The boy, Quantel alleged, had spent a part of the morning playing with Pokémon cards. He was in seventh year, and not yet five feet in height.
Mr. Lotts is 25 now, and it is in the high security here prison, serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole for murder.
The mother of the victim, Tammy Lotts, said that she lost two children that day of November in 1999. One was a son, Michael Barton, who was 17 when he died. The other was a stepson, Mr. Lotts.
"I don't feel that he is guilty," she said of Mr. Lotts in his modest apartment living room in St. Louis, emotional growth. "But if it was, it has already been his time." He should be released. Time served. "If they think it's too easy, let someone watch his case".
In the current state of things, however, the Act does give Mr. Lotts no hope to ever come out.
Almost a year earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that the punishment of juvenile offenders to life without possibility of parole violated prohibition of the eighth amendment of punishment cruel and unusual - but for crimes which did not murder only. Decision received about 130 prisoners convicted of crimes such as rape, theft to robbery and kidnapping.
Now the inevitable followed by cases began arriving to the Supreme Court. Last month, the lawyers of the two other prisoners who were 14 when they were involved in the murders filed first petitions urging the judges to extend last decision of the year, Graham v. Florida, all offenders to 13 and 14 years of.
The Supreme Court has been methodically reduced from severe penalties. It prohibits the death penalty for juvenile offenders, the mentally disabled and those recognized guilty of crimes other than murder. The decision of Graham for the first time excluded a category of offenders a sanction other than death.
This progress suggests that should not be long until the judges decide to deal with the question posed in the query. An extension of the decision of Graham to all juvenile offenders would affect about 2,500 prisoners.
Mr. Lotts, a sturdy man with an easy way, said that he was not reconciled with his sentence. "I understand that I deserve punishment," he said. "But to be here for the rest of my life with no chance, I do not think that it is a fair sentence."
A large part of the logic of the decision of Graham and the decision of the Tribunal 2005 the prohibition of the death penalty for juvenile offenders, Roper v. Simmons, does not seem to apply for new cases.
The views of the majority in the two were written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who said adolescents deserve more lenient treatment than adults because they are immature, impulsive, sensitive to pressure from peers and able to change for the better over time. Judge Kennedy added that there is international consensus against juveniles to life without parole sentence, which said, had been "dismissed the world above."
A factor of cuts in the opposite direction. Judge Kennedy relied on what he calls a national consensus against sentencing for crimes which did not murder. Juvenile offenders have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for nonhomicide crimes, he wrote, only 12 States and then very rarely.
It does not appear to be such a consensus against the life sentence parole for young people who take a life. This is perhaps why opponents of the penalty are focused for now on murders committed by very young offenders as Mr. Lotts.
This strategy follows that used by attacking the juvenile death penalty, which eliminated the Supreme Court in two stages, it the prohibition for the less than 16 in 1988 and 18 in 2005.
Kent s. Scheidegger, legal Director of the Justice criminal legal basis, a victims rights group, said that the categorical approaches were erroneous in General and particularly unjustified where murders by young offenders have been involved.
"Since I think Graham is wrong," he said, "extending homicide might be poorly square." "".
"Sharp thresholds by age, where the legal status of a person suddenly changes on some anniversary, are only a rough approximation of correct policy", he added. There are approximately 70 prisoners serving life sentences without parole for murders committed while they were 14 years or less, according to a report by the Equal Initiative of Justice, a law firm representing prisoners and the poor Alabama non-profit.
没有评论:
发表评论