Last Thursday, the Minnesota State Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Lamonte Martin, who, along with 19 year-old Cornelius Jackson, was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of release for shooting 19-year-old Christopher Lynch nearly a dozen times in May of 2006. The ruling upheld the convictions of both gang members who coldly executed Lynch as he begged for his life in a north Minneapolis alley.
This horrific act might have been just another in the long list of crimes associated with gang violence–crimes that occur daily in large cities across the country–except that Lamonte Martin was 17 at the time of the murder. His age was one of the issues cited on appeal.
A divided Minnesota court ruled that sentencing juveniles to life without the possibility of release does not violate the constitution’s ban on cruel or unusual punishment. Citing a 2005 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on a Missouri case involving a juvenile killer, which overturned the death sentence for the juvenile but upheld a sentence of life without release, Justice Christopher Dietzen concluded that, “When a juvenile offender commits a heinous crime, the state can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties.”
While the prosecution hailed the verdict, Martin’s public defender argued that the ruling was another case of the justice system failing to properly distinguish between teenagers and adults when it comes to criminal responsibility and life sentences.
So did the Supreme Court make the right decision in sentencing Martin to life in prison? After all he was just days from his 18th birthday when he participated in Lynch’s brutal execution.
According to a 2005 report from Human Rights Watch, more than 2,225 juveniles across the country are serving life in prison without parole. Forty-two states permit judges and juries to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole. Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of juvenile lifers, with more than 330. Interestingly, Human Rights Watch found that 59% of the juveniles serving life-without-parole sentences nationally had no prior criminal convictions before being placed in prison for life.
So while some may argue that the decision handed down by Minnesota’s Supreme Court was cruel, it’s difficult to argue that it was unusual.