Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Fact vs. journalism

Today's Clarion-Ledger lede:
Mississippi and 35 other states can no longer lock up juveniles for life for crimes other than murder, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.
No, it didn't, as the article itself implicitly admits later:
In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court said young people serving life prison terms must have "a meaningful opportunity to obtain release" if they haven't killed their victims. * * *

"The state has denied him (Graham) any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a non-homicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. "This the Eighth Amendment does not permit."
IOW, life without parole is no longer allowed as a sentence for juvenile non-homicide offenders.

... TBA actually thought Chief Justice Roberts' concurrence in the result had the better argument: no bright-line rule that would bar such a sentence for the most heinous offenses, but clearly on the facts of Graham's case, life w/o parole for armed robbery and home invasion was unconstitutional.

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