'Dangerous' Sex Offenders Can Be Imprisoned Indefinitely, Supreme Court Rules

In a span of just a few minutes Monday morning, the Supreme Court exhibited the breadth and complexity of the nation's sentencing laws. In one ruling, the justices declared that juvenile defendants may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for non-capital crimes. And in the other ruling, the justices declared that some mentally ill sex offenders may be kept indefinitely in "civil confinement" despite already having done the time for their crimes.

With the latter decision, the court gives great comfort to prosecutors, the police and victims' rights groups, who have pushed for decades now to better protect communities from recidivism among sex offenders. With its former decision, the justices take away from prosecutors, the police and victims' rights groups the rationale for continuing to push juvenile defendants into adult courts to get tougher sentences. As a result of both cases, we'll have fewer juvenile prisoners serving longer sentences and more sex offenders serving long past what judges gave them.

The juvenile sentencing ruling (Graham v. Florida) strikes down 37 state laws, plus federal law and the law of the District of Columbia. But, as Justice Anthony Kennedy noted, only 129 men and women around the country were sentenced as juveniles to life in prison without parole. No fewer than 77 of them are in Florida. This, the justice declared, meant the practice was actually "exceedingly rare," touching upon Florida and only 10 other states, and thus unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual" under the Eighth Amendment's punishment clause.

Focusing on how many juveniles are actually being sentenced to life without parole instead of on how many states permit the practice, Justice Kennedy emphasized the relative "lack" of maturity and "underdeveloped sense of responsibility" that juvenile offenders often have. As was the case five years ago, when he wrote the majority opinion striking down capital punishment for juvenile offenders, Justice Kennedy focused on the developmental differences between adults and teenagers.

He wrote: "... [D]evelopments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds. For example, parts of the brain involved in behavior control continue to mature through late adolescence." And then he reiterated his empathetic view. A life sentence, he wrote, "means a denial of hope" for juvenile offenders. Thanks to a 6-3 ruling (in which Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority on the case but argued in a separate opinion that it should not set precedent) Monday, those juvenile offenders now may hope for new sentencing hearings.

Ruling on Sex Offenders

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