The Supreme Court's shocking ruling sends a cold-blooded message

[turbinetree]

By John Stoehr, The Editorial Board
Published April 27, 2021

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Take a walk with me inside the mind of Brett Jones. He was the plaintiff in Jones v. Mississippi, the United State Supreme Court case I told you about Monday. In a 6-3 opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court rolled back two previous rulings regarding lifetime imprisonment without parole for minors. The previous rulings, called Miller and Montgomery, held that lifetime imprisonment for juvenile offenders was justified only in the worse of the worse cases—when a convict is "permanently incorrigible." In Jones, Kavanaugh said nah. Life in prison's fine even if corrigible.

I want you to take this walk with me to understand more fully the complex layers of cruelty in Kavanaugh's opinion. By understanding that his point is not punishment in the service of democracy and justice but instead punishment in the service of impunity and power, I hope you will understand the need for calling this barbarism instead of what we usually call it. Conservatism seems like something debatable. Barbarism isn't.

I am able to take you for this walk, though I do not know Brett Jones or his family, because there's not that much distance between me and him. To be sure, the details differ. The degree and magnitude of suffering differ. But survivors of childhood trauma, the kind that stamps you forever, recognize each other, and I recognize in Brett Jones, who murdered his grandfather 23 days after turning 15, a familiarity. I recognize that if my brain had functioned a bit differently, I might be where he is.

https://www.rawstory.com/the-supreme-courts-shocking-ruling-sends-a-cold-blooded-message/

-snip-

In this, the Supreme Court affirmed what every single survivor of childhood trauma secretly believes but fights every single day: the idea that the weak in this world are the playthings of the strong, and that democracy, equality, freedom, morality and all the rest have nothing to do with it. In deciding Jones, the court, led by Kavanaugh, said yeah, you're right. What matters began long before you came into being, so that Boy Kavanaugh can commit crimes with impunity while rising to the pinnacle of judicial power to sit in judgment of Boy Jones who can now only curse the day he was born.

[Lovie777]

1. Private prisons make a lot of money . ...

[turbinetree]

2. Agreed .......................

[Jilly_in_VA]

3. Beer Boy Brett Kavanaugh

thinks he's redeemable, but nobody else is. Fact.

[2Gingersnaps]

7. It is worse than that.

He thinks he is entitled to behave the way he did, and he has no shame, no regrets. He also has no character and no integrity but, again, entitled. Mom and Dad must be real peices of work too, children learn what they live.

[Hoyt]

4. 25 states prohibit life without parole for minors. 6 other states do not have

anyone serving that sentence.

The new ruling specifically says that it does not keep states from banning life without parole for minors.

Don’t like the new ruling, but doubt it will result in more harsh sentences. And hopefully states will pick up the cause. Hell, even Texas bans it.

[Hortensis]

11. Balanced info. And as you say, "even TX bans" this barbarism.

[Evolve Dammit]

5. God this privileged frat boy makes me sick. What an entitled, smug little prick. nt

[Takket]

6. the irony is that the gop os always making up bullshit about "activisit judges"

which is a completely made up term that "sounds bad" but really means, any judge that upholds freedoms over GOP authoritarian desires.

[BobTheSubgenius]

8. This is disgusting.

A civilized society doesn't throw away children so cavalierly, with what I imagine was the frat boy sneer/smirk on his punchable face. His SO punchable face.

[2Gingersnaps]

9. Remember when "abused as a child" was an authoritarian sneering joke?

Sad thing is, survivors of childhood trauma understand what a vast majority seem clueless about. This nation is self destructing. There is an extreme mental health crisis in this country that is largely ignored, and totally unaddressed. Children indeed learn what they live. If the adult with power over the child is incapable of reason, where is the child going to learn reason?

"In this, the Supreme Court affirmed what every single survivor of childhood trauma secretly believes but fights every single day: the idea that the weak in this world are the playthings of the strong, and that democracy, equality, freedom, morality and all the rest have nothing to do with it." Thank you, fact. Donald Trump peeled that scab back, and laughed. Brett Kavanaugh sneered.

In nursing school, in basic psychology two things hit me like a gut punch-feral children have deficits they never outgrow; and you will either despise or you will imitate your tormentor. The only way you survive is if you despise them. I was orphaned. My "family" preyed on my siblings and I for every dime they could take from us. It wouldn't have been so bad if they had been otherwise decent human beings but hating our father was their excuse to hurt him by hurting us. When my trust was broken, the love and devotion every kid has for a parent figure went right behind it. This happened in a "nice" middle class white bread community. Our school, our church, and Children's Protective Services who were paid to protect us, did not. The community uncomfortably looked the other way. I am the only one of four who survived, and I did so by failing upward, nothing in my first eighteen years prepared me for life as a functional adult. Justice for us simply never came up. Two of my siblings were utterly destroyed before they were out of high school. My oldest sister turned her pain inward, and my little brother turned his outward. My other sister has lived with the pain and rage of what was done to her without redress all of her life, killing her would have been far more merciful. So when I hear how much people "value life," forgive me if i see hubris. I remember those blank faces, or the gratuitously cruel ones-which were far more than you would care to know. It was and still is a very curious irony, the people who were the absolute worst were the ones that seemed to have every blessing that life could give a person, like Trump and Kavanaugh. It is obvious where they come from. And 70 million people are OK with that.

[Hekate]

10. Thank you for this

[Hortensis]

12. Regarding the case and the decision,

SCOTUSBLOG: The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to impose new restrictions on the ability of states to sentence juveniles to life without parole, rejecting a challenge from a Mississippi man, Brett Jones, who was convicted of the 2004 stabbing death of his grandfather, a crime committed when Jones was 15.

Jones had argued that two recent Supreme Court decisions on mandatory life-without-parole decisions for juveniles – the court’s 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama and its 2016 ruling in Montgomery v. Louisiana – required the judge who sentenced him to find that he was incapable of rehabilitation before imposing life without parole. By a vote of 6-3 in Jones v. Mississippi, the justices disagreed, holding that it was enough that the judge considered his youth in sentencing him.

In an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the majority explained that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Miller and Montgomery “squarely rejected” any requirement that a judge or jury imposing a sentence make a separate finding that the defendant cannot be rehabilitated. All that Miller required, Kavanaugh wrote, was that “a sentencer consider youth as a mitigating factor when deciding whether to impose a life-without-parole sentence.” ...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an often sharply worded opinion that was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. She accused the majority of “distort[ing] Miller and Montgomery beyond recognition.” Although Miller does not require a particular procedure to consider the defendant’s youth or “require sentencers to invoke any magic words,” the sentencer must determine whether the defendant “is one of those rare children whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption,” she wrote. ...

Thursday’s decision was significant in several ways. First and foremost, it may make it easier for states to sentence juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole. Second, the 6-3 ruling shows the extent to which the court has shifted to the right since its 5-4 ruling in Miller and its 6-3 ruling in Montgomery. Third, the opinions themselves show that tensions may be running high already behind the scenes at the court, particularly when it comes to the issue of adhering to prior precedent.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/04/court-upholds-life-without-parole-sentence-for-mississippi-man-convicted-as-juvenile/