Constitutional Law

High Court Seeks Fla. Input On Challenge To Life Sentence of Youngster

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the Florida attorney general to respond to a petition filed by the Equal Justice Initiative seeking review of a life imprisonment sentence. The Equal Justice Initiative has urged the high court to review the life imprisonment sentence of Joe Sullivan for a sexual assault. A Florida judge sentenced Sullivan to life in prison without parole when he was 13. In an article about the case, The New York Times’ Adam Liptak writes that the court’s order for a Florida response to EJI’s petition “probably means that at least one justice considered the case significant or difficult” and that in 2005, the high court invalidated the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by teenagers. In that case, Roper v. Simmons, Liptak notes that Justice Anthony Kennedy “said that even older teenagers are different from adults. They are less mature, more impulsive, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better over time.”

EJI maintains that Sullivan’s sentence – a life in prison for a crime where no killing was involved – is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.” EJI says that Sullivan is one of only two 13-year-olds in the nation “to be sentenced to die in prison for an offense in which no one was killed,” and that, only “eight people in the country are sentenced to die in prison for any offense committed at the age of 13.” Sullivan’s case is part of EJI’s National Litigation Project “to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on young adolescents.” Bryan A. Stevenson, EJI’s executive director, told the Times that, “I don’t think it’s possible to say that a 13-year-old will never change and that life without parole is an appropriate punishment.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 03, 2009 (boomark / email).