ARGUMENT ABOUT LIFE SENTENCES MISSTATED THE LAW

Former Justice Stratton writes in her op-ed about the recently enacted Senate Bill 256 to“set the record straight.”She begins her article by stating that“In 2010 and 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sentencing juveniles to life without parole violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment” and that “In 2016, the Ohio Supreme Court followed suit.”That statement is legally false. In 2010, in Graham v. Florida the U.S. Supreme Court banned life without parole for non-homicide offenders and in 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, they banned mandatory life without parole sentences. The Ohio Supreme Court banned life without parole for non-homicide offenses in 2016 in State v. Moore.

Life without parole sentences for juvenile homicide offenders remain constitutional. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court said earlier this year in a case called Jones v. Mississippi, where the question before the court was whether the 8th amendment requires a court to find permanent incorrigibility before it can impose life without parole on a juvenile, that such a finding was not necessary and that in fact “a discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient to impose a sentence of life without parole on a defendant who committed homicide when they were under 18.” Misstatements of the law by people with an aura of legal authority were a big reason SB 256 was enacted. It is these misstatements and the continuation of them in defense of this constitutionally unnecessary law that do a disservice to your readers and all Ohio voters.