CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CRUEL AND UNUSUAL
1 Joe was made to say in court ...
DEFENSE COUNSEL: All right. If you can’t identify me, then I may not have to kill you.
DEFENDANT: If you cannot identify me, I maybe won’t kill you.
WITNESS: It sounds—there’s a tone in your voice that’s just like that, only you said it very loud to me that time in a
belligerent way.
PROSECUTOR: I don’t want to argue about it. Are you able to say that’s the voice of the person?
WITNESS: There’s a tone in that voice that makes me know its that person.
PROSECUTOR: So you are saying the person who just spoke to you is the person that said that to you that day?
WITNESS: It sounds like the voice.
PROSECUTOR: All right.
WITNESS: It’s been six months. It’s hard, but it does sound similar. But it’s said in a different way. See, the tone—it was
said to me very belligerent in a loud voice.
Tr. I 86 – 88 (emphasis added).
2 Despite numerous potentially meritorious grounds ... See Anders v. California, 386 U.S.
738 , 744 ( 1967 ). The brief asserted that counsel could perceive no issues worthy of
appellate consideration.
3 “A rapid and dramatic increase”... Brief of Petitioner, Sullivan v. Florida, U.S. Supreme
Court ( 2009 ). Charles Geier and Beatriz Luna, “The Maturation of Incentive Processing
and Cognitive Control,” Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior 93 ( 2009 ): 212 ; see also
L. P. Spear, “The Adolescent Brain and Age-Related Behavioral Manifestations,”
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 24 ( 2000 ): 417 (“[A]dolescence is of its essence, a
period of transitions rather than a moment of attainment.”); also 434 (discussing radical
hormonal changes in adolescence). Laurence Steinberg et al., “Age Differences in
Sensation Seeking and Impulsivity as Indexed by Behavior and Self-Report,” Develpmental
Psychology 44 ( 2008 ): 1764 ; Laurence Steinberg, “Adolescent Development and Juvenile
Justice,” Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 5 ( 2009 ): 459 , 466.
4 We argued in court that, relative to ... See B. Luna, “The Maturation of Cognitive
Control and the Adolescent Brain,” in From Attention to Goal-Directed Behavior, ed. F.
Aboitiz and D. Cosmelli (New York: Springer, 2009 ), 249 , 252 – 56 (cognitive functions
that underlie decision-making are undeveloped in early teens: processing speed, response
inhibition, and working memory do not reach maturity until about the age of fifteen);
Elizabeth Cauffman and Laurence Steinberg, “(Im)maturity of Judgment in Adolescence:
Why Adolescents May Be Less Culpable than Adults,” Behavioral Science and Law 18
( 2000 ): 741 , 756 (significant gains in psychosocial maturity take place after the age of
sixteen); Leon Mann et al., “Adolescent Decision-Making,” Journal of Adolescence 12
( 1989 ): 265 , 267 – 70 (thirteen-year-olds show less knowledge, lower self-esteem as
decision-makers, produce less choice options, and are less inclined to consider
