Too young to vote, but they can be sentenced to die in a US prison

Amnesty campaign aims to prevent the US imposing life sentences on children

THE US is the only country in the world that sentences individuals to life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed as children, the human rights group Amnesty International says in a report published today.

More than 2,500 men and women who committed crimes before the age of 18 are doomed to die in prison, Amnesty reports in This is where I'm going to be when I die; Children facing life imprisonment without the possibility of release in the USA. Children as young as 11 at the time of their crimes have received life sentences.

“In the USA, people under 18 years old cannot vote, drink alcohol or buy lottery tickets, but they can be sentenced to die in prison,” says Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty Ireland. Because children are not mature, they are not fully responsible for their actions, Amnesty argues.

Furthermore, they have greater potential for rehabilitation.

Laws on mandatory sentences mean that life imprisonment is often imposed without regard to mitigating circumstances such as abuse suffered by a child, the child’s mental health, the degree of involvement in the crime or the possibility of rehabilitation.

Amnesty timed the publication to coincide with an appeal for executive clemency on behalf of Christi Cheramie (33), who has spent the last 17 years in Louisiana prisons. If the parole board recommends clemency, the decision falls upon the Republican governor Bobby Jindal, who has ignored positive board recommendations in the past.

Cheramie was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend as a child and twice attempted suicide at the age of 13. When she was 16, Cheramie and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Gene Mayeux, visited Mayeux’s great-aunt, Mildred Turnage, with the intention of robbing her. Cheramie was intimidated by Mayeux, who told her to “shut up” when she objected to his plan. Mayeux stabbed the old woman in the back with a hunting knife while she was preparing coffee.

To escape the death penalty, Cheramie, who had no comprehension of the legal proceedings, was pressured into pleading guilty on a reduced charge of second-degree murder, which carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

In prison, Cheramie earned a high-school equivalency diploma and a college degree in agricultural studies. She now teaches other prisoners. “Christi is a model inmate . . . worthy of a second chance in society,” one of her wardens said.

David Young, now 32, was an accomplice to a murder in North Carolina, but did not pull the trigger. Young’s parents were both drug abusers. He and his mother were beaten by his stepfather. He had to fend for himself from the age of 13.

At age 17, Young was involved in a dispute over a drug sale, during which his friend, Khristopher Davis, shot a customer dead. Young’s court-appointed lawyers made virtually no attempt to defend him. It took years for Young to realise that prison was “where I’m going to be when I die”.

Jacqueline Montanez, who is serving a life sentence in Illinois, is the only one of three cases detailed by Amnesty who admits to having killed. Montanez began using drugs and alcohol at the age of nine. “For 15 years I lived being beat up or watching my parents shoot up or delivering drugs for my [step]father, or being raped,” she said.

Montanez joined a street gang. At age 15, she shot a member of the rival gang to which her stepfather belonged in the head. She handed the gun to another girl in her gang, who shot a second man. Two years later, Montanez was convicted of the double murder and sentenced to life in prison, as required under Illinois law in cases of multiple homicide. Now 35, she has earned a high-school equivalency diploma and become a certified trainer of dogs for disabled people.

The US and Somalia are the only two countries who have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids life sentences for crimes committed by minors. “The US is very much isolated on this issue,” says Amnesty’s US campaigner Natacha Mension.

Under 2005 and 2010 Supreme Court rulings, the US no longer carries out the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18 and no longer imposes life sentences on underage criminals, except for murder. Mension says the campaign launched today will exert maximum pressure on the US to stop imposing life sentences on children in all cases.

Tony McClary, Christi Cheramie’s lawyer, says the severe treatment of child criminals in the US is rooted in the country’s violent history. “There is a segment of our population that is not willing to have a sense of forgiveness and redemption,” she says. “People see children as young as 12, 13, 14 and say, ‘These kids are not worth it any more. Lock ’em up and throw away the key.’ ”