November 17, 2011 Dear Friends,  There are many people who have no idea that the United States sentences youth to life without parole--or that we are the only country that imposes this extreme sentence on youth. The CFSY has produced a new video to raise awareness about this unjust practice.    You can help inform and inspire supporters by sharing our new video with your networks.   Help build the movement by sharing this with your friends, family and colleagues, because youth should never be sentenced to die in prison.  Together, I know we can end the practice of sentencing youth to life without parole.         In Solidarity,  Jody Kent Lavy Director & National Coordinator Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth   www.fairsentencingofyouth.org

Juvenile lifers and the tragedy of certainty (guest commentary)

Published: Friday, November 18, 2011, 6:05 AM     Updated: Friday, November 18, 2011, 7:37 AM

By Guest writer MLive.com 

By Mark Osler
I’ve spent my career prosecuting criminals, teaching criminal law, advocating reforms, and studying our criminal justice system. From all of that, I am convinced of only one absolute truth: That all of it, every bit, is tragedy. When we execute a murderer, it does not un-murder the victim, but adds to the pile of the dead. When we lock up a robber, it does not reverse a victim’s trauma, and only rarely does it restore the victim’s wealth. This is the cruel necessity of criminal law — that the best we can do is manage and try to limit the spread of tragedy.
Done well, the vocation of criminal law is emotionally exhausting for exactly this reason. One’s work is about death and loss and pain, and even when a prosecutor wins a case and obtains a fair sentence, that sentence is meted out in terms of yet more death and loss and pain. The victories are shrouded in loss.
One unfortunate effect of this bare fact is that those involved in criminal law are prone to become too certain in their views and over-committed to their work. We see this in stories like the Hank Skinner case out of Texas, where prosecutors have withheld DNA evidence from testing for years to protect their conviction. This over-commitment rankles our sensibilities, but at a human level it makes sense. Victims’ family members and prosecutors are emotionally bonded to the conviction because it is theirs -- their stake within a disordered realm of tragedy. They asked for death. Put plainly, these victims and prosecutors literally and publicly stated that they wanted someone to die. Given the stark nature of identifying someone to be killed, should we be surprised at the depth of their commitment, even in the face of rational argument?

Mark Osler

Professor Susan Bandes has studied the emotional over-commitment of prosecutors and victims, and sees the relationship between the two as one reason they value a conviction or tough sentence above all else. Their discussions can become a narrow feedback loop, which re-enforces the idea that a conviction and sentence must be maintained at all costs.
The discussion in Michigan of the sentence of life without parole for juvenile offenders is buried deep within this nest of tragedy and over-commitment. Particularly odd is the total certainty of some victims’ family members that a child of 16 will be a lethal danger the remainder of his life. How could anyone know that? There is no scientific test that predicts the future in that way. Such certainty is rooted in something deeply personal and dark, and such shrouded, private certainties should not be the basis for a system of public justice.

Reason tells us that they must be wrong—there simply is no rational basis for the idea that all 358 juvenile lifers in Michigan are beyond redemption, and that we can determine this fact before those children are old enough to vote or enter a bar or go off to college.
The truth within the tragedy is this: When we look at a 16-year-old, we can’t be sure how that kid will turn out. Perhaps he will be a danger to society the remainder of his life. Or, perhaps, he won’t be. We have to wait and see. That’s the role of parole. It allows experts to monitor the progress of the convicted to determine how they have changed, if at all.
Equally unfounded is the belief of some that the executive pardon power can take care of this issue. Clemency in the form of commutation of sentences is rarely given these days — as evidenced by the fact that President Obama has granted not a single commutation petition. Governors vary wildly in their use of this power, even when they do deign to use it. Relying on something so sparse, unstructured, and unpredictable is a poor form of justice.
I believe in public prosecution and the incapacitation of dangerous people through incarceration. However, I also believe that I can’t predict the future, especially the future of those who are not fully formed, and neither can those who are calling for the continuing vitality of juvenile life without parole. We need to care for victims and their family members, listen to them, do what is possible to make them more whole, but we should not imagine that they have the extraordinary power to predict what a 16-year-old boy will be like in 20 or 30 or 40 years. To do so is to compound tragedy unnecessarily, and that is the very result we must seek to avoid as we administer justice.
-- Mark Osler was a federal prosecutor in the Detroit area from 1995 to 2000. A Detroit and Grosse Pointe native, he graduated from Yale Law School and is now a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minnesota. His scholarly work has consistently confronted the problem of inflexibility in sentencing and corrections.

© 2011 MLive.com. All rights reserved.