WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone.
By a 5-4 vote today, the court says the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release.
The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.
"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. "This the Eighth Amendment does not permit."
Comments
Thank God for a humane Supreme Court. How preposterous that we should lock kids up and throw away the key. This is something I would expect in a third world nation not the United States of America.