Ruling breaks with precedents and illustrates the impact of Donald Trump’s appointments of three conservative judges The newly conservative-leaning US supreme court has declined to place new limits on sentencing juveniles to life in prison with no chance of parole, marking a break with the court’s previous rulings which had been gradually moving towards more leniency for minors over the past two decades. In a ruling that illustrated the impact of the appointments of three justices by former president Donald Trump, the high court ruled to reject arguments by Brett Jones of Mississippi, who was convicted of killing his grandfather at age 15 and is serving a sentence of life without parole. The court’s six conservatives were in the majority, with the three liberal members dissenting. The justices rejected arguments by Jones, that his sentence violated the constitution’s Eighth amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment because the judge in his trial had not made the finding that he was...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment