Adult Time for Adult Crime: Sentencing Under Siege

Cully Stimson / October 19, 2009

This report was undertaken in response to litigation and legislation against the use of life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Following several challenges in state supreme courts, interest in the issue has only grown since the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases challenging life-without-parole-sentences for juvenile offenders on Eighth Amendment grounds. Recent years have also witnessed the introduction, in several states, of legislation prohibiting the practice. California’s experience with such legislation is typical.

California Misled

In 2007, State Senator Leland Yee introduced a bill to radically alter the sentence of life without parole for juvenile offenders in California. Specifically, Senate Bill No. 999 would have ended the use of these sentences prospectively. Under the legislation, any juvenile offender convicted of first-degree murder, with any number of aggravating circumstances (such as multiple murders, murder for hire, murder of a police officer or firefighter, and torture of the victim ), would be punishable by, at most, a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. (more…)