The U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument March 20 in two cases over life without parole sentences for juvenile killers.
According to briefs filed in those cases, there are 73 people serving life sentences in the United States for murders they committed when they were 14.
One of those 73 is Wilfredo Caballero, convicted of first-degree murder in York County as an adult in 1990.
York County has eight more “juveniles” serving life sentences, all convicted between 1974 and 2008. Here in April, Jordan Wallick goes on trial for first-degree murder for the July 28, 2010 shooting of James Wallmuth III, 23. Wallick was 15 at the time of the shooting.
The cases to be heard by the Supreme Court involve murders committed by 14 year olds. One was a brutal baseball bat beating of a neighbor in Alabama. The other, the shooting of a video store clerk during an armed robbery in Arkansas.
Attorneys for the defendants are relying on prior Supreme Court cases that held that juveniles should not face the death penalty and should not be sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide cases.
In those prior rulings, the court agreed with medical and social scientists that the juvenile brain and character is not as morally developed as that of an adult. That juvenile lawbreakers should not be held as culpable as an adult who is convicted of the same crime.
The defense is arguing the same findings should apply to juvenile murderers.
The American Bar Association is standing as a friend of the court on the side of the defendants.
The bar concluded in 1980 that, compared to adults, juveniles had a reduced capacities in moral judgment, self-restraint and resisting peer pressure.
In its brief, the bar said it does not believe juvenile murders are “entitled to parole. But only that they should not be denied the opportunity to be considered for parole before they die in prison.”
Quoting the court in its holding over the death penalty for juveniles, the ABA said life without parole for juveniles also should be found unconstitutional because it does stand with “the evolving standards of decency.”
The ABA points out the United States is the only country that sentences juveniles to life without parole.
Using a 1989 Nevada case, the bar describes a JLWOP sentence as the “denial of hope; it means good behavior and character improvement are immaterial; it means that whatever the future might hold for the mind and spirit, he will remain in prison for the rest of his days.”
Bringing the prosecutions’ arguments in the Supreme Court cases are the respective states’ attorney general offices.
The two states’ briefs are similar. They say that 26 states and the federal government have established life without parole as the minimum sentence for juvenile killers.
In the Alabama case, while the defense argues the low national number of life without parole sentences for 14 year olds shows it is an aberration in the criminal justice system, the National District Attorneys Association, a friend of the court on the prosecutions’ side, counters it is “thankfully (because) relatively few 14 years commit homicide.”
The prosecutors maintain the JLWOP sentences are proper because they can provide for: “retribution … proportional to the offense;” a way for governments to “express appropriate outrage over the worst crimes;” and “to alleviate the anguish suffered by the victims’ families.”
They also contend that neither Supreme Court defendant can support their opinion that there is a national consensus against life without parole for juvenile killers.
Nine men from York County – ranging in age from 20 to 55 — are waiting on the court’s decision. So, probably, are their victims’ families.