The Supreme Court has made it
easier for states to impose life
sentences without the possibility
of parole for juvenile offenders.
We're talking about minors here who
might have done something awful,
but the whole point here
is are minors redeemable I mean,
they are minors,
they are not fully matured yet, but
the Supreme court unfortunately
with its Supreme court conservative
Supreme court justices has decided
that no, we should totally throw
the book on minors.
So the justice in a 6 to 3 ruling
rejected arguments by
an inmate His name is Brett Jones,
who was 15 years old by the way
when he stabbed his grandfather
to death and was sentenced to life
in prison, they disagreed with his
arguments that his sentence of life
in prison with no chance of parole
violated the Eighth Amendment
because the judge in his trial had
not made a separate finding that he
was permanently incorrigible.
So the point here is the minor
irredeemable?
Right? Can this
person be rehabilitated and
allowed to be out free to be
a productive member of society?
And so the point here is that,
hey are the judges or
is the judge required to prove that
this person is incorrigible and
unfortunately the conservative
justices said, no, they don't even
need to really figure that out.
So justice Brett Kavanaugh is the
one who wrote the opinion here and
he writes Determining the proper
sentence in such a case raises
profound questions of morality and
social policy.
The states not the federal courts
make those broad moral and
policy judgments in the first
instance when enacting their
sentencing laws, so he's making
a state's rights argument there.
The kind of discretionary
sentencing followed by Mississippi
has resulted in numerous sentences
less than life without parole for
defendants who otherwise would
have received mandatory life
without parole sentences.
And then there's this part that I
mean, the whole thing is upsetting,
but this is the part that really
got under my skin because he's just
lying Jones's argument that
the sentence must make a finding of
permanent incorrigibility is
inconsistent with the court's
precedents, that's a lie.
As long as the state considers
the use of the offender during
sentencing, no other analysis is
required, so actually want to go to
some precedent to maybe
remind justice Kavanaugh, maybe
he was drinking too much beer and
doesn't remember these cases.
But in 2012 ruling the Supreme
Court had decided that mandatory
life sentences without parole in
homicide cases involving juvenile
offenders represented cruel and
unusual punishment in 2016.
The Justice has decided that the
2012 ruling applied retroactively
meaning that convicted criminals
imprisoned years earlier could
then argue for their release, so
if you want to talk about
precedent, there is precedent.
It's just that it doesn't go along
with the narrative that justice
Cavanaugh would have you believe.
>> So they're chipping away at it,
so this is how this works to
simplify so
conservatives pretend that they
care a lot about precedent because
they like some of the old law and
they want to keep it.
They're not in favor of
change they're conservatives.
Right?
But the problem is some of the old
precedent is on our side, and
meaning progressive side, etc,
then they got to find an excuse.
Right?
So, in this case the court ruled
nine years ago you cannot give life
sentences to people under 18 now,
that's because they're young
it's not
because the crime isn't horrific,
sometimes the crime is terrible.
Right?
But you've got kids,
you think that a 14 year old for
example, is perfectly mature, and
knows exactly what they're doing.
No, in fact we know that they're
literally their brains change.
Right?
The neural connections are not
fully formed yet, and so they are
quite literally different people
identity wise when they grow up.
So that is why the court ruled as
it should, that under the 8th
Amendment, it would be cruel and
unusual to lock them up for
something they did when they were
minors.
Right?
So now Kavanaugh on the rest of
the conservatives, the six that
voted in that way are barbaric
because they don't want that like,
I don't care if you're an infant,
I want you to locked up forever and
ever, because you're bad guys and
we need to protect society ie
the powerful, the rich, etc.
Okay? So, in this case,
what they're saying is.
Well, the only way that you could
lock up someone who was a minor
after that Supreme Court case was,
the judge does said
something extraordinary,
they're permanently incorrigible.
Like there's no help for
them ever it's impossible for
them to get better,
now they're saying,
well, you really need that?
You don't really need that,
we can still lock him up
forever if we use other pretenses,
in other words, you're getting rid
of the precedent.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> Okay. And you're trying to find
cutesy loophole to try to get
rid of it so you
could lock up people forever and
that's definitely what happened.
Sotomayor just absolutely levelled,
Kavanaugh's decision and
had a brilliant descent but
to no avail, because there's six
conservatives on the Supreme Court
now, so there's almost nothing you
could do.
>> Let me give you an excerpt
of her dissenting opinion she said,
the court is fooling no one.
The question is whether the State
at some point must consider
whether a juvenile offender has
demonstrated maturity and
rehabilitation sufficient to merit
a chance at life beyond the prison
in which he has grown up, for most,
the answer is yes.
And look I also want to be clear
the examples like the cases
where a juvenile offender has been
sentenced to life without
the possibility of
parole these are serious offenses.
No one is trying to whitewash that
or make it seem like they didn't
do anything wrong, no, it's awful.
But the question is,
do you apply the same standard to
a child that you would to an adult
right because an adult is a fully
formed human being already matured
brain is developed the situation is
different for children.
And so our children really
completely irredeemable
in all cases where they've
been sentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole I
don't believe that and
neither does justice Sotomayor.
>> Yeah.
And neither did the Supreme court
until we Trump and the Republicans
packed it full of conservatives and
now all of a sudden they're like
kids that we really need them?
And I know there was some grownups,
without fully formed brains either
the guy who appointed those three.
>> God he appointed three of them.
>> I know it's unbelievable.
But I mean, you want to permanently
incorrigible I would be
Donald Trump.
But for these kids now, well, that
it's a lifetime in prison for a lot
of them because of this decision,
no matter how much they change and
no matter how much they can prove
that they changed.