WASHINGTON — Though it may be decades, Joe Harris Sullivan is waiting to die in prison for a crime he committed at age 13, one of thousands of children who have been sentenced to life terms without parole in the United States.
The Supreme Court on Monday announced that it will decide whether sentencing juveniles to spend the rest of their lives in prison without hope of ever being released can be considered a cruel and unusual punishment.
The justices are taking up two cases from Florida challenging life sentences for teenagers.
In the first case, a judge determined that Terrance Graham, 17, took part in an armed home-invasion robbery while he was on probation for a violent crime.
Sullivan, now 33 and in prison at the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in Milton, Fla., was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for the rape of Lena Bruner in 1989.
The rape victim never saw her attacker, but she testified at trial that Sullivan’s voice sounded like that of her attacker.
Bryan A. Stevenson, Sullivan’s lawyer, said Sullivan was one of two 13-year-olds sentenced to life without parole for a nonhomicide crime in the United States and only one of eight with that sentence for any crime in prison.
Times have changed people’s minds about sentencing juveniles, Stevenson said.
The Supreme Court in 2005 outlawed the death penalty for juvenile criminals, declaring there was a national consensus that such executions were unconstitutionally cruel.
by the associated press
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