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was an exciting possibility.
The cases generated a lot of national media attention. When we filed our brief in the U.S.
Supreme Court, national organizations joined us and filed amicus briefs urging the Court to
rule in our favor. We received support from the American Psychological Association, the
American Psychiatric Association, the American Bar Association, the American Medical
Association, former judges, former prosecutors, social workers, civil rights groups, human
rights groups, even some victims’ rights groups. Former juvenile offenders who had later
become well-known public figures filed supporting documents, including very conservative
politicians like former U.S. senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming. Simpson had spent eighteen
years in the Senate, including ten as the Republican whip, the second-ranking senator in his
party. He had also been a former juvenile felon. He had been adjudicated as a juvenile
delinquent when he was seventeen, for multiple convictions for arson, theft, aggravated
assault, gun violence, and, finally, assaulting a police officer. He later confessed: “I was a
monster.” His life didn’t begin to change until he found himself imprisoned in “a sea of puke
and urine” following another arrest. Senator Simpson knew firsthand that you cannot judge a
person’s full potential by his juvenile misconduct. Another brief was filed on behalf of former
child soldiers whose terrifying behavior after being forced into violent African militias made
the crimes of our clients seem much less aggravated by comparison. Yet these former child
soldiers, rescued from their armies, had mostly recovered and been widely embraced at
American colleges and universities, where many of them had thrived.
In November 2009 , after the briefs were filed in Joe’s case and the Graham case, I went to
Washington for my third U.S. Supreme Court oral argument. There was a lot more media
attention and national news coverage than in any of my earlier cases. The Court was packed.
There were hundreds of people outside the Court as well. A wide assortment of children’s
rights advocates, lawyers, and mental health experts were watching closely when we asked
the Court to declare life-without-parole sentences imposed on children unconstitutional.
During the argument, the Court was feisty, and it was impossible to predict what the
justices were going to do. I told the Court that the United States is the only country in the
world that imposes life imprisonment without parole sentences on children. I explained that
condemning children violates international law, which bans these sentences for children. We
showed the Court that these sentences are disproportionately imposed on children of color.
We argued that the phenomenon of life sentences imposed on children is largely a result of
harsh punishments that were created for career adult criminals and were never intended for
children—which made the imposition of such a sentence on juveniles like Terrance Graham
and Joe Sullivan unusual. I also told the Court that to say to any child of thirteen that he is fit
only to die in prison is cruel. I had no way of knowing if the Court had been persuaded.
I had promised Joe, whose name and case were constantly being discussed on television,
that I would visit him after the argument in the Supreme Court. At first Joe was very excited
by all the attention his case was generating, but then the guards and other prisoners started
making fun of him and treating him more harshly than usual. They seemed to resent the
attention he was getting. I told him that now that the argument was over, things would calm
down.
For weeks he’d been working on memorizing a poem he said he’d written. When I asked if
he had really written it, he acknowledged that another inmate had helped him, but his