In slapping down life sentences for teenage offenders in non-homicide cases, the U.S. Supreme Court ended life terms for 77 Florida inmates.
Saying Monday's ruling "will have a significant impact on our state's juvenile justice and corrections systems," Attorney General Bill McCollum said his office, along with the state Department of Juvenile Justice and Department of Corrections, has a lot of work to do.
"We're not just going to let them out," said Sandi Copes, spokeswoman for Attorney General's Office. "These individuals will be resentenced."
Florida has been a leader in meting out life terms to teens since two special sessions of the Legislature toughened sentencing guidelines in 1993.
In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, McCollum's office argued that the state had a pressing need for a new Juvenile Justice Act amid soaring crime activity by minors:
"The Acts primary goal was to protect society by emphasizing 'control, discipline, punishment, and treatment' of juvenile offenders. The Act broadened the ability to prosecute older juvenile offenders, and those who commit serious violent crimes, as adults."
Other states acted, too. Thirty-six states currently permit life sentences without parole for juveniles convicted of non-homicides. This, McCollum observed, represented "a broad consensus."
In the court's opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested Florida went too far. He said that of the nation's 129 juvenile offenders serving life without parole for non-homicide crimes, 77 are behind bars in Florida.
But Kennedy's statistics were seemingly contradicted by Ashley Nellis and Ryan S. King, authors of "No Exit, The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America."
According to their 2009 report, Florida ranks sixth among states in raw numbers and is below the national average (ranked 30th) with respect to juvenile life without parole sentences as a percentage of its entire life-sentenced population.
Still, the case of 17-year-old Terrance Graham proved to be Florida's downfall at the High Court on Monday.
The Jacksonville teen had been sentenced to life without parole after two separate convictions stemming a string of beatings, home invasions, burglaries, probation violations and other non-lethal crimes. The high court ruled 6-3 to reverse that sentence, with Chief Justice John Roberts calling the term "extraordinarily severe."
Roberts joined the minority in dissenting from the court's sweeping rejection of all life sentences in non-homicide cases where teenage defendants are effectively "manned up" as adults.
Kennedy, writing for the majority, stated, "It is fair to say that a national consensus has developed against (life sentences for non-lethal teen offenders)."
But McCollum and other critics of Monday's decision say the court has set up a contradiction in its reading of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual" punishment.
McCollum noted that several life sentences have previously been upheld by the court -- even though the crimes were far less severe than those committed by Graham, now 27.
"A constitutional rule that categorically excludes life sentences without parole for violent and potentially lethal offenses is unworkable and raises far more 'line-drawing' questions than it answers," McCollum argued.
"Does a 'non-homicide' offense include violent crimes with dangerous weapons that cause serious injury but not death? Does 'life' mean only those sentences that actually impose 'life' for a single offense, or does it include consecutive sentences for two or more offenses that effectively amount to (or exceed) the actuarial life expectancy of the offender?
"Do states have to reinstitute costly and oftentimes problematic parole systems to assist life-sentenced juveniles in reforming themselves? How effective must parole be? The possibilities are boundless."
Those "boundless possibilities" will be some of the factors the state of Florida will have to consider as it attempts to refashion its juvenile-sentencing laws.
In a 2005 decision, also on a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute defendants younger than 18.
On Monday, Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito said the ruling in Graham v. Florida "eviscerated" the court's long-standing distinction between death sentences and other types of sentences.
Robert Sanchez, policy director of the James Madison Institute, said, "What was troubling about the U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 decision wasnt so much the end result: a ruling that a state should not sentence juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole unless they had taken a life. Those of us who believe in the power of redemption hold out hope that even the worst among us will change and someday be deserving of another chance at freedom."
Said Sanchez, "Rather, the troubling issue in Justice Anthony Kennedys majority opinion was his reliance once again on his perception of the sentencing trends in various states and in foreign countries. Court opinions should be based on the U.S. Constitution, not on ever-shifting trends in public opinion or the practices in the international community.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 559-4719.
