Juvenile Justice Reform: An End Run Around the Supreme Court?

[The following post, on the state-level interpretation of the Supreme Court decision banning life without parole for juveniles who commit crimes short of homicide, is reprinted with permission from a May 28th blog post on Youth Today. You can get more background on the decision in this post from the National Juvenile Justice Network. -Ed.]
Youth Today already posted a story on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Graham v Florida, and our subscribers can look for a more in-depth look at its ramifications in our June issue. But here’s yet one more point we think should be made about the aftermath of the decision.
There are 37 states that have life without parole sentences for certain juveniles and now must replace with new sentencing provisions. The court mandated that juveniles have a “meaningful opportunity” for release.  
 
JJ Today has contacted many people, all of whom were willing to pontificate on what they think would be the best way for states to change those laws. Suggestions include: review sentences after inmates turn 30, review them after 10 years of the sentence, and try all juveniles in juvenile court.
 
Not one person wished to discuss what they felt would be the worst revision they could tolerate.  As Terrance Graham’s attorney Bryan Gowdy put it, there is a point at which a really high term of years or wait for parole would be the “functional equivalent” of a life sentence.

 
The lack of open discussion about what is tolerable and what is a “functional equivalent” really could affect the 129 inmates doing life without parole (LWOP) for juvenile non-homicides at the moment. California has four of them. It used to have five, before one inmate successfully appealed his LWOP conviction last year and won the chance to be resentenced. The judge gave him four consecutive 40-year sentences as a replacement.
 
This is not to say the notion of a hearing after 10 years is a bad one; it makes sense to many people. But the reality is that at least some of the 37 states who will make revisions have no intention of replacing LWOP sentences with a system that could, conceivably, place an inmate on the path to release after 10 years.
 
Without a public discussion about what might be an acceptable maximum threshold, it is left to  state legislatures either to figure it out or follow the standard set by the first state to act.
 
If that state is Florida, which has 77 inmates to resentence, advocates for early review might be very disappointed with what follows. Attorney General Bill McCollum has already said he expects Graham to “be resentenced to a very long term in prison.” Even before the Graham ruling, one Florida insider told us, there was a noticeable increase in very high term-of-years sentences in Duval County (Jacksonville).

John Kelly is Associate Editor at Youth Today.
Photo of the Supreme Court: a_trotskyite.