Gearing up for the SCOTUS juve LWOP cases on the horizon

I was pleased to receive word this week that the Institute of Bill of Rights Law had chosen one of the two juve LWOP cases, Sullivan v. Florida, for its moot court event as part of its Supreme Court Preview 2009-2010.  The Institute's decision to moot this juve LWOP case confirms my instinct that Sullivan (and the companion case Graham) are perhaps the most important and interesting cases on the Supreme Court's current docket. 

Adding to my excitement, today I came across this effective new piece about Graham and Sullivan from the online magazine Miller-McCune.com.  The piece is titled "Should Minors Ever Face Life Without Parole?," and here are a few excerpts:

In the term beginning this October, the Supremes will hear two cases — one involving a 13-year-old sex offender, the other a 17-year-old probation violator present when a felony murder occurred — both aiming to challenge life-without-parole sentences for juveniles (known by the unwieldy acronym JLWOP). Concurrently, the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security has been gathering testimony on a bill that would mandate parole hearings for JLWOP prisoners. The bill covers federal cases and gives states a financial incentive to comply with its terms.

"There is so much attention on this issue right now," says Baylor Law School professor Mark Osler, who has testified in favor of the proposed House bill, H.R. 2289. "I think in part it's because you have groups doing a good job advocating on it, and the idea is becoming more and more prevalent — that instead of wholesale change, we are smoothing off the rougher edges of the justice system, and that includes a focus on children."

Opponents to a change suggest that a focus on the prisoners as children, and not offenders, is wrong-headed and ahistorical. In its brief before the Supreme Court in the 13-year-old sex offender case, the State of Florida Attorney General's Office wrote, "Outside the context of the death penalty, this Court has always examined whether a sentence is grossly disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment by examining the sentence in relation to the offender's instant offense and prior offenses, not the individual characteristics of offender, such as age or mental capacity."...

The United States is one of the few countries that hand out JLWOP sentences. A 2005 Amnesty International study found that life without parole for juveniles is theoretically available in a dozen countries, but besides the U.S., only three others actually had teens serving such sentences — Israel with seven, South Africa with four and Tanzania with one.

In contrast, Sentencing Project Executive Director Mark Maurer noted in his testimony before the House subcommittee that 2,500 U.S. teenagers are incarcerated with no hope of release, most of them people of color. A majority of these — as many as 60 percent — are first-time offenders, and more than one quarter were convicted of felony murder, meaning they were participating in a crime when a murder occurred, but didn't do the actual killing.

Other recent posts on juve LWOP and the Graham and Sullivan cases:

• "A Life Term for Rape at 13: Cruel and Unusual?"
• NYTimes coverage of very young lifers
• Does Roper suggest young juve LWOP is unconstitutional?
• Juves serving life terms
• The next issue in sentencing of juveniles?
• New HRW report assailing juve LWOP in California
• LDF report documents disparities in juve LWOP in Mississippi
• SCOTUS grants cert in Sullivan, juve LWOP case
• The (unpreserved?) procedural issues in Graham juve LWOP case
• What might (and should) DOJ and other potential amici say about Graham and Sullivan?
• Analyzing the cert grants in both Graham and Sullivan
• House hearing on bill to eliminate juve LWOP sentences