Earlier this month France amended its civil code to ban life imprisonment for children. The law previously allowed those aged 16 or older to be sentenced as adults for certain crimes, meaning that under 18’s found guilty of repeatedly committing the same offence, or of carrying out a crime with aggravating factors could be sentenced to life in prison. A copy of the 1945 Ordinance can be accessed here. For further commentary on the issue and the position in other EU jurisdictions click here.
Readers may recall a previous PILA Bulletin featured a US Supreme Court ruling that all states must retroactively apply the ban on mandatory death-in-prison sentences for juveniles. Over the past ten years there have been a series of changes in life sentences for juveniles. Beginning in 2005 with the US Supreme Court Case, Roper v Simmons, which abolished the death penalty for juveniles, no one under the age of 18 can receive capital punishment in any state. The US Supreme Court later ruled in the 2010 case, Graham v. Florida, that no crime but murder for juveniles may be punished by a life sentence without parole. The 2012 US Supreme Court case, Miller v. Alabama, ruled that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger convicted of homicide was unconstitutional and would instead be decided on a case-by-case basis.
In a recent decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court held that sentencing a child to a term of years that is the functional equivalent of life imprisonment without parole is unconstitutional. Following a recent string of court cases where juveniles are being required to serve 89, 97 and even 99-year-sentences before being eligible for parole, the court has decided that these sentences are a mandatory, de facto life-without-parole sentence and are therefore unconstitutional. Louisiana is one of several state courts attempting to reform sentencing for juveniles by requiring new sentences that allow for rehabilitation in the form of a meaningful opportunity for release.
Click here for the Louisiana State Supreme Court ruling.
Click here for the previous PILA Bulletin feature on mandatory death-in-prison sentences for juveniles.