Posts tagged legal news

Lawyers for Juvenile Lifers Convicted of Murder Urge Supreme Court to Overturn Sentences

Lawyers for two prisoners sentenced to life in prison for murders committed when they were age 14 are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to accept their cases and strike down their sentences as unconstitutional.

The lawyers want the Supreme Court to extend its Graham v. Florida decision that held unconstitutional life sentences for juveniles who were convicted of crimes other than murder, the New York Times reports. The lawyers say life sentences without parole should be banned for all offenders who were 13 and 14 when they committed their crimes. VIA

This is a big deal since it will force us to determine what to do with juvenile offenders when we can’t just lock them away forever. Perhaps returning to the original purpose of juvenile courts over 100 years ago, which was to provide rehabilitation and guidance will be part of the solution. Putting them in prison for life is cruel and unusual punishment based on lack of cognitive development, maturity and/or deficiencies (which leans to culpably). Once a process is in place for juveniles, maybe it will be one that can extend and be adjusted for adults as well…years down the road.

yesterday’s news.  “Laboratory studies using fMRI, which measures blood-oxygen levels in the brain, have suggested that when someone lies, the brain sends more blood to the ventrolateral area of the prefrontal cortex. In a very small number of studies, researchers have identified lying in study subjects  with accuracy ranging from 76 percent to over 90 percent. But some scientists and lawyers like New York University neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps doubts those results can be applied outside the lab. The data in their studies don’t appear to be reliable enough to use in a court of law,” Phelps said. “There is just no reason to think that this is going to be a good measure of whether someone is telling the truth.”(via)

yesterday’s news. 

“Laboratory studies using fMRI, which measures blood-oxygen levels in the brain, have suggested that when someone lies, the brain sends more blood to the ventrolateral area of the prefrontal cortex. In a very small number of studies, researchers have identified lying in study subjects  with accuracy ranging from 76 percent to over 90 percent. But some scientists and lawyers like New York University neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps doubts those results can be applied outside the lab. The data in their studies don’t appear to be reliable enough to use in a court of law,” Phelps said. “There is just no reason to think that this is going to be a good measure of whether someone is telling the truth.”(via)

When the U.S. Supreme Court denied Charles Dean Hood’s appeal last week, it was done in a one-sentence, unsigned order. Hood is a Texas death-row inmate who was convicted of murdering two people in 1990. Long after the conclusion of the trial it became clear that his trial judge and prosecutor had been secretly involved in a years-long extramarital affair. Because they were both married they denied the affair, even to Hood’s death-penalty lawyers. After the clandestine relationship finally came to light, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Hood’s challenge in two curt sentences last September, finding that his lawyers had waited too long to raise the issue on appeal. How Hood was to have raised the conflict of interest when the existence of the affair was not conclusively established until 2008, when the judge and prosecutor were forced to admit it under oath, is not explained.
You should read this, a really nice bit from Dahlia Lithwick (via newsweek)