Locking Up Teens Forever
Courts, lawmakers consider whether life sentences for juveniles are too harsh
By CHRISTIAN NOLAN
Fifteen-year-old Lorenzo Morgan Rowe was shot and killed in Hartford walking home from a high school basketball game with two of his friends. But his wasn’t the only young life ruined.
Anthony Allen was 17 when he gunned down Rowe in February 2005, and now at age 20 he sits in the Cheshire Correctional Center, sentenced to be incarcerated for the remainder of his life without any possibility of release.
The U.S. Supreme Court says such a penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment. But the same year that Allen was arrested, the high court did outlaw the death penalty for any offender who was not yet 18 when the crime was committed.
Human rights advocates are hopeful that decision opened the door for the eventual banishment of life without parole sentences for anyone under 18. Those advocates, however, will have to wait longer for any policy change in Connecticut. Last week, state Supreme Court justices ruled that the matter isn’t really for them to decide. They said that, ultimately, any changes in sentencing law should be made by the state’s elected politicians.
Citing that U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roper v. Simmons, that abolished juvenile death sentences, Alice Osedach, an assistant public defender, argued to the Connecticut Supreme Court that Roper should be extended to life sentences without parole.
Osedach, who did not return phone calls for this article, argued that there is scientific research showing that juveniles differ from adults in terms of their culpability and moral responsibility. She said a life sentence without the possibility of release excludes the chances of their rehabilitation.
The state’s highest court, in a unanimous decision penned by Justice Joette Katz and officially released last week, did not necessarily disagree with Osedach. But the court didn’t agree with her, either. Instead, it put Allen’s fate in the hands of the legislature.
“The delineation between juveniles and adults for purposes of prosecution and punishment is a public policy determination reserved to the legislative branch of government,” wrote Katz.
Connecticut is one of 43 states that impose life imprisonment sentences on juvenile offenders. It is also one of 13 states that could potentially sentence someone as young as 14 years old to a life sentence without parole. According to state Sen. Andrew McDonald, co-chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, there are no concrete proposals that would change any of that.
“We’ve started to receive requests for legislation in the next session but nothing has suggested we revisit that,” said McDonald “But that doesn’t mean that it won’t come up.”
U.S. Is Exception
Osedach’s challenge to the state Supreme Court was not a complete shot in the dark. At least eight other states, including Massachusetts, Michigan, Florida and California, have begun debating whether to eliminate life sentences for juveniles under 18.
As of 2005, there were at least 2,225 people who had committed their crimes as juveniles who were serving life sentences with no possibility of parole, according to a study by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The same study found only 12 other juveniles serving life sentences in the rest of the world.
The report stated that at least 132 countries don’t even allow such sentences and that the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the U.S. and Somalia, forbids the practice.
“We recognize that the overwhelming majority of countries around the world do not permit the imposition of a mandatory life sentence on a person under the age of 18,” wrote Katz in the Allen decision. "Moreover, we agree that the large number of juveniles serving life sentences in the United States as compared to those few other countries that permit such a sentence raises deeply troubling issues.
“However,” she concluded, “the U.S. Supreme Court clearly has signaled that such a sentence does not violate the 8th Amendment.
Patricia Arthur, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, told the Law Tribune she’s “confident” that one day “our federal constitutional law will catch up with international human rights.”
“I recognize children do commit very horrible crimes and make horrible mistakes but research shows children are still growing and have a greater ability to change than adults,” Arthur said. “Children should be able to get an opportunity at some point in their lives to prove they’ve changed.”
Can all juveniles who commit crimes that warrant life sentences be reformed? That’s highly doubtful, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in its Roper opinion.
“It is difficult even for expert psychologists to differentiate between the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
Developing Brains
Arthur, of the National Center for Youth Law, said she is unaware of any human rights group in Connecticut that has taken up this particular issue. But Edward Gavin, president of the Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said his group does have a firm view.
“Our position is that the fact someone is a juvenile is in and of itself grounds not to sentence someone to life,” Gavin said. “The age of the defendant in a serious criminal case warrants serious consideration. Research shows a kid’s brain is not fully developed until their early 20s.”
In contrast, Connecticut prosecutors remain tightlipped on the issue. Mitchell S. Brody, a senior assistant state’s attorney who handled Allen’s case at the appellate level for the state, declined an interview. Thomas Garcia, the trial prosecutor who handled Allen’s sentencing, did not return a phone call.
Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane took the same position as the state Supreme Court – that the decision of whether juveniles should ever be sentenced to life in prison belonged to lawmakers, not court officers.
“That question is an ethical, moral and social issue for the legislature to decide," said Kane. “And they’ve decided it clearly. We have an obligation of applying the law as the legislature sets it out. We should and we do follow the law.”•
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