There is growing public awareness that is it unjust to hold juvenile offenders to the same standard of blame as adults. Scientific research shows that youth do not have the same capacity as adults to use reasoned, mature judgment, or to control impulsive behavior. Newspaper editorials across the nation increasingly embrace the basic notion that “[c]hildren, even really bad ones, are different from adults” and should be treated differently in criminal sentencing because “they haven’t yet developed an adult’s brainpower, resistance to peer pressure, judgment and thus moral capacity.”¹

As the public increasingly recognizes the unfairness of treating adolescents as adults in the application of criminal laws and penalties, the campaign to eliminate youth sentences of life without parole has grown. NCYL has been a part of this movement, intensifying its work in California and the national arena over the past year. NCYL’s efforts include:

• playing a key role in creating a National Campaign Coordinator position for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth
• co-sponsoring California Senate Bill SB 399, which would provide the opportunity for youth serving life without parole to reduce their sentences, and
• supporting two pending US Supreme Court cases that could potentially determine the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole sentences for youth in non-homicide cases.

National Coordinator

The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth was founded on the basic premise that no child should be sentenced to die in prison without any hope of release or opportunity to show they have been reformed.²

In February of this year, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth hired its first National Coordinator, Jody Kent. NCYL collaborated with other advocates to help create and support this new position.³ Prior to assuming her duties as the national coordinator, Jody was a policy analyst at the National Prison Project of the ACLU.

The National Coordinator supports and assists advocates in several states where legislation to eliminate life without parole sentences for youth is active or planned, including in Michigan, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Washington, California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Nebraska. The Coordinator is also working to provide support for the recently introduced federal legislation, HR 2289, introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA) to eliminate life without parole sentences for all youth in the United States.

SB 399: CA’s Legislation to Provide Sentencing Reviews for Juveniles Sentenced to Life without Parole 

This year, NCYL and Human Rights Watch co-sponsored California Senate Bill 399. This bill is authored by Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo), and co-authored by Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), and Assembly Member Filipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar). The bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support. It failed to pass out of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, but reconsideration was granted. The bill would pass if one opponent on the Public Safety Committee changed his or her vote.

If it becomes law, SB 399 will allow any prisoner sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed as a juvenile to petition the court for a sentencing review after serving a minimum of 10 years. The review can be granted only if the petitioner meets at least three of eight specific criteria. The criteria include that the youth was not the actual killer, had no prior convictions for assault or a violent crime, has demonstrated remorse, and has earned a clean record in prison.

Supporters of SB 399 include the California Catholic Conference of Bishops, California Correctional Peace Officers Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, San Francisco Bar Association, and the Los Angeles Bar Association.⁴

There are currently more than 250 individuals in California sentenced to die in prison for crimes they committed as adolescents. California has the worst record in the nation for racial disparity in the imposition of life without parole sentences on juveniles.

Pending US Supreme Court Cases: Sullivan and Graham

On May 4, 2009, the US Supreme Court agreed to review whether the life without parole sentences imposed in the cases of two adolescents (Joe Sullivan and Terrance Graham) from Florida is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution.⁵ In both cases, one involving a 13-year-old (Sullivan), and the other a 17-year-old (Graham), the teens were sentenced to prison for the rest of their lives for a non-homicide offense.⁶

In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court struck down the use of the death penalty to punish youth for crimes committed under the age of 18.⁷ In that case, the Court recognized for the first time that by virtue of their age and stage of development, youth are categorically less culpable than adults and, therefore, should not be sentenced to death. The Sullivan and Graham cases now offer the Court the opportunity to address whether it is likewise cruel punishment to sentence a child to die in prison for a non-homicide offense, given the developmental immaturity and inherently reduced level of culpability of youthful offenders.

NCYL is among several advocacy organizations working to support these important cases. Argument in the cases will be heard by the Supreme Court this fall.

¹ See Editorial, LA Times, April 30, 2009.
² The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth’s website is located at http://www.endjlwop.org
³ The advisory board to oversee the work of the coordinator and the national campaign is comprised of Alison Parker (Human Rights Watch), Deborah Labelle (American Civil Liberties Union), Pat Arthur (National Center for Youth Law), Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative), Bernardine Dohrn (Children and Family Justice Center, Northwestern University), Dana Kaplan, (Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana), Lia Monahon (Equal Justice Works Fellow), Kim McGill (Youth Justice Coalition), and Sarah Bryer (National Juvenile Justice Network).
⁴ For more information about the bill and its supporters, see http://www.fairsentencingforyouth.org.

⁷ Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005).