United States
In 2010, the United States Supreme court ruled that sentencing minors to life without parole, automatically (as the result of a statute) or as the result of a judicial decision, for crimes other than intentional homicide violated the 8th Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment, in the case of Graham v. Florida.
Graham v. Florida was a significant case in juvenile justice. In Jacksonville, Florida, Terranee J. Graham tried to rob a restaurant along with three adolescent accomplices. During the robbery one of Graham’s accomplices had a metal bar which he used to hit the restaurant’s manager twice in the head. Once arrested Graham was charged with attempted armed robbery, and armed burglary with assault/battery. The maximum sentence he faced from these charges was life without the possibility of parole and the prosecutor wanted to charge him as an adult. During the trial, Graham pled guilty to the charges, resulting in 3 years of probation, 12 months of which had to be served in jail. Since he was awaiting trial in jail, he already served 6 months and therefore was released after 6 additional months.
After Graham’s release, in less than 6 months he was involved in another robbery. Since he violated the conditions of his probation, his probation officer reported to the trial court about his probation violations-a few weeks before Graham turned 18. It was a different judge presiding over his trial for the probation violations a year later. While Graham denied any involvement of the robbery, he did admit to fleeing from the police. The trial court found that Graham violated his probation by “committing a home invasion robbery, possessing a firearm, and associating with persons engaged in criminal activity” The final outcome of the trial was that Graham was sentenced to 15 years for the attempted armed robbery plus life imprisonment for the armed burglary. The life sentence Graham got meant he had a life sentence without the possibility of parole, “because Florida abolished their parole system in 2003”
Graham’s case was presented to the Supreme Court, with the question of should juveniles receive life without the possibility of parole in non-homicide cases. The Justices eventually ruled that it violated the juvenile’s 8th Amendment, protecting them from “"barbaric" punishments and punishments that are disproportionate to the crime committed” resulting in the banishment of life sentences without the possibility of parole in non-homicide cases for juveniles.
The United States Supreme Court considered, in the spring of 2012, the question of whether or not minors should be sentenced, at least automatically, to life without parole for any crime at all, including the only cases stated above in which it was at that time an option: first-degree murder with aggravating factors (felony murder, where life without parole was then given as an option to juveniles, and where an adult in the same context could be charged with capital murder and given life or the death penalty). On Monday, June 25, 2012, according to the Catholic News Service (CNS) news brief posted that day, the Court ruled on the case of Miller v. Alabama in a 5-4 decision and with the majority opinion written by Associate Justice Elena Kagan, that life in prison without parole as an automatic sentence would be considered unconstitutional in all cases in the United States. The majority of the justices, in the opinion, stated that the judge should take into account mitigating factors and other information which are usually of relevance during the sentencing phase. Such factors would include, but are not limited to,: information on the nature of the crime and the victim(s), age, record, potential for rehabilitation and contribution to society, wishes of the prosecution, defense, and the victim's family, maturity level, degree of malice and forethought and degree of participation, aggravating circumstances or accompanying crimes, family environment and related circumstances such as a history of mistreatment, literacy and educational level, psychosocial and neurological development, and many others. For now, a sentence of life in prison without parole could still be handed down for aggravated first degree murder if it was determined after that process to be warranted. The decision was announced on the next-to-last day of the 2011-12 term. Their reasoning was because it violated the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Read more about this topic: Life Imprisonment
Famous quotes related to united states:
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
—Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)
“Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn’t he an archetype? Pioneers, Oh Pioneers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can’t do with him. What’s wrong with him then? Or what’s wrong with us?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)