2005).
 Elizabeth Cauffman & Laurence Steinberg, “(Im)maturity of Judgment in Adolescence,” 18 Behav. Sci. & L. 18: 741-754 & tbl. 4 (2000).
 Bonnie Halpern-Felsher & Elizabeth Cauffman, “Costs and Benefits of a Decision: Decision-Making Competence in Adolescents and Adults,” J. Applied Developmental Psychol. 22:257, 265, 268 (2001).
 Cauffinan & Steinberg, op. cit., at 746, 748.
 Roper, 543 U.S. at 570.
 Miller Brief in Support of Petitioners, supra note 7 at 22.
 Milton J. Valencia, “Bill seeks at least 35 years for young killers”, The Boston Globe (January 24, 2014).
 HB 4650, 98th General Assembly, (Ill. 2014).
 HB 0023, 62nd Legislature (Wy. 2013).
 Kelly Orians, “One Year Later: State Level Response and Implementation of Miller v. Alabama”, Youth Law News XXXII, (National Center for Youth Law July-September 2013), accessible online at http://www.youthlaw.org/publications/yln/2013/jul_sep_2013/one_year_later_state_level_response_and_i... (last visited Feb. 8, 2014).
 Miller Brief in Support of Petitioners, supra note 7 at 34.
 Graham, supra note 9 at 2028.
 Miller Brief in Support of Petitioners, supra note 7 at 25-26.
 See Michigan Life Expectancy Data for Youth Serving Natural Life sentences, supra note 18 (the average life expectancy of youths sentenced to life in prison was 50.6).

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