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Teens sentenced to life in prison face harsher sentences than adults, experts say
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
May 16th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
May 16th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
The United States is the only nation that sentences juveniles to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. Five U.S. states --
California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- account for
two-thirds of all convicts younger than 18 currently serving natural
life sentences, likely to die behind bars.
Children as young as 14 in Michigan who are charged with certain felonies can be tried as adults and if convicted, are sentenced accordingly. Michigan ranks second behind Pennsylvania with more than 370 young people thus far having been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Entitled "Basic Decency: An Examination of Natural Life Sentences for Michigan Youth," LaBelle's report, details wide-ranging differences in the way the states sentence their youth. It also highlights the financial and human costs of juvenile life-without-parole sentences with their vast racial disparities.
According to the report, juveniles charged with a killing in which the victim was white were 22 percent less likely to receive a plea offer than in cases where the victim was black.
In Michigan, 73 percent of youths serving life sentences are racial minorities, even though minority youths comprise only 29 percent of the state's youth population.
"Nationwide, black youths represent just 28 percent of juvenile arrests, yet they account for 35 percent of juvenile defendants who are waived to adult court," the report stated.
"There is just so much wrong with the original idea of putting youth in the adult system that we didn't think through as a society," Ashley Nellis, a researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project says. "Now we're coming to see how many injustices there really are [in] the way we are sentencing youth from the very start."
The report, "The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey," documented "high rates of socioeconomic disadvantage, extreme racial disparities in the imposition of these punishments, sentences frequently imposed without judicial discretion, and counterproductive corrections policies that thwart efforts at rehabilitation."
Young convicts encounter disadvantages from the start. The attorneys representing youths sentenced to life without parole in Michigan have been disciplined by the state bar at an extraordinary rate. Some 38 percent of lawyers representing youths sentenced to life without parole "have been publicly sanctioned or disciplined for egregious violations of ethical conduct," compared with a rate of just 5 percent for other attorneys.
Juveniles also reject plea offers at much higher rates than adults, according to the findings, so often adults receive lesser sentences for comparable crimes.
LaBelle and other experts say that juveniles are less equipped to negotiate plea offers as a result of their "immaturity, inexperience and failure to realize the value of a plea deal." Many of them reported that they didn't understand the nature of their charges or even the meaning of parole. When represented by a lawyer who hadn't been disciplined, juveniles were 43 percent more likely to accept a plea bargain for a lesser crime than those who were represented by an lawyer who had been disciplined.
© 2012, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.