Newswise — FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Brian Gallini, law professor at the University of Arkansas and a national expert on juvenile sentencing, is monitoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s imminent decision on the constitutionality of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of capital murder.
On March 20, the Court is scheduled to hear arguments of two cases that will be consolidated for the purpose of deciding whether imposing a sentence of life without the possibility of parole on an offender who was 14 at the time he committed capital murder constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The cases are Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, which originated in Arkansas.
Gallini has followed the cases closely and is available for comment. He said it is critical that the two cases are being consolidated because the facts, circumstances and role of the defendants in each case are dramatically different. In the Arkansas case, Kuntrell Jackson was one of three boys involved in the robbery of a local video store. The other two boys entered the store and one of the two shot the clerk when she refused a demand for money. Jackson claimed he entered the store after the others but otherwise served only as a lookout. In contrast, Evan James Miller and another youth severely beat Miller’s next-door neighbor, Cole Cannon, before setting fire to Cannon’s trailer. Cannon died from smoke inhalation.
Gallini’s previous research in this area demonstrated that U.S. trial courts impose identical and harsh sentences on juvenile murder accomplices, regardless of the circumstances of the homicide or their degree of participation in the crime. He argued that this has occurred because the Court and the Eighth Amendment do not provide direction to lower courts on sentencing juvenile accomplices in murder cases.
“Courts continue to impose identical sentences on juvenile offenders who have drastically different roles in the crimes for which they were convicted,” said Gallini. “This is because current Eighth Amendment standards, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, do not provide sentencing courts with the analytical tools necessary to account for stark differences in fact scenarios. In other words, the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence does not resolve a juvenile non-killer’s constitutional challenge to a life-without-parole sentence.”
The lack of direction from the Court or the Eighth Amendment, Gallini argued, has led to a further erosion of the ideals underlying punishment of juveniles in the United States. It subverts the conventional ideology that juveniles deserve an opportunity for rehabilitation. The lack of guidance from the highest court also has reflected a growing trend over the past 25 years of trying and sentencing juveniles as adults.
“The determinate sentencing of juvenile accomplice non-killers is inconsistent with what is left of the rehabilitation-based approach to juvenile criminal justice,” Gallini said. “The trend of punishing more minors like adults for a growing number of crimes reflects a philosophical shift in juvenile punishment ideology from rehabilitative to punitive. And I think this shift has inappropriately exposed less-culpable juvenile non-killers to mandatory life without parole sentences.”
Gallini received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 2002. While at Michigan, he served as the Articles Editor on the Michigan Journal of International Law. After law school, Gallini served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Clifford on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. He later joined the Washington, D.C., office of Duane Morris LLP, where he practiced white-collar criminal defense.
Gallini left private practice in 2005 to clerk for the Honorable Richard Allen Griffin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Court. Before joining the University of Arkansas, Gallini taught for two years at the Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gallini's legal commentary has appeared in numerous media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.
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