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Archive for the ‘Youth’ Category

(New York, NY) – On Monday the 17th, the United States Supreme Court declared that children convicted of non-homicide offenses cannot be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Court concluded that because adolescents are, by nature, less culpable than adults and because life without parole is an extreme sentence which is rarely imposed on teenagers, it is cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a child who has not killed to life without possibility of parole. The Court explained that “[a] life without parole sentence improperly denies the juvenile offender a chance to demonstrate growth and maturity. Incapacitation cannot override all other considerations, lest the Eighth Amendment’s rule against disproportionate sentences be a nullity.”

“Today the Supreme Court recognized that children convicted of non-homicide crimes have the potential to become contributing members of society and that certain life sentences run afoul of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment,” said John Payton, LDF’s President and Director-Counsel.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHIRJ) filed a friend of the court brief challenging the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole sentences. In declaring these sentences unconstitutional, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority of the Court, noted that the NAACP LDF’s brief properly identified the “special difficulties encountered by counsel in juvenile representation” and that “the features that distinguish juveniles from adults put them at a significant disadvantage in criminal proceedings. Specifically, juveniles mistrust adults and have limited understandings of the criminal justice system and the roles of the institutional actors within it. They are less likely than adults to work effectively with their lawyers to aid in their defense.” LDF’s brief also noted the stark racial disparities in juvenile life without parole sentencing — African-Americans constitute 60% of the youth serving such sentences.

The United States is the only country in the world that permits adolescents to be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Currently there are more than 2500 teenagers serving life without parole sentences for crimes they committed under the age of 18. One-hundred-and-twenty-nine of those young people were convicted of crimes that did not result in death.

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It’s time…
For too long we’ve dealt with the issues of violence, crime, under-achievement, and low expectations. For too long our community and organizations have been plagued by divisions and mistrust. For too long we’ve waited for solutions to come from the outside, when we have to power to change our reality right now if we would only come together…

It’s time…
On June 26th, at 12:00 noon, the NAACP and the Ministerial League along with other community minded organizations, concerned citizens, families, and youth, will STAND TOGETHER. We will March through our neighborhood, walking past the sites where our young men and women have lost their lives to senseless violence. We are going to March, and sing, and Pray, and recall that spirit of the Community we Used to be… We are going to March together, arm-in-arm, and work together to bring about the Rebirth of our Community Spirit. We are going to March together, and teach our Young People about the beautiful People and Community that God intended us to be.

It’s time…
We are going to stand together and say Goodbye to the Ego’s, Goodbye to the Silo’s, and Goodbye to the divisions that have kept us apart. We are going to stand together and say Goodbye to the violence, Goodbye to the crime, and Goodbye to the low expectations that have afflicted our community.

It’s time…
We’re going to Reclaim our community by reclaiming our Youth. We are not going to cast these young men aside — We are going to reclaim them. These are our children – We are going to let them know that we love them, and we are going to bring them back into the fold. We’re not going to lecture them about the way it was ‘back in the day‘… We going to talk to them about the way its ‘going to be Tomorrow‘, and we’re going to fight to bring our prodigal sons back home. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

It’s time everybody… So get out your old walking shoes. And JOIN US on June 26th… More details will follow shortly through the blog, email, radio, newspaper, text, twitter, facebook, and flyers…

Be ready everybody – Start talking it up – Start praying and Stretching – because on June 26th, we’re going to stand together and rebuild our community…

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