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With the Iowa caucuses right around the corner, and wall-to-wall 2016 campaign coverage about to descend upon us, I thought I'd take a break to cover public policy--you know, that boring thing we elect government officials to do in their spare time between television interviews and fundraisers.
(Sidenote: If Trump follows through on his threat to boycott the FOX News debate tomorrow night, I think it's definitely worth watching. The debate may not be as entertaining without Trump, but it could be the most substantive GOP debate so far. Just imagine it--adults, talking about issues, without Trump's grating neanderthalisms: "I build wall. I build big wall. I strong man. I strong white man.")
Now on to policy wonkery...
Two big things happened this week in the realm of criminal justice reform. First, on Monday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana (full text here), holding that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional and any juveniles receiving this sentence must be given an opportunity to prove their eligibility for parole. Second, later that same day, President Obama announced a host of reforms to limit the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons. These actions serve as powerful signals that at least two branches of government are firmly behind efforts to reform our criminal justice system.
When he was 17 years old, Henry Montgomery was arrested for murdering a deputy sheriff, Charles Hunt. The year was 1963. Henry was black. Charles was white. Henry was found guilty. Three years later, Henry's conviction was overturned because of the racial hostility surrounding his trial. Henry was retried, however, and again found guilty. This time he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Today, Henry is 69 years old. He has spent 46 years in prison.
Such harsh sentences for juvenile offenders were declared unconstitutional in 2012. That year, in a decision in the case Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court held that mandatory sentences (i.e. sentences dictated by statute) of life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders violate the Constitution's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishments." Miller found that "sentencing a child to life without parole is excessive for all but the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption."
But the Court didn't make Miller retroactive, so anyone sentenced before 2012, was shit out of luck.
On Monday, the Court made Miller retroactive. Justice Kennedy wrote,
Henry Montgomery has spent each day of the past 46 years knowing he was condemned to die in prison. Perhaps it can be established that, due to exceptional circumstances, this fate was a just and proportionate punishment for the crime he committed as a 17-year-old boy. In light of what this Court has said in [past cases including Miller] about how children are constitutionally different from adults in their level of culpability, however, prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.
So Henry, sentenced well before the Supreme Court recognized the unconstitutional nature of his punishment, now has the right to a parole hearing, where he can try to show that he is a changed man. The Supreme Court's ruling will affect some 2,000 prisoners nationwide who, like Henry, were sentenced to life without parole as juveniles.
Meanwhile, President Obama announced new restrictions on the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons. The President banned solitary confinement for all juvenile prisoners, reduced the maximum number of days first time in-prison offenders can serve in solitary from 365 to 60 days, banned solitary as a punishment for low-level infractions, and ordered the Bureau of Prisons to limit the use of solitary as a punishment for other offenses. Various other reforms will further curtail solitary's use in the federal prison system.
Cynical commentators have pointed out that only 26 federal prisoners are juveniles, but cynicism ignores the larger package of reforms announced Monday. Some 10,000 people are held in solitary confinement in federal prisons today. Their lives will be better from this day forward.
Last year, Justice Kennedy wrote a short concurring opinion that spoke movingly about the inhumanity of prolonged solitary confinement. The case dealt with a prisoner who had spent the majority of his 25 years in prison in solitary confinement. Kennedy, once again the champion of prisoners' rights, wrote that such "extended terms of isolation" may bring prisoners "to the edge of madness, perhaps to madness itself." He continued,
"Years on end of near-total isolation exact a terrible price. See, e.g., Grassian, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, 22 Wash. U. J. L. & Pol’y 325 (2006) (common side-effects of solitary confinement include anxiety, panic, withdrawal, hallucinations, self-mutilation, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors)."
Justice Kennedy and President Obama seem to be of the same mind when it comes to solitary confinement. And with bipartisan sentencing reform winding its way through the dysfunctional halls of Congress, the legislative branch may have its say too. (Note however that right-wing Republican Senator Tom I'm-a-Moron Cotten is trying to kill the bill).
If Obama can reform our criminal justice system--with the help of the Supreme Court, and maybe Congress--it would be another impressive addition to his already long list of policy achievements.
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