As requested by State Senator Steward Greenleaf
Monday, September 22, 2008, 9:30 AM
In Hearing Room #1, North Office Building, Harrisburg, PA
on
Juveniles Sentenced to Life without Parole in Pennsylvania
J.C. Lore III is a clinical associate professor at Rutgers Law School, Camden
The United States leads the world - by far - in sentencing children to die in prisons. It's the only country in the world where children are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, and Pennsylvania leads the 50 states in the category.
For being a traitorous friend, Stacey Torrance was thrown into jail for life.
Torrance was just 14 when an older cousin convinced him in 1988 to lure a rich kid to a North Philadelphia corner, where the cousin and an accomplice kidnapped and later shot and strangled him.
Legislation brings US into compliance with its international treaty obligations
WASHINGTON - September 11 - Today, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security is scheduled to hold a hearing on a bill that would help end the practice of sentencing children to life in prison without the possibility of parole and provide grants to states to improve the quality of legal representation for youth charged with an offense that could lead to a life sentence. In a letter to Representatives Robert C.
Fed Up, the Pittsburgh chapter of The Human Rights Coalition recently interviewed Anita, Saleem's sister for their 2.3 million and rising radio show on Rustbelt Radio. Check it out by clicking below:
http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2008/06/29598.php#9_45_2_3_Million_...
Audio posted by Pittsburgh IMC: Rustbelt Radio collective to Pittsburgh Indymedia (27.3 mebibytes)
by Robert L. Holbrook
In Pennsylvania prior to the passage of legislative statutes governing the automatic transfer of juvenile offenders charged with murder into Adult Court, juvenile offenders charged with murder were protected from automatic transfer into Adult Court. They were routinely subjected to a hearing before a judge to determine whether or not, based on their maturity and capacity, they would be transferred into Adult Court. Transfers of juvenile offenders charged with murder were rare and typically reserved for heinous crimes in which the juvenile offender was the actual perpetrator or when the juvenile offender had an extensive arrest/detention record.
Robert Holbrook, or Saleem, as his friends call him is a politicized prisoner being held at SCI Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. He contributes regularly to numerous publications and is an active member of the Human Rights Coalition, an organization which advocates for prisoners rights and liberation as well as prison correspondent for the defenestrator.
