Legal Brief
Graham v. Florida
No. 08-7412 (2009)
The facts
When he was 16, Graham in the company of several other juveniles committed a burglary at a certain restaurant and Graham was promptly charged for this in December 2003. He was consequently sentenced to probation for 3 years on pleading guilty to armed robbery as well as battery charges.
For this, Graham was to clock a one year period of probation in detention establishment that was basically pretrial. Graham was released from the establishment in the year 2004 and it was alleged that several months later, he was part of a gang that robed a home and in the incident, it was alleged that Graham had at one instance aimed his gun at the head of a victim as if to shoot him.
When he was arrested, he was found to have violated his probation terms. For the attempted armed robbery, Graham was handed a 15 year jail term while the burglary he had earlier committed attracted a life imprisonment sentence without parole possibility. In the 2006 sentence, it was held that Graham was to serve the two sentences concurrently. Currently, Graham is 22 years old.
Legal issues
The case of Graham v Florida does raise several legal questions. First, the sentencing of Graham to imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole can be taken to go against the abolishment of punishments considered unusual as well as cruel by the eighth amendments.
On the other hand, Florida argues that such a sentence seeks to address the increasing cases of juvenile involvement in crime and hence is in line with the state’s initiative to respond to the increasing cases of the same. In that light, it does not in any way consider the sentence to be barred constitutionally.
The holding
When he was just sixteen years old, Terrance Jamar Graham committed an armed burglary and for this, her is currently serving a life sentence with no parole possibility in the state of Florida. It is clear that at the time of the alleged offense, the petitioner was a juvenile. The life imprisonment sentence without the possibility of parole runs concurrently with the 15 year jail; term Graham is to serve for the attempted armed robbery.
Legal rationale
The state of Florida initially argued that a cartegorical ban should not be taken with regard to life imprisonment for juveniles without the possibility of parole. This, it argued, is in response to the increasing instances of juvenile crime.
This is a measure taken deliberately to deter such crime. Hence in the case of Graham v Florida, the argument was that various states could adopt various measures to address issues of concern in the society such as juvenile crime as well as come up with ways to deal with juvenile offenders.
Amici also noted that in some instances, a life imprisonment sentence is the only equal measure for some crimes. Here, the reasoning was that Graham’s crime was particularly violent and hence it was to be met with a sentence that was equally tough.
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