PORTLAND — The Oregon Court of Appeals has ruled that the state is violating the U.S. Constitution when it sentences juvenile offenders to life in prison without considering their youth.
The court in its 2-1 ruling Wednesday found that the state is in conflict with the Eighth Amendment when juveniles convicted of aggravated murder are sentenced without taking into account that youth offenders are developmentally different than adults convicted of the same crime, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported .
“We conclude that the imposition of life imprisonment . on juvenile offenders without individualized considerations of youth by the sentencing court, is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment,” Judge Bronson James wrote for the majority.
The ruling stems from the case of Justin Link, who was convicted of aggravated murder for the March 2001 death of his mother, Barbara Thomas. The teenager and four of his friends killed Thomas near Redmond, Oregon.
Link was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison. He was given the possibility of applying for parole after serving the mandatory minimum sentence.
The appeals court has vacated that sentence. Link is set to be resentenced.
The ruling is part of an effort to bring the state in line with a 2012 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled it is unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole if that is the only option available to judges or juries.
For juveniles convicted of aggravated murder, the state currently has two options: life without the possibility of parole, or a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison. On the minimum sentence, defendants have to prove they will be rehabilitated to eventually get the possibility of parole.
“It considers whether a person ‘is likely to be’ rehabilitated at a future date, not whether the individual was less blameworthy due to their youth at the time of the offense,” James wrote in the ruling. “What the provision does not consider is immaturity at the time of the offense, nor how such immaturity lessened the culpability or blameworthiness of the defendant.”
Information from: KOPB-, http://www.opb.org
