Report Finds Sentence of Life Without Parole More Likely for Black Teens If Victim Was White

by Frederick H. Lowe

African-American teenagers are more likely to be sentenced to life in prison without parole if a judge or jury convicts them of murdering a white person, according to the first-ever survey in which juvenile lifers were questioned. Conversely, white teenagers who are convicted of murdering a black person are less likely to be sentenced to life without parole, the same survey found.

Those are two of the findings from “The Lives of Juvenile Lifers:  Findings  from a National  Survey” by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.–based organization that works for fair and effective U. S. sentencing by addressing unjust racial disparities.

U. S. Supreme Court to Hear Cases Involving Juveniles Sentenced to Life Without Parole
The Sentencing Project released its survey findings last Wednesday, weeks before the U. S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments regarding juveniles who are sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder, although they committed the crime before their 18th birthday.

Ashley Nellis

NorthStar News & Analysis asked Ashley Nellis, the report's author and a research analyst, if The Sentencing Project released the report to coincide with U.S. Supreme Court arguments.

“It's good luck, but I have been working on this survey since the fall of 2010,” Nellis said.

The justices will determine if sentencing a juvenile under 18 to life without parole constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which would violate the 8th and 14th amendments of the U. S. Constitution.

Justices on March 20 will hear the combined appeals of Evan Miller vs. Alabama, and Kuntrell Jackson vs. Ray Hobbs, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction.  The Court is expected to issue a decision by the end of June.

Jackson had just celebrated his 14th birthday when he became involved in a botched robbery on Nov. 18, 1999, of movie video rental store. One of Jackson's companions, Derrick Shields, shot and killed a store employee, Laurie Troup.

Although Jackson was not the gunman, the prosecutor tried him as an adult. By doing this, the age of the perpetrator in the commission of a crime does not matter, according to court documents.  Jackson was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

In the companion case, a jury convicted 14-year-old Miller for the 2003 murder of Cole Cannon.  Miller was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole under Alabama's mandatory life-without-parole sentencing.

People who support ending mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles cite two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Roper vs Simmons in 2005 and Graham vs Florida in 2010.

In Roper vs Simmons, Supreme Court Justices struck down the death penalty for juveniles after determining that the salient difference between young people and adults is "children's immaturity and turbulent impulses render them peculiarly susceptible to engaging in thoughtless, rash, risky behavior." 

In Graham vs Florida, the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles cannot be sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide offenses. The Graham ruling opened the door to a review of all offenses committed by juveniles that bar a possibility of parole, Nellis wrote.

Kim A. Taylor-Thompson, professor of Clinical Law at New York University,  said she hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will do what it already has done in Roper vs Simmons and Graham vs Florida, which is to eliminate life without parole for juveniles who are convicted of murder, Taylor-Thompson said.

"These are adolescents who committed a crime at an early age, and they should not be sentenced to die in prison because they are beyond redemption,” she explained.

Kent G. Holt, Arkansas assistant attorney general, wrote an opposing brief that painted Jackson as a career criminal. Holt noted that before the attempted robbery, police had arrested Jackson on charges of shoplifting, stealing two automobiles and attempting to steal a third. As a result, he was committed to the state's division of youth services as a serious offender.  Holt wrote that Jackson's life without parole was appropriate for the gravity of the homicide offense.

Survey Was Mailed to 2,309 Inmates
As of 2010, about 2,500 juvenile inmates were sentenced to life without parole for committing murder before the age of 18, Nellis said. She mailed the 15-page, 76-question survey to the 2,309 juvenile lifers, and 1,579, or 68.4 percent, responded to survey.

The respondents have been in prison an average of 15 years, and 359 have been in prison at least 21 years. One inmate, who is now 67 years old, has served 49 years in prison.
 
The United States is the only country in the world that sentences teenagers to prison for life without parole, Nellis said.

"The rise of juvenile life sentences reached its peak during the late 1990s in response to a temporary upswing in youth violence, yet the favored response was a permanent fix: the enactment of adult crime, adult time sanctions, including life without parole for youth," Nellis wrote.

Juvenile inmates who are serving life without parole for murder are housed in prisons in 35 states, Nellis said. The states are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Nellis did not mail surveys to inmates housed in Louisiana's prisons because of ongoing litigation. The Sentencing Project also did not survey two dozen juvenile lifers in Michigan and Pennsylvania because the inmates are appealing their sentences.

Sixty percent of the survey respondents, or 940, were African American. The survey also found that 387 or 24.9 percent were white, 38 or 2.4 percent were Asian, 19 or 1.2 percent were Native American, 139 or 9 percent were classified as “other” and 29 or 1.9 percent were two or more races. Some 97.2 percent of the respondents were men and 2.8 percent were women.

Racism in Sentencing African-American Juveniles
The survey found that an African-American teenager stands more than a 43 percent chance of being sentenced to life without parole for killing a white person.  A white juvenile who murders a black person, however, stands only a 4 percent chance of being sentenced to life without parole.

“There clearly is more value placed on a white person's life,” Nellis said.

In a separate study, the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law organization with offices in Montgomery, Ala., and in New York City, reported in 2008 that 73 individuals who were 13 and 14 years old were sentenced to life in prison without parole after a judge or a jury convicted them of murder. The study also reported that 36, or 49 percent, of the individuals were African American.

“While we do not have detailed information on all the variables that may contribute to a juvenile life without parole sentence, the scale of race differential over the three-decade period is quite remarkable and parallels the range of consistent findings on imposition of the death penalty,” Nellis wrote. “African American youth with a white victim are far more likely to be sentenced to life without parole than their proportion of such crimes would suggest.”

Characteristics of Juvenile Lifers
The study reported that 79 percent of juvenile lifers experienced regular violence in their homes and in their neighborhoods.  For example, Evan Miller's father severely and regularly beat his wife and their children.  Miller attempted to commit suicide at the age of seven to escape his father’s brutal beatings. State officials eventually removed the children from the household, Miller's lawyers note in the U.S. Supreme Court brief.

Other findings were:
·    Girls who are juvenile lifers reported high rates of sexual abuse before they were sentenced to prison
·    Nearly one third of juvenile lifers were raised in public housing
·    18 percent were not living with a close relative before incarceration. Some were homeless, living with friends, in a detention center or  in a group home
·    The vast majority of juvenile lifers (84 percent)  had been either suspended or expelled from school at some point in their academic career
·    79 percent of juvenile lifers had a court-appointed attorney
·    69 percent of juveniles accepted a plea deal to avoid the death sentence when it was still an option for juveniles. After 2005, the death penalty no longer was an option.

Life Without Parole Means Just That
The Sentencing Project notes that a sentence of life without parole means that the individual will die in prison and that it is costly.

The average cost of incarcerating a person is $22,000 annually, but a life sentence that begins in a person's teens can be expected to last 55 years and the cost of housing an inmate dramatically increases as they age, Nellis said.  “Beginning at 55 years old, the annual cost is closer to $65,000, yielding a lifetime to taxpayers of $2 million per prisoner,” Nellis added.