A U law professor and a group of students are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify the constitutionality of sentencing a juvenile to life in prison without parole.
Professor Michael Teter filed a petition on Friday for the court to review the case of Robert Cameron Houston, who received a life without parole sentence for murdering a youth counselor in 2006. Houston was 17 at the time.
Teter’s petition does not focus on Houston’s crime but rather the sentencing. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile to death or to sentence a juvenile to life without parole in non-homicide cases.
“We’re asking for them to settle the question of whether or not it’s constitutional to sentence a juvenile who committed a homicide to life without parole. That’s the kind of gap that’s left in their case law,” Teter said.
Teter has received criticism for his decision to petition the court.
“I’ll be honest — I struggled with the decision because the crime is horrific, and no one is disputing that,” Teter said. “The ultimate reason I decided to is that I think this is an incredibly important question for the court to decide.”
Houston was convicted for asking 22-year-old Raechale Elton for a ride home from a Clearfield youth center before raping and stabbing her to death. Houston had two previous sexual assault charges, but his rape charges were dropped in exchange for his pleading guilty to aggravated murder, a capital offense. Because he was 17, he was ineligible for the death penalty.
The Utah Supreme Court reviewed Houston’s sentence in February. Houston’s lawyers argued that life without parole was cruel and unusual punishment, but the court upheld the original sentence. Houston was the first person in Utah to receive life without parole, and there is only one other person in the state with the same sentence.
Despite the criticism, Teter feels this is an important case. He said if the court decides the sentence is unconstitutional for a particularly brutal case, it will help establish that the sentence is unconstitutional for all other cases.
Teter has no intention of defending Houston’s crimes or reducing his punishment. He said brain science indicates that juveniles are vastly different from adults, and there is no way of predicting how a youth will be as an adult.
“We should postpone the decision about whether that person should spend the rest of their life in prison until we know what that person is going to be like and they’ve had a chance, again, after 20 or 30 years … to redeem themselves,” Teter said.
Teter and the students are now waiting to hear whether the Supreme Court will take the case, which could take several months. The court can receive about 7,000 petitions in a year and only accepts about 70.
Kay Shelton, associate director for the S.J. Quinney College of Law’s clinical program, said they hope to give students “real-life legal experience while they are students.”
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