Juvenile Life Sentencing Update

Aside from death penalty cases, a USA Today article this morning says, justices of the Supreme Court have never before found a penalty crossed the cruel-and-unusual punishment line. That may have changed this morning.

"Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than murder, and there are just over 100 prison inmates in the United States serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences," the article says. Florida reportedly has more than 70% of that total, including Terrence Graham and Joe Sullivan, whose cases were before the Supreme Court just before noon.

The case is saying to flow directly from the Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 to rule out the death penalty for anyone younger than 18. There the Court said, "When a juvenile commits a heinous crime, the State can exact forfeiture of some of the most basic liberties, but the State cannot extinguish his life and his potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity. While drawing the line at 18 is subject to the objections always raised against categorical rules, that is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood and the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest."

Lyle Denniston at ScotusBlog, however, points out that "The Supreme Court has said repeatedly, as it decided death-penalty cases (often putting limits on such sentences, or ruling them out altogether in some situations), that ‘death is different,’ and that perception has led to a complex jurisprudence of capital punishment, including a flat ban on that penalty for some specific crimes (rape, for example) and some individuals in a specific group (minors and mentally impaired individuals). The Court, however, has not yet constructed a full constitutional guidebook for long prison sentences, although it has settled on one principle: a sentence for a term of years in prison will be struck down if it is 'grossly disproportionate' to the crime, judged on a case-by-case, rather than across-the-board, basis."

While similar, the cases are not identical, and the Court has decided to hear them separately.

See our previous posts (Here) and (Here), with much more on ScotusBlog (Here)

Graham’s Petition for certiorari
Sullivan’s Petition for certiorari

Ohio Supreme Court upholds "intensive program prison" release

In a case echoing State v. Bloomer back in June, in which the Ohio Supreme Court held that trial courts "had a statutory duty to provide notice to offenders of post-release control at the sentencing hearing, and any sentence imposed without such notification is contrary to law and void," possibly allowing the release of as many as 15, 000 former prisoners now under post-release supervision, it yesterday found that once the Department of Corrections determines an offender a good candidate for placement in an intensive program prison ("IPP") in lieu of serving the sentence ordered by the court, and notifies the court of that determination, if the court doesn't take any action after ten days, the Department may proceed with placement in IPP and once that inmate completes the IPP can be released.

State v. Roberts [pursuant to ORC §5120.032(B)(1)(b) ]
Roberts' appeal case

Previous post re Bloomer, Oct. 29th.

PACER redaction policies

For those who don't know what PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is, first of all, it is "an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet." It's a service of the United States Judiciary; the PACER Service Center being run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

CM/ECF is the federal courts' case management and electronic case files system, an intricate part of PACER, providing courts with enhanced and updated docket management, and allowing them to maintain case documents in electronic form. It also gives each court the option of permitting case documents - pleadings, motions, petitions – to be filed electronically with the court over the Internet.

CM/ECF in bankruptcy courts began in early 2001. For the district courts the "roll out" began nationally in May 2002, and in 2005 for the federal appellate courts . Over 35 million cases are now on CM/ECF systems, with more than 450,000 attorneys and others have filed documents over the Internet.

Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, Civil, and Criminal Procedure implementing the E-Government Act of 2002 became effective on December 1, 2007, amending Appellate Rule 25, Bankruptcy Rule 9037, Civil Rule 5.2, and Criminal Rule 49.1 to require that personal identification information, such as social security numbers & taxpayer identification numbers, the names of minor children, financial account numbers, dates of birth, and, in criminal cases, home addresses of parties and other particulars, be redacted from documents being filed with the courts.

The Judicial Conference's policy on privacy and public access to electronic case files has developed incrementally over the years, evolving to the point where it now provides for remote access to all electronic civil, bankruptcy, criminal, and appellate case files along with the appropriate privacy safeguards. The Conference continues to review that policy periodically and, in March 2008, the approved streamlining it to eliminate provisions that are duplicative of the Rules of Practice and Procedure. (Here)

The Federal Courts are now taking a number of new steps to ensure that privacy protections afforded under federal rules are followed and are reminding those filing electronically of the their obligation under the law to redact personal identifier information with a message that includes links to relevant rules. An example of the revised login screen was included in PACER's October newsletter. At login to CM/ECF, a message reminds attorneys of their responsibility to redact this private information from the documents they file; the most recent version of this reminder also requires attorneys acknowledge that they have read the notice and complied with the redaction rules. Filers cannot complete the login process without checking the acknowledgement in this recent version.

The latest CM/ECF versions also include a number of other notable changes, including being able to choose whether the client code field should be mandatory when logging into CM/ECF. (See Here)

A new "Court Information" utility is also now available, providing general court information such as hours of operation, court location and phone number, as well as filing information such as the maximum size of PDF files, the court's version of CM/ECF, case flag definitions and more.