US top court to debate life terms for minors

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court said Monday that it would examine whether life imprisonment terms without parole handed down on two teenagers in Florida were constitutional.

The two life terms handed down on boys, who were 13 and 17 at the time sentence was imposed, have been challenged as constituting "cruel and unusual punishment" which is banned under the US Constitution.

In most states such life terms without parole are handed down only in cases involving murder.

But Joe Sullivan, now 33, was just 13 when he was sentenced to life for raping a woman in 1989. According to his defense team, he is mentally retarded and was turned in by one of the others involved in the crime who was older than him.

Terrance Graham, 21, is serving the same sentence for his role in several robberies, committed when he was on probation at the age of 17.

The issue is a sensitive one in the United States where more than 2,200 people are serving life terms without parole for crimes committed before they had reached 18 and the age of majority.

Sullivan's lawyers argued he had been condemned to die in prison.

"Joe Sullivan is one of only two people in the United States to have been sentenced to die in prison for a non-homicide offense committed at the age of 13, and one of the only eight 13-year-olds to receive sentence for any crime," his lawyers wrote in their petition to the nation's highest court.

"In the vast majority of states, no one Joe's age has received that sentence for any crime."

Graham's lawyers for their part recalled that the court's reasons for sentencing the 17-year-old to life were that the "petitioner had thrown away a great opportunity to do something with his life" and that "nothing could be done to deter the petitioner from future criminal activity."

Recalling the international plea against life terms for minors, the lawyers quoted from a US study which showed there are only about a dozen youngsters in the world serving life terms for crimes committed when they were adolescents.

And they recalled the Supreme Court had withdrawn the death penalty for crimes committed by minors.

"Imprisoning a juvenile for life is inhumane where the juvenile did not commit a homicide," they argued.

"Though at first blush a life sentence may seem less cruel and inhumane than a death sentence, in reality, it is not."