Juvenile Life Sentences Ruled Unconstitutional | Second Chance Kids
Video 1: Supreme Court Rulings

TITLE CARD:
Starting in 2005, a series of court decisions changed how juvenile offenders were treated under the law. It began with a decision on the death penalty for juveniles.

NEWSCASTER:
The court has ruled today that executing people who were under 18 when they committed their crime is unconstitutional.

ROBERT KINSCHERFF, Ph.D., J.D., Ctr. for Law, Brain & Behavior, MGH/Harvard:
So in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the execution of juveniles. What was fascinating about this was that the Supreme Court, in coming to this decision, relied very heavily on developmental science.

NEWSCASTER:
Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy said juvenile offenders are different because their character is not as well formed as that of an adult.

ROBERT KINSCHERFF:
The research was telling us that youth are different and they cannot be as culpable as adults simply because of their developmental immaturity.

NEWSCASTER:
The Supreme Court heard arguments today about the propriety of imposing life sentences─

NARRATOR:
In 2010, the Court, drawing again on the evolving science of the adolescent brain, ruled on the case of a 16 year-old who wasn’t charged with murder but was given life without parole for an armed home robbery. In Graham versus Florida, the court did not guarantee freedom for this type of juvenile offender, but it did require a meaningful opportunity for release based on their growth in prison.

BRYAN STEVENSON:
I’m Bryan Stevenson, Director of the Equal Justice Initiative─

NARRATOR:
Attorney Bryan Stevenson argued the case before the Supreme Court.

BRYAN STEVENSON, Dir. Equal Justice Initiative:
─to say to any child of 13 that you’re only fit to die in prison is cruel─We were really encouraged when the court said, “You know what? Even though it’s not a death penalty case, death in prison is a terminal sentence, too, and there ought to be the same protections for these children convicted of non-homicides than we’ve now given to kids facing execution.” That was a very big step forward. But it was still not as big a step as we needed to make.

NARRATOR:
After two victories on juveniles, Stevenson decided to take on an even harder case, one of the 2,000 or so teens sentenced to life without parole for first degree murder.

NEWSCASTER:
It was a brutal crime. Fourteen years old at the time, Evan Miller beat and robbed his neighbor─

BETH SCHWARTZAPFEL, Reporter, The Marshall Project:
Evan Miller, who's the named plaintiff in that suit, Miller versus Alabama─ he beat a man to death with a baseball bat, then set his trailer on fire over nothing. They had some argument over drugs, I think. And so, you know, you hear the details of that case, and you think, you know, if that's not depravity, I don't know what is. But if you scratch beneath the surface, you know, you find out about the details of his dysfunctional childhood. You know, this man that he beat was actually his mother's drug dealer. His mother was doing drugs in his home. There was just a depth of dysfunction in that family. So I think it's interesting that he ended up being the face of this issue.

NEWSCASTER:
The court ruled today that juveniles can't be given life mandatory sentences without parole. They say that's cruel and unusual punishment─

NARRATOR:
The 2012 decision in the Evan Miller case did not abolish life without parole for juveniles.

NEWSCASTER:
Children under 18 can be sentenced to life─

NARRATOR: But in a narrow 5-to-4 decision, the court severely limited the sentence, ruling that even in a crime as brutal as Evan Miller's, the child's background and diminished culpability as a juvenile first needed to be considered.

NEWSCASTER:
─automatic mandatory life sentences amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

BRYAN STEVENSON:
Miller was a very big breakthrough. The population of children that were sentenced to die in prison in this country are largely some of the most victimized children in America. Now we have the opportunity, remarkably, because of what the court has done, to do something. And that's just give them a second chance.