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Effective new commentary on the Supreme Court's work in Graham

By Douglas A. Berman

Over at Findlaw, Professor Sherry Colb has this new column on the Supreme Court's recent Eighth Amendment work in Graham.  The piece is titled simply, "High Court Rejects Life Without Parole for All Juvenile, Non-Homicide Crimes," and here is how it starts and ends: Last week, in Graham v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments bars the sentencing of juvenile offenders to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole ("LWOP") for non-homicide offenses.  As I noted in an earlier column, such a decision stands in considerable tension with the Court's existing precedents.  Accordingly, though the majority opinion does not explicitly depart from prior rulings, there is nonetheless reason to expect that the Court may now be more willing to entertain Eighth Amendment challenges to lengthy prison sentences than it has been in the past...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 27, 2010 (boomark / email).