Graham v. Florida -- A Look at the Projects to Prison Pipeline through Sentencing and the Eighth Amendment

Graham v. Florida – decided May 17, 2010

In Mid-May, the US Supreme Court issued yet another criminal case. Graham v. Florida focuses on the issue of whether a defendant who is sentenced for a crime committed while a minor but sentenced as an adult can be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for certain crimes.

The facts of the case at hand are a tragedy. Graham was 16 years old when he committed armed burglary in Florida. He had a plea agreement, and while he was on probation and still a minor, Graham committed a home invasion robbery, and he had possession of a firearm and was associating with people involved in criminal activity. Graham had grown up with parents addicted to crack cocaine, and Graham himself became involved with drugs and alcohol at the age of 9. When Graham was brought before the court on his probation violations, he admitted violating his probation. The trial court sentenced Graham to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The trial court, reviewing the circumstances, stated, “ . . . I don’t understand why you would be given such a great opportunity to do something with your life and why you would throw it away. The only thing that I can rationalize is that you decided that this is how you were going to lead your life and that there is nothing that we can do this.” The court then referenced the State’s argument that the Defendant showed “an escalating pattern of criminal conduct.” The trial court then said, “[W]e can’t help you any further. We can’t do anything to deter you.” With that statement, the trial court then explained that since it cannot reform the Defendant, it must act to protect the community by removing him for the rest of his life. Given that Florida has abolished its parole system, the Defendant has no chance of release except for executive clemency.

Graham brought this case up to the Supreme Court under the Eighth Amendment, which guarantees that “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The courts have interpreted cruel and unusual based on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Estell v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 102 (1976). This, of course, makes sense. Looking to our past, we see that American colonists came from England, where drawing and quartering, holding someone’s feet to flames, imprisoning someone for an indeterminate period of time, and hanging were the usual. In fact, such actions were often deemed entertainment for a town. When America was settled, recall that the country went through a period of setting women ablaze to determine their guilt about deals with the devil. America has grown out of the gas chamber, mostly out of the electric chair, out of the death penalty all together, and back into the death penalty. The only measuring stick of whether a practice is cruel and unusual is the current measuring stick of society. As society evolves, so will its methods of dealing with those who break laws.

Legally speaking, when a defendant challenges a punishment on Eighth Amendment grounds, the defendant must try to prove that the sentence is not proportional to the crime. This is done by proving either that the length of the sentence (think of a lifetime sentence for a seventh conviction for passing bad checks – see Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277 (1983)) or that there is a categorical violation (think of restrictions on what types of crimes may be eligible for the death penalty). This second avenue for relief generally requires a showing of a grossly disproportionate sentence when compared to the crime, and it is what Graham chose to appeal. He is claiming that defendants who committed non-homicidal crimes as a minor should not be eligible for sentences of life without parole.

To understand what society considers acceptable, the Court looked at the statutes of the states to determine how many states permitted life without parole sentences for juveniles. Seven jurisdictions allowed such a sentence for minors only convicted of homicide cases. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia permit such a sentence for minors convicted of non-homicide cases. Given the lack of a clear direction of society’s view on this issue, the Court then analyzed how courts actually sentence minors. The Court recognized that while laws may permit certain sentences, what matters is whether the leniency of those laws is actually relied upon and used by judges across the country. The Court noticed that there are 129 juvenile offenders serving life without parole sentences for nonhomicidal crimes, and 77 of those are in Florida.

Reaching its conclusion, the Court came to four conclusions: (1) the rules of governing juvenile offenders rely on a discretionary, subjective treatment by a judge or jury that a defendant is “irredeemably depraved” and eliminate the chance that the offender will receive a life without parole sentence “despite a lack of moral culpability;” (2) a case-by-case approach would not provide the necessary accuracy to determine whether a juvenile offender has “sufficiency psychological maturity and dep[r]avity to merit a life without parole sentence” versus those who have the capacity to change; (3) such sentences do not allow for the scientifically-known facts that adolescents are impulsive, have difficulty in thinking long-term; and are reluctant to trust adults; and (4) the United States is the only nation that imposes this type of sentence on this type of defendant.

Reviewing this opinion, I find it to be extremely well-reasoned and to take into account what society has come to understand about adolescents. With all of the current research about development and the impact of physiology on behavior, I think it would be remiss for the Court to have ignored such findings. Adolescents are by nature impulsive and have trouble analyzing the consequences of certain actions. To imprison a young person for the rest of his life for crimes done while a juvenile seems barbaric to me, especially when those crimes do not include homicide. For me, I would even ban life without parole for juveniles who commit homicide, but I know many others would not agree with me. Taking the limitations of adolescent analytical powers at face value and believing wholly in the power to change, I have difficulty locking someone up for the rest of his life based on young, foolish actions.

In addition, I think this opinion serves also to provide a lens on the pipeline from the projects to prison. Here in Nashville, there are several organizations that work to break that pipeline. Defendant Graham is essentially poster-child for the failures of a society to care for its young and ensure they are raised to become valuable, contributing members. Graham’s parents were drug-addicted, absent parents. How was he supposed to know what was good or bad? I am not absolving Graham of all his culpability, but I am asking how he was supposed to know right from wrong. He was not brought into the world with responsible caretakers and leaders. It can be a parent, it can be a minister, it can be a teacher. At some point, we need people to step up and say, “I will lead this child and introduce him to the world.” Knowing that adolescents are impulsive and prone to mischief, it is only a matter of time before a teenager essentially raised with backwards morals and living in a sea of crime becomes an actor in it himself. These actions do not necessarily mean that the juvenile offender is locked into a loop of crime for the rest of his life, but it does mean that there is plenty of room for improvement. I think the Court’s opinion really opens up a dialogue about the projects to prison pipeline and allows for a close examination of how much we, as a society, can expect (whether it be good behavior before prison or bad behavior during prison or after any release) from someone who is traveling along that pipeline. This opinion serves as a wake-up call to making sure our science, our community-action, our service to others, and our justice system are all in line. Let us use this call to action to help break the pipeline for someone. Get involved today.



For two great organizations in Nashville that address the projects to prison pipeline, please see Preston Taylor Ministries at http://www.ptmweb.ik.org/ and the Martha O'Bryan Center at http://www.marthaobryan.org/aboutus.