Would You Want a Teenage Killer Locked Up for Life?

Source: Tamirlan Maratov/Unsplash

On Friday, March 12, 2021, 6-year-old Grace Rose disappeared from her home in New Carlisle, Indiana. Two hours later, her lifeless body was found in the woods nearby.

That same day, a mother brought her 14-year-old son to a police station, where he allegedly told investigators that Grace had followed him into the woods, where a “shadowy man” had ordered him to strangle her. He is currently charged with murder and child molestation.

What if 6-year-old Grace was your daughter? I can’t even fathom the anguish, rage, the second-guessing I would do as I struggled to cope with what I believe is life’s worst tragedy — losing a child. Imagine this 14-year-old boy was your son. I can only guess at the shock, the horror, and the rage I would feel if my child did this. I can also imagine the terror I would feel at what was going to happen to him.

And what should happen? We don’t yet know the details. Let’s first consider a worst-case scenario: a premeditated murder that involved sexual assault. If substantiated, has this 14-year-old forfeited his right to freedom for the rest of his life?

How Young Is Old Enough?

For much of human history, killer teenagers could be sentenced to death just as easily as a grownup. The thinking was: an eye for an eye and, if you took deliberately took a human life, you gave up your own, no matter how old you were.

Until 1988, the death penalty was on the table for an American teenager convicted of murder. The youngest defendant to be legally executed in the United States was 14-year-old African American George Stinney, who, in 1944, was unjustly convicted of murdering two white girls after a 3-hour trial and 10-minute jury deliberation; in 2014, his conviction was posthumously vacated.

In the 1970s and 1980s, scientific research began shining a light on just how underdeveloped adolescent brains still were and how this “transient immaturity” could lead to dumb decisions and poor impulse control. This raised two legal questions: a) given their still-developing brains, should violent teenagers be held as accountable as adults for the same actions and b) were they as likely to recidivate once their brains had a chance to mature (and spent some time reflecting on their crimes locked up either in an adult prison or in a juvenile facility?)

In 1988, the Supreme Court said no, first outlawing capital punishment for offenders who had committed their crimes under age 16. In 2005, it extended the age to 18. In 2012, Miller vs. Alabama eliminated automatic life without parole sentences for juveniles except in the rare instance it could be demonstrated that s/he was “permanently incorrigible.” In theory, then, being sentenced to die behind bars was reserved for the worst-of-the-worst; teens who could not be rehabilitated.

The problem, of course, was there was no guidance on how to determine who was beyond repair and who could be salvaged. Because Miller vs. Alabama was retroactive, LWOP (life without parole) juveniles (over 2000) had to be resentenced, which gave us a clue as to what factors the courts at least thought made the best case for “incorrigible.”

Seems like a lot of it had to do with the nature of the original crime, whether or not the inmate had expressed remorse, and how s/he behaved in prison. In October of 2019, for example, 44-year-old Scott Schroat, convicted of murdering 5-year-old Lila Ebright in 1992 at age 17, was resentenced to life without parole and will never see the light of day. At his sentencing hearing, prosecutors successfully argued that he continued to blame his problems on adults in his life who had failed him, continued to distort and lie about the details of his crime, and had shown little interest in mental health treatment during his years in prison.

All Juvenile Crimes Are Not Equal, Even Murders

Since 2012, several hundred adults, arrested and convicted as juveniles, have been resentenced. Some have been given the chance for eventual parole, some have been resentenced to LWOP, a small minority have been released. Here’s a snapshot of what’s happened in one state: In Alabama, 73 inmates qualified for resentencing. As of March 2021, 39 have been given an eventual chance of release, 13 were resentenced to life without parole, and 20 are in limbo.

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But the 20-year tide of leniency for juveniles may be receding. On April 22, 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that a judge no longer needed to assert that a juvenile was permanently incorrigible before sentencing him or her to life without parole. The case that led to this ruling involved Brett Jones, a 31-year-old man who murdered his grandfather during an argument in 2004 over his girlfriend. He has since earned his high school diploma, consistently expressed remorse, and been a model prisoner, suggesting he is clearly not permanently incorrigible.

But what about Phillip Chism, the then-14-year-old who, in 2013, brutally raped, murdered, and robbed his ninth-grade teacher, Colleen Ritzer, who had asked him to stay after class when she found him drawing instead of taking notes? At age 15, while awaiting trial for those charges at the Dorchester (Mass.) Department of Youth Services, he attacked and attempted to murder a 29-year-old female employee. What about Josh Phillips who, in 1988 at age 14, killed his 8-year-old neighbor, Maddie Clifton, and hid her body underneath his waterbed for six days, participating in the search while her family frantically searched for her?

Clearly, these are exceptional crimes. These are not the kind of crimes I imagine the Supreme Court was thinking about when it banned life without parole for juveniles—the hotheaded adolescent who impulsively kills during an argument or a group of teenagers who get together, get drunk and high, and do something together they would never do on their own. There should be severe consequences for those crimes, too, but an argument can be made that perhaps not permanent ones.

Science favors the argument against mandatory LWOP for teenagers; 90 percent of violent juvenile offenders don’t become violent adults. Clearly, juveniles are more reformable than adults. On the other hand, I don’t imagine those statistics provide much comfort for Maddie’s mom, Colleen’s dad, or Grace’s family.

At this point in my life, I can’t support mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles. I’m not even sure I can support it as an option. Giving a teenage murderer an extended mandatory sentence before parole is even a possibility would, in my opinion, maximize public safety while giving us all a chance to see exactly who this murderous teen has grown into. That’s what a Massachusetts judge did to Philip Chism in 2016 when he ordered him to spend 40 years behind bars before he is eligible for parole. That’s something I can live with – and a juvenile murderer can live for.