*disclaimer: this post was not written by Steven, but by those who help him with his blog. We thought many people may find such information useful. JLWOP is the sentence Steven received. Our aim is to make our audience aware of the situation of thousands of people who are victims of the American legal system.
We are publishing this post on a special day. A day that brings hope for people like Steven, for more than 2,000 boys and girls,
men and women kept in American prisons. SCOTUS, in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Arkansas decided that JLWOP is unconstitutional, as violating the Eighth Amendment. All mandatory LWOP sentences given so far will have to be reviewed.
Juvenile Life Without Parole, often referred to as JLWOP, is a type of
sentence currently present nowhere in the world but in the United States of
America. In the age of striving for the freedom of the individual, for equality
and for universal justice, most people show disbelief when they are told that
such a practice is permitted in our times. The statistics make it even more
striking- there are at least 2,500 people in the US serving life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole for crimes committed when they were under 18
years old. It is estimated that over 100 juveniles add to this number every
year (from 2005 to 2007 courts sentenced 259 children to serve LWOP). Are
American kids really so much worse than kids in other countries? Are they less
able to develop, to rehabilitate, or to simply grow up than their peers from
Portugal, Bolivia, Pakistan, South Korea, Ghana or New Zealand?
First, we would like to draw your attention to a publication by Amnesty International: "This is where I’m going to be when I die”.
Amnesty International is an organization which has been fighting for human rights worldwide for more than 50 years now. In 1977, AI received Nobel Peace Prize.
Their website has a designated section with information on JLWOP-related issues. Please click here to browse their publications on the subject.
The
Introduction of the report gives a short explanation on: “Prosecution as adults” and
“Mandatory life without parole”- two mechanisms in the American law that have made
JLWOP possible.
"This is where I’m going to be when I die”, presents
stories of three victims of JLWOP - Jacqueline Montanez , David Young and
Christi Cheramie. In the introduction, the authors point out that
the US and Somalia are the only countries yet to ratify the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child. They present what had been done before
to minimize harsh sentencing of juveniles to LWOP- in 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, death penalty for under-18-year-olds was abolished by the Supreme Court
of The United States. In 2010, in Graham v. Florida, SCOTUS deemed LWOP for
non-homicidal offences unconstitutional.
The full report can be accessed here:
Please leave us a comment with your thoughts on JLWOP and words of encouragement for Steven, to continue his fight for freedom.
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Good Luck, and Best Wishes from Central Mississippi.
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