This week, the Supreme Court will hear a case testing whether the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits sentencing a teen to life in prison without parole for a nonhomicide crime. Punishment is generally deemed "cruel" if it's more than "graduated and proportional." It is constitutionally "unusual" if imposed so infrequently "that a national consensus has developed against it." (Click here to follow Dahlia Lithwick).The seeds for this particular constitutional challenge were sown in Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in a 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, banning capital punishment for juveniles. That case hinged on the growing national consensus against executing teens, bolstered by scientific studies finding teenage brains to be underdeveloped in ways that make their owners less culpable than adults. The question for the court this time is not just whether teens are really different than adults, but whether being sentenced to die in prison is truly different from being sentenced to die there by lethal injection.The court ordered two different Florida cases to be argued on the same day—suggesting it may resolve each one differently (the court may simply find that age 13 is too young for life without parole but 17 is not). In Joe Sullivan's case, he and two accomplices robbed a 72-year-old woman, then he and a confederate allegedly returned to her home and raped her. Sullivan was tried in adult court and sentenced to life without parole. He was 13. Terrance Jamar Graham tried to rob a restaurant with two accomplices. He was charged as an adult, pled guilty to armed burglary charges, and received one year behind bars and three years probation. But when he violated probation, Graham was sentenced, without trial, to life without parole. He was 17. In both cases the sentencing judges were certain these boys were beyond hope or help.The cases force Justice Kennedy, once more the court's likely decisive vote, to confront the neurological and behavioral science he relied upon in Roper. Writing there for five justices, Kennedy found teens prone to "impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions" and concluded "that the character of a juvenile is not as well formed as that of an adult."That same neuroscience has been deployed again in this case. A dramatic friend-of-the-court brief submitted by a group of former juvenile offenders, including Tony-nominated actor Charles Dutton and former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson, argues that "it is fundamentally inhumane to give up on a youthful offender." Detailing Dutton's youthful conviction for manslaughter and Simpson's early experiments with arson and guns, the brief contends that teenagers are risk-takers by nature; some are just unluckier than others: "Had circumstances been different—had [Simpson] not been fortunate regarding where his stolen bullets struck or what was damaged by his arson—he might have been jailed for the rest of his life."On the other side of the case, the state of Florida focuses not on the unseen mysteries of the teenage brain, but on the fact that "death is different." Advocates for life without parole argue that courts should stay out of the brain-science business. Just last week an Italian judge reduced an adult murderer's prison sentence based on evidence that his genes were linked to his violent behavior. Sentencing based on someone's genes or frontal cortex is a complicated business—one that might be used to extend sentences rather than just shorten them.Another highly controversial strand in Kennedy's Roper analysis was what he described as "the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty." A reported 2,574 juveniles in the United States are serving life without parole. Sullivan's lawyers now argue that "the United States stands alone in sentencing children to die in prison without hope of ever winning release," an argument which will likely send the court's conservative wing into orbit, since they consider consulting foreign law tantamount to consulting Bazooka Joe comics.Kennedy's willingness to cite foreign practices—which triggered calls for his impeachment after Roper—could be a factor this time too. The outcome of these complex cases may well turn on whether Kennedy believes a teenager can possibly attain, as he put it in Roper, "a mature understanding of his own humanity" in a prison cell to which his jailers have thrown away the key.

Ask the families of some person killed by this "child" the answer to your question. They are more qualified to answer than we are. My opinion is there is no difference in being killed by a 14yr sold or a 30 year old!

What we should do depends upon what we're after. If its just revenge, there is probably no punishment too severe... a person who wants vengeance is not interested in proportionality, much less mercy. But if its justice we are after, we have to decide what that means. Permanent incarceration or execution are exceedingly harsh...and especially when the prisoner is a juvenile, and the crime wasn't homicide, such punishments go beyond what is necessary for anything I'd call justice.

Let's re-institute executing then; then life imprisonment becomes a moot point.

Tell ya' what...if their brains make them less culpable, take out the brains, then hang 'em!

If Americans would take responsibility for their own actions we would need 75% fewer laws. The genetics or development argument is irrelevant, it does not make you unconscious the the criminal act you are committing.

YES...some kids have not been taught right--their parents should be locked up with them. We have to get a license to have a dog--we ought to license PARENTING! Use the fees to subsidize parenting classes prior.

Unlimited procreation is America's greatest unquestioned "right". Without a second thought, we subsidize all children and take no measures to deal with irresponsible people having children. Criticizing a single mother for being a single mother is horribly un-PC, but very few of them are not at fault for their situation, and very few can survive it without subsidy.

We allow a 20-year old-couple without high school diplomas to spit out a kid a year for 10 years, happily granting them tax breaks/credits and all manner of social services. This is not a sustainable model.

The problem is, again, political incorrectness. The mother must be a subject of pity. No one is responsible for their own failed marriages (or decisions to marry), or their own decisions to engage in child-creating activities. And of course, once the deed is done, it's unfair for the children to suffer for the parents' mistake. We have yet to resolve a way to "enforce" parenting rules. Some would jump straight to great controversy and mandate abortions. That's another can of worms. The current (ridiculous) legal precedent says that a mother can choose to kill her own baby, but if someone else does it for her it's murder. Such would be involuntary abortion. Of course, a good half the country believes its murder anyway, and their arguments are well supported.

So it looks like we're not close to solving the irresponsible parent issue, short of mandating hard labor to pay for the kids you make if you can't do it any other way. Hmmm... not a bad idea.

Oh, another ridiculous "right" we don't question is the "right" to live wherever you want. As in, someone complains that they need $100k/year to survive their expensive California hometown, and we must subsidize them, but if someone else lives in North Dakota can get by on $20k/year, no help is coming. What on earth makes the California person more worthy than the North Dakotan? Being born there? Sorry, if your housing costs too much, either do the work yourself or move to a cheaper area and make room for someone who wants it more.

Execution is far less cruel at that age.

I recommend we let them out and put them right next to Dalia Lithwick. They let two guys off parole and they gunned down the UNC Student body president last year for a little drug money. Should we let them out on the street becausethey they shot her in the face with a shotgun when they were teenagers???

It makes me sick to admit it, but I think it's obscenely wrong to tell a young kid he's going to the slammer for the rest of his life. And I say this knowing full well the kind of savagery these young criminals are capable of.

No....we should gas them....and sterilize their 'parents'.

Why is it that liberals just don't get the concept of evil? It surrounds us and rears it's head every day, but some of you people just shut your eyes to it.

If it were "life imprisonment with a chance for parole" I'd favor it. There are opportunities in prison that are available and if they really wish to redeem themselves they can avail themselves of such. There are opportunities for highschool and college level classes, techinical and trade opportunities to learn, and being a good behaving citizen. To "throw away the key" is simply to say "why bother?". Many times it's easier in prison to gain these things with the time they have on their hands then it is out in the real world. They should be not only encouraged, but almost forced to take advantage of these opportunities.

You're going out on a limb with nuanced thinking like that. There seems to be a trend among the other posts here favoring thinking with one's stomach.