Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Iowa Supreme Court deals with Graham's prohibition of juve LWOP for nonhomicide

By Douglas A. Berman

A helpful reader altered me to a decision today by the Iowa Supreme Court dealing with a juvenile LWOP sentence that is now clearly unconstitutional in the wake of the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment ruling in Graham v. Florida.  The ruling in Bonilla v. Iowa can be downloaded below, and here is how it starts: Julio Bonilla was convicted of kidnapping in the first degree in adult court for an offense committed at the age of sixteen.  He was sentenced to mandatory life in prison without the possibility of parole pursuant to the Iowa Code. Under the recent United States Supreme Court decision Graham v. Florida, ___ U.S. ___, ____, 130 S. Ct. 2011, 2033?34, 176 L. Ed. 2d 825, 848?50 (2010), this sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Federal Constitution...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on December 17, 2010 (boomark / email).