On life sentences for juveniles

From Fox News yesterday:

Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman and judged incorrigible though he was only 13 at the time of the attack.

Terrance Graham, implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17, was given a life sentence by a judge who told the teenager he threw his life away.

They didn’t kill anyone, but they effectively were sentenced to die in prison.

Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United States are serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences. . . .

Graham, now 22, and Sullivan, now 33, are in Florida prisons, which hold more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for nonhomicide crimes. . . .

Only 9 people in the country are serving life sentences for crimes committed when they were 13. The number rises to 73 when 14-year-olds are added in.

No other country allows life sentences for young offenders . . .

Actor Charles Dutton, former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson and others who committed crimes as teenagers have weighed in against life without parole sentences. Corrections officials, psychologists, educators and even some victims also have taken Graham’s and Sullivan’s side. . . .

The Wyoming Republican served 18 years in the Senate, but as a teenager, he pleaded guilty to setting fire to an abandoned building on federal property and later spent a night in jail for slugging a police officer.

Here is an issue that has drawn many Republicans and Democrats together in support of prohibiting life sentences for minors. Please note that 70% of all juveniles with a life prison sentence come from just one state, Florida. Frankly, when even Fox News publishes an article mildly supportive of change, you have an issue that would appear to be a slam dunk. And yet, there are still groups whose only thought is punishment, harsh and permanent. Please note that the juveniles cited above did not kill anyone.

Here is an issue that puts us alone–sentencing a juvenile non-murderer to life without parole–among the countries on earth, and yet the claim of altogether too many is that it does not matter what anyone else says. It is a claim that says that only the United States is right and everyone else is wrong. That is a very dangerous claim. But, it is a claim that is found over many other issues, for there is more than one issue in which the United States stands almost alone.

And, I guess that is one of my worries. There are sufficient people whose attitude is punishment, harsh and permanent, regardless of age, that despite the support for change from both several Republicans and Democrats and the international community, the change may not yet come. In passing, the youngest person ever sentenced to life was in Florida and he was 11 years old at the time of the crime. The sentence was not carried out because finally the public outcry was so great. The Florida Supreme Court conveniently overturned the sentence on a technicality and, on re-sentencing, the sentence was vastly reduced.