Sunday, October 14, 2012

Supreme Court Taking Up Life Without Parole For Teens

From the Detroit Free Press: Sixteen-year-old Keith Maxey was in an abandoned house on Detroit's east side about 2 p.m. Dec. 24, 2007, when his friends, both in their 20s, tried to rob four young men who went there to sell them a pound of marijuana.
Brian McClendon Jr., 20, of Detroit, who was with the sellers, was shot to death, and a companion was seriously wounded. Maxey, who was unarmed, also was shot repeatedly in the chaos, and later said he had no idea his friends were planning a robbery. But he's now in prison for life with no chance of parole.
Raymond Carp was 15 when his half brother, Brandon Gorecki, 22, beat and stabbed 43-year-old Maryann McNeely to death in her mobile home in St. Clair County's Casco Township on May 31, 2006.
Gorecki testified at Carp's first-degree murder trial that he, not Carp, killed McNeely. But a friend testified that Carp made incriminating statements about handing Gorecki the knife and holding McNeely down. Carp is now serving life without parole.....
Now Maxey and Carp, along with 356 other juvenile lifers in Michigan, could get a shot at eventual freedom because of a June decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down automatic mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of murder. The high court, in a 5-4 decision, said such juvenile life sentences violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  http://www.freep.com/article/20121014/NEWS06/310140211/Supreme-Court-ruling-may-give-those-sentenced-to-life-as-juveniles-a-chance-at-freedom?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
I think the Supreme Court got it wrong when they said juveniles couldn't be executed, so obviously, I think it is acceptable for some juveniles be sentenced to life in prison, without parole.  There are some people who just cannot be rehabilitated.

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