Court Upholds Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers

Cully Stimson / May 17, 2010

There are positive and negative aspects to today’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Graham v. Florida that it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile non-homicide offender to life without the possibility of parole.

On the positive side, the Court upheld the constitutionality of life without parole (LWOP) for juvenile killers. Over 90% of juveniles serving LWOP are murderers, so this ruling won’t affect them at all. That means that the 1200 or so juvenile killers serving LWOP got no relief from this case.

Furthermore, states can continue to sentence appropriate juvenile killers to LWOP. The Court clearly recognized that states must be able to incarcerate the worst of the worst for life.

The Court, by implication, adopted The Heritage Foundation’s statistics regarding the number of jurisdictions that allow for juvenile LWOP; 44 states, the federal government, and the District of Columbia. In so doing, the Court soundly rejected the manufactured statistics of the anti-incarceration crowd. (more…)