As noted earlier, each state is sovereign and establishes its own laws.

Recent Legal Decisions

If an individual wants to appeal their matter, they must first go through the state courts. Then, once they’ve exhausted all their state appeals, they can seek remedy through the federal courts, provided Constitutional laws apply. As the Constitution is the nation’s supreme law, all states must comply.

The United State Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama 567 U.S. 460 (2012) held that mandatory LWOP imposed on juvenile defendants violated the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. It consolidated two similar matters: the title case and Jackson v. Hobbs, an Arkansas case, involving two individuals who committed crimes when they were fourteen years old. Evan Miller and a friend smoked marijuana and drank alcohol with a neighbor. They then robbed and beat the neighbor with a baseball bat and set fire to his trailer to destroy evidence. The neighbor died as a result of the fire and his injures. Alabama tried Miller as an adult and when a jury found him guilty, the court enforced a mandatory LWOP.

Kuntrell Jackson was also fourteen years old when he and two other teenagers robbed a video store. Jackson initially remained outside but entered shortly before one of his friends shot and killed the store clerk. Arkansas charged Jackson as an adult with capital felony and imposed a mandated LWOP.

Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the Supreme Court decision noted, “mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences…it prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him…and from which he extricates himself…no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.” The decision, however, failed to ban all juvenile, homicide LWOP and that the system must differentiate between momentary immaturity and uncommon “irreparable corruption.”

Four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. __ (2016), the United States Supreme Court considered whether Miller must be applied retroactively. When Henry Montgomery was seventeen, a truant officer caught him. When the officer frisked him, he shot and killed the officer. After his initial trial, the court sentenced him to death, but he was retried because “public prejudice had prevented a fair trial.” His second trial resulted in a LWOP, which did not allow a sentencing phase or the opportunity to introduce mitigating evidence. Justice Kennedy, who wrote the decision, determined that the Constitution required retroactive application of Miller’s prohibition and mandatory LWOP sentences for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment. While he did not oppose LWOP for juveniles, he said that the require individualized sentencing and determined that all states must either re-sentence offenders given LWOP as minors or offer them parole. Montgomery is expected to impact up to 2,300 cases nationwide.

Back to Pennsylvania

Senator Street’s bill (SB942) would allow an individual who received LWOP to become eligible for parole after serving fifteen years. One of his goals is to end LWOP, specifically for juveniles convicted under felony murder laws (Pennsylvania prisons house over 500 such inmates). He is also concerned about another category of murderers, the kind of which would normally be eligible for parole due to extenuating circumstances (e.g. a battered wife who kills her abusive husband out of self-defense), but received mandatory LWOP. His bill does not create a right to parole, so it does not set free the most dangerous inmates. The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole would retain the power the review parole eligibility.

Senator Street also pointed out that it costs about $42,000 per year just to house a prisoner and that the state spends about $33 million a year just to maintain those serving LWOP felony murders. So, as prisoners age and their medical needs increase, the average per year cost will to about

$70,000 to $80,000 a year. Considering that that LWOP inmates are the least likely to recidivate, instituting parole for them offers tremendous taxpayer savings.

Representative Dawkins’ bill (HB135) would is extremely similar and would also abolish LWOP in Pennsylvania

Two Sides to Every Story: LWOP as a Death Penalty Alternative

The death penalty has always been a contentious subject with people holding extreme views on either side. Many who morally oppose the death penalty consider LWOP a preferable choice. They believe it avoids the risk of executing innocent people.

A California coalition of wrongfully convicted individuals, law enforcement officials, and surviving members of murder victims twice attempted to convince voters to repeal the death penalty and replace it with LWOP. Members felt the state’s death penalty system was “costly and broken” and twice, in 2012 and 2016, launched a SAFE (“Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement”) voter act to ensure no innocent person was ever executed. Both times, voters defeated the act, believing the death penalty should continue for the most heinous killers.

Death row inmates opposed the measure. LWOP eliminated their rights to appeal their sentences, which instantly deprived them of hope. One death row inmate wrote an op-ed and said that he’d rather be executed than have his rights to appeal taken away.

Two Sides to Every Story: Survivors of Victims Support LWOP

Some families of murder victims like LWOP. For them, it forever imprisons the criminal who killed their loved one and eliminates the decades long appeals process that usually accompanies death sentences. In some cases, district attorneys agree to plea bargains, with victim’ families support, that allow offenders to plead guilty to crimes with LWOP and avoid death penalties.

Two Sides to Every Story: The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act

History has not been kind to Bill Clinton or anyone else who supported the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, especially because of the racial disparities caused by the sentencing reforms, “three-strikes” rule, and racial issues during its enactment. Hillary Clinton suffered, too, for her use of the term “super predator.”

The act, however, deserves a second look. It also provided:

• funding for programs to address crime prevention
• funding for drug treatment
• funding for education and jobs
• grants to combat violence against women; fund state efforts to arrest and prosecute those who victimize women, offer rape prevention, counseling services, and the arrest of offenders in domestic violence cases.
• grants to make improvements to transit systems with surveillance lines and emergency phone systems
• funding for handgun requirements to enable states to identify ineligible firearms purchasers and conduct interstate background checks on individuals who worked with children
• grants develop or improve the capability to analyze DNA in a forensic laboratory.
• funding for rape crisis centers
• funding to reduce the sexual abuse of runaway, homeless, and street youth

The media, politicians, and many others have asked everyone associated with this act, including Vice President Joe Biden, to apologize for this act.

The act, as all things, was part of its time. This doesn’t excuse its impact or mean that the problem shouldn’t be resolved. It means, as with all things, it should be considered individually, applying all extenuating circumstances. It took the Supreme Court nearly thirty years to figure that out.

One Other Case to Consider

Right now, society and opinion seem to be leaning toward abolishing LWOP and offering parole to offenders the courts imposed such sentences, especially those who committed crimes when they were juveniles. One case may cause some to pause, even if just for a moment.

Lee Boyd Malvo, better known as the D.C. or Beltway Sniper, was seventeen years old when he John Allen Muhammad shot and killed ten people and seriously wounded three others during the weeks between September 5, 2002 and October 22, 2002, in what Virginia officials called “one of the most notorious strings of terrorist acts in modern American history.” Muhammad received the death penalty for his crimes and died by lethal injection in 2009. Malvo pled guilty and received LWOP.

Malvo appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court and, under Miller, claims his sentence deserves review. The Supreme Court agreed and, in March 2019, agreed to hear his case in its upcoming October session.

The Danger of Broad-Based Solutions to Problems

Malvo demonstrates, as history constantly teaches, that there is usually never one solution to a certain problem. What’s popular during the moment leads society to discuss resolutions. Those resolutions, however, have far-reaching consequences, which we cannot see or predict. And, what we think is important at the time, may be inconsequential later.

If even just a tiny percentage of released LWOP inmates go on to commit violent crimes, some will no doubt consider offering them parole a mistake and we will be right back on the opposite side. History’s pendulum usually always swings back the other way.

Images provided via Google

Election night 2016 wasn’t all that disastrous. Californians overwhelmingly elected Kamala Harris to the senate. Her win was historical and monumental. She is the second woman of color voters elected to the Senate (Illinois’ Carol Moseley Braun was the first) leading by over sixty percent.  

Roughly, three years later, in January 2019, she announced her presidential campaign. About 20,000 Californians cheered Kamala Harris on as she emphasized the current political discord and feelings that the United States’ position in the world was at its lowest point. She borrowed from Abraham Lincoln saying “I’m running to be a president of the people, by the people, for all the people.”

So, who is Ms. Harris and for what does she stand? Let’s look at her background and career thus far.

Family and Early Life

Ms. Kamala Harris, whose name originates from the Sanskrit word for lotus flower, was  born in 1964, to parents who emigrated to the United States. Her father, who is from Jamaica, taught economics at Stanford University. Her mother, an Indian diplomat, researched breast cancer. 

After her parents divorced, her mother took her and her sister to Montreal, Canada. Kamala returned to the states after graduating high school to attend Howard University, where she majored in economics and political science. Upon earning her bachelor’s degree in 1986, she went to the University of California, Hastings College of Law, and earned her Juris Doctor. She failed the California Bar exam upon her first attempt citing it her “most half-assed performance.”

In 2014, Ms. Harris married attorney Douglas Emhoff.  

Public Service Life

Ms. Harris entered public service right away. She first worked as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California. She then joined the San Francisco district attorney’s office as Chief of the Community and Neighborhood Division, where she managed civil code enforcement matters. 

In 2003, she beat two-term incumbent Terence Hallinan to become San Francisco’s District Attorney. She formed a unit to focus on hate crimes against LGBT children and teens and assembled a national conference to discuss gay-transgender hate crimes. She also prosecuted drug traffickers and attained a $20 billion settlement for homeowners facing foreclosure.

In November 2008, Ms. Harris became the first female, Indian-American, Jamaican-American to become California’s Attorney General. In 2014, voters re-elected her. She helped defeat Proposition 8 (which opposed gay marriage) and supported marriage equality nationwide. Her office’s investigations into pipeline oil spills resulted in numerous indictments and further probes into potential price fixing schemes. She began the Bureau of Children’s Justice to focus on foster care, truancy, childhood trauma, and juvenile justice. 

In 2015, Senator Barbara Boxer announced her retirement following twenty-four years of service. Ms. Harris decided to run for the seat. From the start, Ms. Harris remained a frontrunner, catching the endorsements of Governor Jerry Brown, Vice President Joe Biden, and President Barack Obama. 

Service as Senator and Achievements

Since her election to the senate, Ms. Harris supported democratic causes and continued to counter Donald Trump’s decisions, policies, and appointments

Immediately following her election, she vowed to protect immigrants from Donald Trump’s policies. At a January 2018 hearing, she grilled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for preferring Norwegian immigrants and alleging to not know that Norwegians were mostly Caucasian.

Ms. Harris supports single payer healthcare and opposes attempts to weaken healthcare protections for those with pre-existing conditions. She supports Senator Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill and has insisted that repealing the Affordable Care Act would declare health care a “privilege” instead of a “civil right.” She was one of ten senators to sponsor the Choose Medicare Act, a public option for health insurance that additionally increased ObamaCare subsidies and granted eligibility to higher income individuals.   

In August 2018, she co-signed a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency alleging that it was not helping Puerto Rican homeowners displaced by Hurricane Maria. 

She co-sponsored the Climate Risk Disclosure Act, which sought to speed the transition to cleaner energy without increasing taxes.  She also supports Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.   

While Ms. Harris did not initially support the legalization of recreational marijuana, she co-sponsored Senator Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act, which would remove marijuana’s classification as a controlled substance and require federal courts to expunge prior marijuana possession and use convictions. 

Ms. Harris opposes the death penalty, but states that she would consider each case individually. She prefers life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and thinks such is also more cost-effective. She supports middle class tax cuts raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour; cash bail reformation, and tuition-free college education. 

She supports a woman’s right to choose, so Planned Parenthood Action Fund has consistently given her a 100% rating. She supports gun control and says that thoughts and prayers are inadequate solutions to shootings. The National Rifle Association has thus, given her an “F” rating. 

She believes there is a direct relationship between habitual truancy in elementary school and later criminal history and has, thus, called for deeming such truancy a parental crime. 

Presidential Campaign

When Ms. Harris announced her presidential campaign, she vowed to defend against cybersecurity threats and to safeguard elections.  She reaffirmed her commitment to immigrants stating her  desires of an America that welcomes refugees and offers a path to citizenship. 

Kamala has also stated that she will not accept donations from Political Action Committees (PACs).

Potential Issues

In this article, when required and appropriate, Ms. Harris is described as a “woman of color” and “black.” Such was done out of respect to her wishes. It also relates to recent articles that concern whether she is “black enough to represent African-Americans in the White House.”  These articles simple state that “critics” and social memes have asked about her ethnic background, her history of incarcerating minorities, and her marriage to a Caucasian. The matter most likely stemmed from Tariq Nasheed’s January 24, 2019 tweet in which he notes that Ms. Harris has no ancestral connection to native black Americans and asks how her presidential run benefit native black Americans (Mr. Nasheed is a film producer and media personality).

In February 2019, Ms. Harris appeared on The Breakfast Club, a hip-hop, morning radio program in New York City, and addressed these matters. She said, “I’m black and I’m proud of being black. I was born black. I will die black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.” When a host asked her about a meme that claimed she was not African-American, she explained that she was born in Oakland and lived in the United States and Canada.

The hosts also asked if she had “hurt black people” as a prosecutor and if she regretted any decisions, relating to a meme of her laughing about a program that prosecuted underprivileged parents of truant children). While she acknowledged systemic racism, she highlighted her re-entry and recidivism programs and efforts to reform the bail system. She further claimed that some would simply reject her just because she was a prosecutor and noted that she married for love.

In July 2017, the New York Post noted that Ms. Harris met with several of Hillary Clinton’s biggest financial backers in the Hamptons. Some of her donors include Allergan, Bank of America, and the Hospital Corporation of America, all of whom are large corporations. 

When Ms. Harris was a prosecutor, she handled some controversial matters, including the shooting of a police officer. She did not seek the death penalty, as she vowed never to do so.  Such infuriated and defied the police department. 

Overall

Ms. Harris has an extremely good reputation as a public servant, is determined, and is certainly qualified to run the country. You could examine every decision she made in her current and prior positions and find problems with everything, if you wanted. While she has corporate donors, such hasn’t yet caused a problem. She’s very nice and determined, as well. 

Her one major problem could be her corporate donors. Such could turn off progressives and liken her too much to Hillary Clinton.