Once a month, my husband and I visit a juvenile lifer at a state prison in Waynesburg, Pa., just 15 miles north of the West Virginia border. Every time we take the exit for Ken's prison, those signs for West Virginia remind me that the difference between hope and despair often depends on a state line.
Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences for juveniles constitute cruel and unusual punishment, the states’ responses to Miller v. Alabama have varied significantly.
In West Virginia, the legislature passed a bipartisan law that eliminates juvenile life without parole as a sentencing option and provides parole review after no more than 15 years to every child sentenced to adult prison. That new law appropriately offers no guarantee that all children convicted of homicide in West Virginia will be released. But it’s a fragile breath of hope to those who are remorseful and genuinely desire to become contributing members of society.
[For more of this story, written by Cindy Sanford, go to http://jjie.org/op-ed-mandator...up-to-states/107916/]
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