WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court took two cracks at one of the law’s thorniest questions Monday: When can you lock up a prisoner and throw away the key?
Not when it’s a teenager who hasn’t killed anyone, the justices said. But when it’s a “sexually dangerous” inmate, maybe so, even if he has completed his federal prison sentence.
By a 5-4 vote, the court said young people serving life prison terms must have “a meaningful opportunity to obtain release” if they haven’t killed their victims. The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy extended the “children are different” rationale that drove his decision five years ago that outlawed the death penalty for killers under 18.
The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 23, is in prison in Florida.
“The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. “This the Eighth Amendment does not permit.”
In a second case, the court voted 7-2 to uphold a federal law that allows for the indefinite imprisonment of inmates considered mentally ill and “sexually dangerous,” no matter that their sentences have been served.
The decision is in keeping with previous high court cases that have upheld state civil-commitment laws for sexual predators. States hold the majority of sex offenders who are in prison.
The court said the federal civil-commitment law is appropriate for maintaining “the security of those who are not imprisoned but who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others.”
Lower federal courts held that Congress overstepped its authority when it enacted a law allowing the government to hold indefinitely people who are considered “sexually dangerous.”
But “we conclude that the Constitution grants Congress legislative power sufficient to enact” this law, Justice Stephen Breyer said in his majority opinion.
The law has been invoked for roughly 100 federal prisoners.
Authorities must persuade a federal judge that continued imprisonment is necessary and also must try to transfer prisoners to state control.
In both cases, the court’s liberal justices held sway and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were in dissent.
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