 Dora Larson, vice president of the National Organization of Victims
of Juvenile Lifers, has been a victim advocate since her 10-year-old
daughter, Victoria Larson, was brutally murdered by a 15-year-old
boy in 1979.
Larson said the Supreme Court decision was not as bad as it could
have been.
"We are so happy that they upheld and made no decision on juvenile
lifers without parole who committed murder," Larson said, "because
if this would have happened, we would have had to have resentencing
and parole every five years."
The Supreme Court was asked to rule in Graham v. Florida, the
case of Terrance Graham, who was twice convicted of armed robbery,
when he was 16 and 17, and given life without parole in Florida. In
a 5-4 decision, the
court found sentencing a juvenile to life without parole for
non-homicidal crimes to be unconstitutional. The
court stopped short of ending life-without-parole sentencing for all
juveniles.
Larson said the court's decision will affect 109 inmates around the
country. Each of the 109 inmates will now have to go through a
resentencing process and be subject to parole hearings every five
years. She said there are currently between 1,200 and 1,500 juveniles
serving life without parole, the majority of whom were convicted
for homicides.
Larson believes that some juveniles are hopeless and need to be
locked up for life to protect society, although she doesn't say if
she differentiates between homicidal and non-homicidal juveniles.
"I'm saying that there are juvenile offenders that can't be fixed. I
know that," Larson said. "And that's the reason we have to have
prisons, so they don't reoffend. Usually if a juvenile is sentenced
to life without parole they have a long, long criminal history.
Oftentimes it starts in preschool."
[to top of second column] |
But juvenile protection agencies believe the Supreme Court ruling is
a good thing.
Mary Reynolds, policy advocate at the Juvenile Justice Initiative,
said the court's decision puts the United States closer to the rest
of the world on juvenile justice.
"The international norm does not endorse using life without parole
in any circumstances for juveniles," Reynolds said. "We believe this
is a step in the right direction."
Reynolds also said the decision is important, because it reaffirmed
the psychological and developmental differences between adults and
children.
[Illinois
Statehouse News]
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