Perhaps the most overused, and most effective, mantra in criminal law is “do it for the children.”  Yet concern for our children is forgotten when they are on the wrong end of the deal.  The child as defendant is no less a child as defendant, despite the inability of so many to accept this premise. 

From the New York Times, Joe Sullivan, now 33, asks the Supreme Court whether his conviction for a crime that occurred when he was 13 should put him in prison forever. 

According to court papers and a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, which now represents Mr. Sullivan, only eight people in the world are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 13. All are in the United States.

And there are only two people in that group whose crimes did not involve a killing. Both are in Florida, and both are black.

Joe Sullivan is one

While the Times’ article suggests that Sullivan might, in fact, be innocent of the crime, that ship has long since sailed.  The trial, which lasted a day, produced highly equivocal evidence.  His lawyer, who didn’t bother to open, gave a summation that runs for a mere 3 double-spaced pages of transcript.  But the only question remaining is whether a 13 year old, particularly one whose crime falls short of murder, should be thrown away forever.

We recognize that children are not like adults in almost every aspect of our society.  “They are less mature, more impulsive, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better over time.” 

Juveniles “are not permitted to vote, to contract, to purchase alcoholic beverages or to marry without the consent of their parents,” the court said. “It seems inconsistent that one be denied the fruits of the tree of the law, yet subjected to all of its thorns.”

Yet the judge who sentenced Joe Sullivan to a life in prison at age 13 took little issue with the severity of his punishment.

“I’m going to send him away for as long as I can,” Judge Geeker said.

It’s that simple for a judge to say the words that put a child in prison forever.  And I would expect many to feel no concern about it, despite the fact that these are the same folks who care so deeply about children under any other circumstances.  Our society’s love of children seems to stop at the “broken” ones, unworthy or incapable of repair.  When did we grow so hard and cold that even children became dispensable?

The point is not whether a child should be allowed to commit a crime, to harm another, without consequence.  It is all about the proportionality of consequence, particularly when there are judges like Geeker who appear bent on tossing away the bad kids.  Championing this lack of proportionality across the spectrum is none other than sentencing maven Doug Berman.

Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State, said it was time for the Supreme Court and the legal system to widen its relentless focus on capital cases and to look at other severe sentences as well. Cases involving the death penalty receive careful review at multiple levels, he said. Life sentences can receive almost none.

For obvious reasons, we focus long and hard on the death sentence, given it’s abject finality.  But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have enough zeal left in us to show concern for children sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison.  We can and we should do so.  We should “do it for the children.”