According to a statement released yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Michigan have filed a lawsuit on behalf of nine Michigan citizens sentenced to life in prison without parole for crimes committed when they were minors. The lawsuit charges that a Michigan sentencing scheme that denies the now-adult plaintiffs an opportunity for parole and a fair hearing to demonstrate growth, maturity and rehabilitation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, violating their constitutional rights.

Deborah Labelle, an attorney for the ACLU of Michigan’s Juvenile LWOP initiative said, “These life without parole sentences ignore the very real differences between children and adults, abandoning the concepts of redemption and second chances.”

Michigan law requires that children as young as 14 who are charged with certain felonies be tried as adults and, if convicted, sentenced without judicial discretion to life without parole. Judges and juries are not allowed to take into account the fact that children bear less responsibility for their actions and have a greater capacity for change, growth and rehabilitation than adults.

According to Labelle, the practice is simply unfair and demonstrates the same apparent hypocrisy demonstrated in states like Colorado through practices like direct file.

“As a society, we believe children do not have the capacity to handle adult responsibilities, so we don’t allow them to use alcohol, join the Army, serve on a jury or vote – yet we sentence them to the harshest punishment we have – to die in adult prisons.”

The U.S. is the only country in the world that sentences youth to life without parole. This includes many individuals who were sentenced to life without parole who were present or committed a felony when a homicide was committed by someone else.

“Sentencing children to spend the rest of their lives in prison without giving them some opportunity for parole is unfair, unconstitutional and un-American, and it completely ignores the human potential – especially in children – for rehabilitation,” said Steven Watt, staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program. “In America, we should not be locking children up and throwing away the key without affording them a second chance.”

The ACLU’s complaint asks the court to declare that denying children a meaningful opportunity for parole violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. It also alleges violations of the plaintiffs’ rights under international law and treaties.

Michigan’s laws run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s admonitions that children must be treated differently in our criminal justice system. In May, the Court ruled in Graham v. Florida that it is cruel and unusual punishment to sentence juvenile offenders who did not commit homicide to life in prison without any chance of parole. In 2005, the Court ruled similarly in Roper v. Simmons that executing juvenile offenders is unconstitutional. Both decisions recognized that juveniles bear less responsibility for their actions than adults and have a greater capacity for change, growth and rehabilitation, and that children should not be punished with the harshest sentence that can be imposed on adults.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Jennifer Granholm, Governor of Michigan, Patricia Caruso, Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections and Barbara Sampson, Chair of the Michigan Parole Board.

As this moving blog demonstrates, people who have honestly and openly wrestled with the idea of Juvenile Justice and Sentencing issues must inevitable reach a point where they see that, as our justice system stands now, it is incapable of giving youthful offenders the chance at rehabilitation that they deserve while simultaneously giving them the correction that their crime demands.

It is no surprise that we as a society find ourselves in this situation.  Life can be brutal, and especially so for children.  The number of violent crimes committed by minors is direct proof that we as a society have made some enormous errors, somewhere along the way.  For example, we rightly condemn forced sterilization, but at the same time do nothing to protect innocent babies born to drug addicted prostitute mothers.  We set up a foster care system that too often takes children from one abusive situation only to place them in a worse one.

Conservatives who preach ad nauseam about “traditional family values” are among the first in line to turn their backs on the possibility of meaningful reform to the current foster care system, preferring to insist that the state has no place coming between a child and has/her parents.  I would love to whole heartedly agree with them, but for the fact that they cannot see that their ideology depends upon the parents actually being parents.  It is not enough to insist that the government stay out of peoples lives.  What has to be realized is that the government should only stay out of peoples lives when the people show that they are capable of living those lives responsibly.  On the other hand, liberals whose hearts bleed for every young person in jail are the first to turn their backs on the very real and painful plight of the victims and their families.  Yet apart from these two view points, what else is there?

As the number of broken homes and children in foster care continues to grow, as membership in violent gangs grows, and as the number of minors behind bars increases, we as a society cannot sit back and rely on our justice system, designed for adults, to adequately dispense justice.

Yet the question remains, what else is there?  It is a heinous idea to argue that the government take some sort of active role in preventing the birth of a child into a certain set of circumstances.  It is an impossible idea to argue that any governmental, or private, entity can provide for the thousands of children trapped in our deeply flawed foster care system.  Yet again, what else is there?

Until that question is answered, miscarriages of justice in the name of being “tough on crime” will continue, young people will continue to be ineptly dealt with by a justice system not equipped or intended to deal with them, and violence and social decay will continue to advance in our national statistical studies.

It is time we looked at ourselves in the mirror and for once honestly asked ourselves to answer the question, what else is there?.

After visiting the Limon Correctional Facility in July, StopDirectFile.org began corresponding with Erik Jensen. Though Jensen only participated peripherally in the crime, he was convicted of murder at the age of 17 in 1999. He is currently serving life without the possibility of parole. StopDirectFile.org will continue to correspond with Jensen over the coming months to ask him about his experiences with life in prison and a justice system that abandoned him before he was even old enough to influence it.

Dear StopDirectFile.org:

Hey there. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I was waiting for you to send the questions you wanted answered, but when I was told you already had, I went back and looked and it was so.

As to the answers:

1. The only access to computers we have is in an academic situation for typing or select programs. The Internet terrifies [Department of Corrections], and just about every appliance is seen as a gateway to it. So much of the population can’t even use a a computer at all.

2. Direct File takes all of the power originally meant to reside in state, judiciary and with individuals and assigns it to one person, who, with the aid of mandatory sentencing now dictates not only that the youth will be charged as an adult, but will face a certain sentence regardless of what a judge thinks. The justice system was always meant to provide a fair balance, but now it is tipped heavily. The advice I would give juveniles currently facing direct file is to A) hire a lawyer versed in juvenile and adult law, transfer proceedings and who will attack the right of the DA, appeal to the judge and demand proof after proof. The more knowledgeable you are, the better. Ignorance was my worst enemy.

3. The biggest difference now, as opposed to when I was a child, is my ability to reason consequences and to logic out other people’s motivations and empathize with their realities. As a kid, it was always me, me, me, and who cares what happens. As an adult, I am cognizant of the world and the small role I play in it, rather than the egocentric, careless viewpoint I had prior.

Yours,
Erik Jensen