Newswise — As the Supreme Court prepares to announce rulings in two landmark cases, a law professor who has experienced the rare occurrence of both winning a case before the Court and having his work quoted in another Court opinion says sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment with no chance of parole is unconstitutional.
The Court is expected to hand down rulings soon in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, two cases which both deal with minors sentenced to life in prison for committing crimes other than murder. Mark Osler believes the Court should rule that life without parole for minors constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
"I'm a former prosecuting attorney, so I believe in punishment. Justice is never achieved without punishment,” says Osler who is a professor at Baylor Law School. “At the same time, all children deserve a chance to grow into productive adults – even those who have committed a crime as a child."
The United States is one of only two countries in the world known to sentence offenders under age 18 to life without parole.
More than 2,500 youth offenders are currently serving such sentences in the U.S., and the estimated rate at which the sentence of life without parole is imposed on children nationwide remains at least three times higher today than it was 15 years ago. Black children are 10 times more likely to receive a life-without-parole sentence than white children.
"More than half of the juveniles who receive life without parole are first-time offenders, and many are in prison for crimes short of murder," Osler says.
Osler was among experts invited by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security in June 2009 to testify why H.R. 2289, the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act of 2009, should be enacted into law. The bill calls for regularly scheduled parole review for child offenders sentenced to life.
In 2009, he was the successful lead counsel in Spears v. United States, where the Court held that sentencing judges can categorically reject the 100:1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine mandated by federal sentencing guidelines. In 2005, Justice John Paul Stevens quoted Osler in the seminal case of United States v. Booker, which struck down the mandatory guidelines. As an appellate attorney, Osler briefed or argued cases in six federal courts of appeal as well as the Supreme Court.
Osler is a graduate of Yale Law School. Before joining Baylor in 2000, he clerked in a U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, was an associate with a Detroit law firm, and served five years as Assistant District Attorney in Detroit.
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