by Andrew A. Green
Buried deep in his dissent of this week’s Supreme Court opinion outlawing the practice of sentencing juveniles to prison without parole for crimes short of murder, Justice Clarence Thomas hit upon an indefensible flaw in the majority’s reasoning. The five justices who signed on to the majority opinion determined that such a sentence violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because juveniles are not fully mature and cannot be held culpable in the same way as adults are. Because such offenders are still developing, the courts cannot justifiably determine that they are irredeemable and must at least entertain the possibility that they have been rehabilitated.
