Best US Supreme Court Decision of 2012

In my view, the best U.S. Supreme Court decision of 2012 would probably be Miller v. Alabama.  This decision scored a big one for human rights of juveniles. There will be no more mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders.  This was a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court back in June of 2012.  The majority opinion was penned by former Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan.  Of course, international human rights law was not the basis for the decision, but rather the US Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  

I have previously blogged about the issue of locking up our children and throwing away the key - see here and here.

BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE Excerpt:

A divided US Supreme Court struck down mandatory life-without-parole sentences Monday for juveniles convicted of murder, ruling the widespread practice violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. 

The ruling will nullify Massachusetts law, legal specialists said, and throw into question the sentences of 61 prisoners who over the past four decades were ordered to spend the rest of their lives in jail. Nationally, about 2,500 prisoners are serving life sentences without parole for murders they committed before turning 18. 

In a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that juvenile offenders younger than 18 have “diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform” and that judges should be able to consider the “mitigating qualities of youth” in sentencing, even when juveniles commit heinous crimes.

“Such mandatory penalties, by their nature, preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender’s age and the wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion. “Under these schemes, every juvenile will receive the same sentence as every other — the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, the shooter and the accomplice, the child from a stable household and the child from a chaotic and abusive one.”

It so far appears that Massachusetts has not moved quickly during the past half year since that SCOTUS decision to make the necessary corrections.   Let's hope our state will finally do so soon in 2013, and we'll thus complete one small but important step in furtherance of human rights rights here in our state.  


For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Indigent Parents In CHINS Cases Now Get Free Attorneys

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) recently looked at two CHINS (children in need of services) cases, one from Worcester County and the other from Essex County, in both of which a juvenile court judge had denied a mother legal right to court-appointed counsel. The SJC ruling in this consolidated case In the Matter of Hilary has now established that parents in these cases do indeed have a right to be heard, may have an attorney representing them in these proceedings, and further have a right to an appointed attorney if they cannot afford one.

For more information about the case, see the February 11, 2008 article by David Frank in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, SJC gives parents right to counsel in CHINS cases.

About this expanded access to justice, the Boston Globe, in an editorial from February 14, A Break For Desperate Parents opined: "Providing lawyers for poor parents could cost roughly $1 million to $2 million a year, according to Mike Dsida, a deputy chief counsel for the state's Committee for Public Counsel Services. This is only fair. Parents accused of abusing their children already have the right to a lawyer if they risk losing custody. Parents in CHINS cases should also have that right."

I completely agree with this recent SJC ruling, which expands in a reasonable way access to justice to parents in CHINS cases, and with its analysis and rationale. I similarly agree with the Boston Globe's commentary.

Furthermore, I believe that this case, and its basic rationale, lend great support to my longstanding position that the SJC should also require the appointment of lawyers to indigent individuals in district courts and family courts when and where they are challenging restraining orders, at the very least when these individuals have children in their home and they risk losing custody. See my previous post touching on this issue here.

The specific issue of access to justice for individuals defending against restraining orders has not yet been before the SJC. I hope that important issue will also be before it at some point soon, and the SJC will fairly and appropriately continue to expand access to justice in a sensible way, as it has done in this recent CHINS case, for which it should be applauded.

Excerpts from IN THE MATTER OF HILARY:

"The issue of first impression that we decide in these consolidated cases from the Worcester County and Essex County Divisions of the Juvenile Court Department, which are here on a reservation and report, without decision, from a single justice of this court, is whether, after a child is adjudicated a child in need of services (CHINS), a parent is entitled to counsel at the dispositional phase of the proceeding, if custody of the child is at issue. G.L. c. 119, § 39G. Two Juvenile Court judges denied, among other things, the indigent mothers' requests for such court-appointed counsel. Because we conclude that, pursuant to G.L. c. 119, § 29, parents are entitled to counsel at the dispositional phase of a CHINS proceeding if the judge is considering awarding custody to the Department of Social Services (department), and have a concomitant right to intervene in the case, see note 18, infra, we reverse the decision of the Worcester County Juvenile Court judge and remand that case for further action consistent with this opinion.

....

For the reasons set forth above, we conclude that, pursuant to G.L. c. 119, § 29, after a child is adjudicated a child in need of services, a parent is entitled to counsel at the dispositional phase of the proceeding if custody of the child could be granted to the department. We reverse the decision of the Worcester County Division of the Juvenile Court Department and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.So ordered. "

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see Law Offices of Steven Ballard.