Culpability
The Illinois appellate court reversed the trial court’s sentence of 14 years for an aggravated driving under the influence and reckless homicide conviction based on defense counsel’s failure to produce evidence related to youth-based factors in mitigation. The court offered the following language in support. “Because defendant was a minor when the crash occurred, the…
From the Abstract: In Maine, there is no such thing as a child too young to be prosecuted. Maine’s Juvenile Code grants the juvenile court jurisdiction over a child of any age, even one who would have been considered too young to prosecute in the fifteenth century. As of 2024, just over half of states…
In this amicus brief (and a companion brief filed in Michigan v. Andrew Czarnecki), Fair and Just Prosecution urges the Michigan Supreme Court to extend 19- and 20-year olds its finding that life without parole sentences for young people violate state and federal constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
From the Abstract: “Modern doctrine and scholarship largely take it for granted that offenders should be criminally punished for reckless acts. Yet, developments in our understanding of human behavior can shed light on how we define and attribute criminal liability, or at least force us to grapple with the categories that have existed for so…
From the introduction: ” Recent Supreme Court cases have recognized the science underlying the common-sense notion that children are not “little adults.” Their brains function in a completely different manner than those of adults. In 2005, the Court abolished the juvenile death penalty and recognized the neuroscience underlying the claim that those under the age…
The Iowa Supreme Court struck down mandatory minimum sentencing schemes as applied to a young person transferred to adult court, finding mandatory minimum sentences to be in violation of federal and state prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment and the best interest clause in Iowa’s juvenile code. The court notes “the statutory recognition of the…
