Sullivan v. Florida

The Supreme Court will hear two cases from Florida next term dealing with minors sentenced to life in prison for committing crimes other than murder.

In Graham v. Florida, a judge sentenced then-17-year-old Terrance Graham to life without parole in 2004 after he took part in an armed home invasion while he was on probation for committing a separate violent crime.

Evidence was presented during his trial concerning the robbery, but the trial judge sent Graham to prison for violating the terms of his probation after an earlier conviction for armed burglary and attempted armed robbery when he was 16.

Meanwhile, in Sullivan v. Florida, then-13-year-old Joe Harris Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted for the rape of an elderly woman.

In 1989, Sullivan and two older teens burglarized the home of Lena Bruner, who was not home at the time. Someone returned to her house later that day and beat and raped her.

The two older teenagers admitted to the earlier burglary but said Sullivan committed the rape. He was convicted in a one-day trial in which Bruner testified that she’d been blindfolded during the assault but that she could recognize her attacker’s voice.

At trial, Sullivan had to repeat certain phrases used by the attacker while Bruner was asked whether she recognized his voice.

Police collected biological evidence at the crime scene but it was destroyed before it could be subjected to DNA testing, according to the brief filed by Sullivan’s attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative.

The Florida district court of appeal affirmed the conviction without opinion and the Supreme Court of Florida denied review without opinion.

Attorneys for both men contend that since their clients’ crimes didn’t involve murder, a life sentence without parole violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Stevenson noted in his brief that his client was one of only two 13-year-old children sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime in the United States and only one of eight with that sentence for any crime in prison.

"This court has recognized that the Eighth Amendment requires the states to treat juveniles differently than adults, at least in the context of the death penalty," attorney John Mills wrote in his brief to the court on Graham's behalf. "This is so because, given the difference between juveniles and adults, juveniles have a greater claim to be forgiven for their criminal misbehavior."

In the 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for juvenile offenders, citing a "national consensus" against the practice, along with medical and other evidence that teenagers are too immature to be held accountable for their crimes to the same extent as adults.

In urging the court not to hear the case, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum argued that in the past the justices have “recognized that a state is permitted to make ‘a societal decision that when a person who has previously committed a felony commits yet another felony, he should be subjected to the admittedly serious penalty of incarceration for life, subject only to the state's judgment as to whether to grant him parole.’”

On May 4, 2009, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the cases, which will be argued separately during the fall term that begins on Oct. 5.

Question presented:
Graham: Issue: Whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments prohibits the imprisonment of a juvenile for life without the possibility of parole as punishment for the juvenile’s commission of non-homicide.

Sullivan: Issue: Does imposition of a life without parole sentence on a thirteen-year-old for a non-homicide violate the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, where the freakishly rare imposition of such a sentence reflects a national consensus on the reduced criminal culpability of children?