By STAN DIEL
October 18, 2007
Alabama is among 19 states where 13- and 14-year-olds have been sentenced to life in prison without parole, a violation of international law, the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative said in a report released Wednesday. But Alabama is low on that list.
Pennsylvania and Florida easily outpaced other states, with 18 and 15 children of that age, respectively, sentenced to life without parole, the report said. There have been two such instances in Alabama.
The report was meant to draw attention to appeals the Equal Justice Initiative has filed on behalf of the incarcerated youths, claiming that their sentences - usually resulting from mandatory sentencing laws - are unconstitutional.
The report found seven instances of 13- or 14-year-olds sentenced to life without parole for crimes in which no one was killed, and one instance in which a California 14-year-pld will spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime in which no one was injured.
The nonprofit group, which represents indigent inmates, has filed a dozen lawsuits on behalf of convicted children in six states, including the two in Alabama. Most of the suits argue that life-without-parole
sentences for those so young violate the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that executing children violates the Eighth Amendment, but has not ruled on the constitutionality of life-without-parole sentences.
"The U.S. is the only country in the world known to condemn 13- and 14-year-old kids to imprisonment until death," said Bryan Stevenson, the organization's executive director.
The Alabama lawsuits filed in the past year by the organization:
Lawyers have asked a federal district court in Alabama to reconsider the sentence imposed on Ashley Jones, who was 14 in 1999 when she and her boyfriend killed her grandfather and aunt in their Smithfield home, and wounded her grandmother and younger sister. Their victims were shot and stabbed to death.
Jones' grandmother, whom Jones set on fire after pouring lighter fluid on her, now believes her granddaughter should be eligible for parole. Jones is now 22 and is incarcerated at Tutwiler Correctional Facility.
The organization has appealed on behalf of Evan Miller, who was 14 in 2003 when he beat a man with a baseball bat, telling him, "I'm God and I've come to take your life." Miller, who along with another teen had been smoking methamphetamine, set the man's trailer on fire and left him to die.
Miller's appeal argues that his sentence of life without parole violates the Eighth Amendment because of his age at the time of the crime. Miller is now 18 and is incarcerated at St. Clair Correctional Facility.
The most celebrated case under appeal by the organization may be the case of California's Antonio Nunez, who was 14 in 2001 when he kidnapped a man and got in a shootout with police. No one was injured, but mandatory sentencing, which Stevenson said is responsible for 75 percent of life-without-parole sentences for children, meant Nunez would spend the rest of his life in prison for the aggravated kidnapping conviction.
In the report released Wednesday, the Equal Justice Initiative said sentencing 13- and 14-year-olds to life without the possibility of parole is a clear violation of international law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States became a party in 1992, prohibits such sentences for juveniles. And, the report said, the United States and Somalia are the only countries not to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which also bars such sentences.
Stevenson said that, in addition to apparent violation of international law and their questionable constitutionality, such sentences are simply wrong.
In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the execution of juveniles unconstitutional, the court found credible scientific evidence that the brains of young teens are still developing, and that they lack the impulse control of older youths.
"It's not my position that these children can't be prosecuted, can't be punished or don't need direction," Stevenson said. "It's just our position that there should be some review of their cases."