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GUEST: Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama and Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law

Dozens of 13 and 14 year old children have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole in this nation. In a new report called Cruel and Unusual, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented 73 such cases. The United States is the only country in the world where a 13-year-old is known to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In fact, over 2225 juveniles (age 17 or younger) have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in the US. The children documented in the report are overwhelmingly poor, lacked legal representation, and are majority children of color. In fact, every single one of the children condemned to death in prison for non-homicide offenses are children of color. The United States Supreme Court recently declared that death by execution is unconstitutional for juveniles. But life imprisonment without parole for children has yet to be overturned. According to the Equal Justice Coalition, sentencing young children to imprisonment until death violates international law and the U.S. Constitution.

For more information, visit www.eji.org. Download the report at: http://eji.org/eji/files/20071017cruelandunusual.pdf

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION ACTION:

The YJC will hold an action this afternoon at 3 pm at Chuco’s Justice Center, 253 West Martin Luther King Blvd., L.A. CA 90037. For more information, call (323) 235-4243 or email freelanow@yahoo.com

Youth organizations, gang intervention workers and community leaders will gather at the Youth Justice Coalition to call on elected officials to:

Stop studying and debating gang violence. Move instead to fund efforts, which have been proven to work both in L.A. and throughout the nation:

1. We want 500 gang intervention workers on the streets by July
2. Flood poor and working class communities with youth jobs
3. Open youth centers that provide educational enrichment, recreation, arts, job training and violence prevention from 3pm to 11pm, seven days a week, in every community.