doha ah, i'm carry johnston with the headlines hair on al jazeera top advisors to former u. s. president donald trump. so they told him his claims of widespread voter fraud were not legitimate. the statements were part of video testimony shown at a committee hearing into the attack on capitol hill, on july 6th last year. ukraine says russia has destroyed the last bridge out of the eastern city of severity on yet. moscow packed separatists claim ukrainian troops now effectively blockaded in the city, wanting them to surrender or die to rebellious work. disclosable in europe was little girl should sever dynette has practically been blocked out to the blue of the last bridge, which connected it to life to shanks with those ukrainian divisions that are there are there for ever. they have 2 options, either to follow the example of their fellow service men and surrender, or to die. there is no other option. and international has accused a roster of war crimes what it calls. relentless selling of ukraine's 2nd largest city. how to keep the rights group says it's found evidence that moscow used cluster munitions and scatter val landmines. they cited one attack using cluster munitions on the playground that killed 9 people wounded. 35, you case a court of appeal has reject to the request to hold the 1st flight, deporting refugees and migrants to rewind. human rights groups had asked the court to block the flight should you'll to leave on tuesday. it's thought no more than 11 people will be on board out of around $130.00, who've been notified after a series of individual legal challenges for the senate. brazil are denying reports that the bodies of 2 men missing in the amazon have been found leading indigenous rights expert, bruno pereira, on the british journalist on phillips, disappeared a week ago while on a research trip local media. quoting phillips wife said 2 bodies were found but hadn't been identified. on sunday, some of their belongings were recovered. the un says violence between tribes in sudan has killed at least a 100 people in the past week. the fighting between arab and non arab tribes began overland disputes near the capital of western dar 4 state. armed men from arab tribes attacked several villages. the region has seen worsening unrest of access to water and passion. there's all the headlines. news continues, heron ultra 0. that's after full light, stay with us. ah algae, 0. great with oh . in 1996, joseph writings, a 21 year old manager of an electronics door was killed during an armed robbery in knoxville, tennessee. 3 young people were involved. amanda jo, good and amir nance were both 16. robert manning was 20. he gave elmore a gun and they both went into the radio shack armed. amanda waited in the car manning later testified that he killed the manager with a shot to the head. even though i am your nance didn't pull the trigger, he was convicted a felony, murder, and sentenced to a minimum of 51 years in prison. he's 43 years old. now. i've been here through my whole twenties thirties. now i've been outside the field when i say count time, i got to go on wrong. they locked the door and come out. miss life, a miss in the world. oh miss mid o. amier actually represent so many people that or just they're and they're held accountable for things that technically they did not do. tennessee has the longest mandatory sentence in the united states for a teenager convicted a felony murder at their 16 or 17. if they're carrying a gun and line elder na spoke, have a gun and they're involved in a criminal act. they know that's wrong. and you can't afford to let those people out fault lines travel to tennessee, as the state supreme court considers whether these 51 year sentences violate the constitution. it's unfair. it's like they're trapped there and some sort of nightmare that they can't get out. my daughter's brown, she's in her twenties. i've been in prison. her whole life. she's never known me outside of a visitation gallery. you don't want to give him a chance to like become a better person for his family. 51 years before pro is ridiculous. phyllis to point, i've been imprisoned more years than i've been free on the street. i was an old enough to bad cigarettes. what i was only if you throw me away for it. should he be punished? nice. but 151 years. what kind of just system is day ah, on january 18th, 1996, the day of the shooting, robert manning showed up to al mir's house and flashed a pistol. a what i remember most about robert manning is that he had no off switch. that was always struck by the fact that he seemed to have no conscience at all. he did not seem to have true morsel regret for anything you did. and that made him an incredibly dangerous. i don't argue mad. robert manning had a history of violence. he had shot and injured one of elmer's friends earlier that day and a half with me. why my son was afraid for his life. and he every right to be afraid. i know fair. i probably would have gotten a amanda was the other teenager in the car that day i was a drug. she asked us not to show her face. do you have any memory of weather on your wanted to come along to do this thing? i think it's the same as me. he had no idea it was gonna turn out the way that it did. and i do know for a fact after that he did tell me or wait right here with her. come with me, i'll mere sit in the car with her l mirror. so you can kind of imagine maybe what the conversation was. well, after the shooting, the group rob to home nearby and tied up the couple blocking them in the trunk of their car. a serious trouble really, really in robert manning was pulling the strings from the get go. he decided that they would go to the right ish, i guess his mom. and that was always my sense about both those young people. is that for robert manning? neither they stand for to have been in the situation. the subject being intervene, lee blackmail subject named el near nance. almost a week after the shooting almira nance was arrested in the middle of the night and interrogated at this knox county sheriff's office building a 16 year old without a parent. without my permission with ada tony, aiden, an officer kept me now all night long. subject to this interview will be the homicide or told police that robert manning killed joseph. right. are you sick? i was known i time trying to run out to school when i was like at the do up to do open and i heard a shot. a mere says he repeatedly asked for a lawyer that night, but never got one in line with me. they told me a name, there was none of it. he's a 16 year old kids. been looking at gunpoint with dogs, cut off from his mother, and he still shows the presence of mind to invoke council. i want a lawyer, we reviewed the trial transcripts with chris erwin, a former public defender that and the money. and for me, an activist in knoxville in court. the officer who, questioned honor, testified that he didn't recall him asking to see an attorney and the officer lied when he was on the stand. under oath. did he in bo council? he said, no. no, he did not. he comes back with his notes and hands. he goes, oh, he did and opens right to counsel the officers own hand written notes, contradicted his testimony under oath, but the judge refused to throw out al me, your statements to police. what impact does i have on the rest of his case? when you have some 6 year old talking about his involvement, he would have said anything. the constitutionally, the statement obviously should have been suppressed. was obviously a coursed confession. i couldn't even explain to you. yeah. sorry, i feel i'm expecting that to happen. may already know not about the last thing. they'll be the end of this interview with elmer news. initially, robert manning blamed the shooting anal moore, but he later testified in court that he pulled the trigger. i'm pushing down a. yeah. robert manning was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. ah, while in prison, he stopped a man and set him on fire, killing him. he did not respond to any letters from fault lines, but amir was sentenced to a minimum of 51 years. that wasn't the case for the 3rd person involved in the robbery. amanda jo, good. she did. how much time a jill did 2 years. 40 years, 10 years. she did one year she was incarcerated. what's the difference between her and i am, the person who has the darker skin color is going to get more time that has been proven. you had a white judge why prosecutor white defense attorney white cops, and then you have this like kid. this sitting there, 16 when it happened and gets nailed. the color of his skin was not my concern. and never was ready. nichols was the district attorney at the time and oversaw the prosecution of i'm yours case. don't you see a double standard in the way that a 16 year old white girl gets a year? how do you explain? well, i, i can explain it to, you know, in like say people wish to draw the conclusion that it was racially motivated. they would be free to do that. the only thing i can say is that's just not the way it was. he got out of the automobile and went into the store. she did not a secondly, he had a hand gun, but she did not. we tried to base our decisions on the facts that we could prove in court. and i believe i did that in this case. do you think that a juvenile who doesn't actually kill anybody? should go into prison as a teenager and come out as a senior citizen. as you look at it in know some 30 years later for chance it was overly harsh. i wouldn't or you that. but i continued to be able to live with glad to see on this case right or wrong. so we're on our way to the old knox county courthouse to meet with a juror. and on the, our trial this year in particular, it said that really wanted to talk to us. she said that she'd been thinking about this case for 25 years and have been feeling guilty for 25 years. i don't feel like what we did was just best to search when the sentence was pronounced. we're again, i'm really naive. i. i thought the jury would have some input to the half. do you remember how you felt when you heard this 51 year minimum senate? i was stoned shocked. your life was taken and that is a terrible tragedy. a great injustice to the victim, to his family. all the people whose the ripples of his life would have gone out to for generations. but taking l mir's life. when he just started in, was it even formed into who is going to become yet really i felt horrified. you know, feel like i follow the instructions, but it wasn't just and i regret being a participant in the message that you're asked us not to use her name because she's concerned about possible backlash for sharing her feelings about amir sentence. it was like a death blow. it was like over q league, you know, it's just it's cruel and unusual. if you think about it, definitely. if you pull in black you on don't he was definitely in humane and it was no just no just served. no body looked at him like he was nothing and they knew he didn't deserve it and they didn't care. they didn't care. oh, isn't they pre pay call for an inmate that the tennessee department correction northwest correctional complex. hello. hey ellen today? yes. and they're flat bed, he's doing a homes around the center on the table. it's not 1st time with that. i haven't really seen him in a while. and i'd love to just have him home. if it was just for a few hours, you know this, let us go do something together. anything. what goes through your head when you think about the fact that your dad is serving a felony, murder sentence, and didn't murder anybody? it just makes me like realized that the system does not always work the right way. they know that i didn't shoot this person. this mendoza bride has like to say his name and i like to just say the person or the victim. i like the doing the father main body, lisa and his name, but they know i didn't kill this person can be charged with felony murder if they take part in a crime and wish someone is killed, even if they didn't cause the death. united states is one of only a few countries in the world with such a law, felony murdered doctrine in and of itself is a fiction because it transfers the intent of a felony which is not murder. and they shouldn't be treated like they intended to kill. because they did do a series of rulings over the past 20 years, the supreme court has concluded that juveniles convicted of murder should be sentenced differently than adults. nearly 12000 people in the u. s. are serving life sentences for crimes. they committed as a juvenile, a juveniles are different because they are sort of uniquely susceptible to peer pressure. from outside. they have a greater capacity for change and growth over time. their brain does not fully develop until they're 2021 between 21 and 25. so we know a lot more about brain development. and if that juvenile is thinking like an adult, or if they're thinking like a child, you don't really understand things like at that age of 16, you don't think life as like an hour or, you know, you're normal things right now to day and next week. at the since 1995, 236 juvenile offenders and tennessee have received 51 year minimum sentences. 72 percent of them are black compared to just 17 of the states population. ah, all of these factors, race, peer pressure, youthful decision making, and a difficult childhood, played a role. and on the nurse case, i grew up in a drug addicted home. my mother was on drugs. my father was absent. i spent a lot of time living with my grandmother. so i was really a kid. i had no big brothers. i had no father figures why wind up ang, with older guys, and doing things that i shouldn't have been dornen. and i was easily manipulated. you know, you, blank staff and feel like you one a good enough mom, but i did the best to what i now i never want to just again in my life it cost me too much keys hashed me a little bit about your family. i can my mother's close by guys where he straightened up her life and she works and she's got a nice place for self. and i talked to her as often as i am. if you see more, i came from, i know i was allows home keep know that i would amount anything out 20 years clean. today i live in truth that people can change if given the cheeks. it's like i know i may have given a chance that one, now i am more troubled him at all period that people do change. then i know i've never been anywhere but to a vending machine. you know? oh, we get along as much as we can and any way i can be a board or source of hope or something. so i get to tell them now that i'm in school, that i'm doing something i know is not just sitting in or you know, friendly cups off the bars like you would imagine. how does it feel when he says like, i've never been able to treat it or something i thought in a vending machine. it's really just high. bright encouraged her him. what have been that times that stick out in your mind or you've especially messed him around prom birthday. ah. but as long as that a morning thing from her birthday, but for him the walk through the door. you know, how, like little videos are the soldiers come home? i always imagine like that would be me like my dad getting out of prison is the prize in me somewhere there still a dream even now and i'm well ah, people deserve a chance to make mistakes and learn from them and grow up. you know, he's death and at the same person, he's a better man. there's no way he should still be there all these years later. we all know he didn't kill any man. tim hutchison was the sheriff. when i'm your nance was convicted, i can understand the 51 years. he has no problem with him spending 51 years behind bars. oh, are you going to do you say, oh, well, he was 16 and had a weapon, but he didn't need to do that just a couple of years ago of his age. no, there's not. that is the act. there are a lot of people who say there should not be felony murder charges because you shouldn't be considered a murderer if you'd and pulled the trigger or felony. murder is a way to get these people off the street, keep them off the street and they need to be off the street. and the same goes with mr. nance. he knew he was born inside the store to rob the store. what would your response be to people who say this isn't really working, talking people up doesn't actually solve any problems. well, for those who say it doesn't really solve any problem by locking the juveniles up for long period of time. elmer nance hadn't been involved in any more violent crimes since the supreme court rulings states around the country have been reconsidering life sentences for people like i'm here in 2021. a bill passed the tennessee state senate that would have reduced the mandatory finance from 51 years to 25. there was opposition to it in the house, so the bell didn't move forward. seat senator john lundberg voted against it. he's an influential voice in the legislature opposing criminal justice reform. these are heinous murders and acts. ah, and the unfortunate part, i think we have to admit and we may not like it as a society. but there are some folks who are just born bad. and some of those people probably best that you're behind bars if it's their child, if it's someone in their community who is making these mistakes, they don't believe that their child was born bad. it is only people from other communities, people with different backgrounds, people that they don't have a connection with that they can sorta forget what they really know. which is that children are different. are the tennessee supreme court will be deciding soon if the state will treat children any differently. it's considering a case similar to i'm yours, challenging the constitutionality of 51, your sentences for juveniles, the 1st time you are eligible for releases when. oh, well, it's kind of non existent, you know, it's 16 years old. if you give a person 51 years, the u. s. supreme court will that mandatory life sentences for juveniles are cruel and unusual punishment, violating the 8th amendment. so i don't even look forward to that date, but tennessee argues that 51 years is not a life sentence, because eventually they could get out if they manage to live that long. i don't see any one surviving of 51 year life sentence. i can't see it even if you didn't pull the trigger, even if you the annoying thing about it. felony mara, daryl k with you, which you die in in prison. we spoke with the family of joseph fridays, but they declined to take part in our story. his mother cited our old saying, if you have a sore place that escaped over, don't pick out it because it will bleed. i've been incarcerated for 26 years. deciding may say, throw those guys away, but i don't have to feel that way about myself. but you got a family day, you know, they never want to give up on you for what time i have lived, i choose to try to be the best version of myself that i can be hello. hey i'm here we go by when god baby mirror, i try to be as much a source of support and inspiration from a dark place. china, sun light, even for her. if i pay for them, i live, i live a family home. you meet them home with women? yeah, i will. my mom is seen humble. talk about a mile button. you don't have to come out and get him a job. you know, as a mom, she's at 80 said with k. why does they use the way everybody lives up even from worries? oh oh, i've never given up hope and i never will till he comes home with my bill. i was a allows to change very soon how good or where he needed a good drive. you know, the new you did our way you know to the b and i feel know caught in us leave. yeah. i'll, we'll see i'm, we get a chance to get in the car ra. would me play with his kids in town with his dog. i'm a big, i believe he's gonna get a chance one day to come wiping this door and we'll be able to her give me talk to him on schofield. right. a what happens in new york has implications all around the world. it's the home of the united nations. it's a center of international finance, international culture make these stories resonate requires talking to everyday people to normal people, not just power brokers, and that's where al jazeera is different. the mayor of the city announced that he was doing way with the curfew that was supposed to get everybody off. it's international perspective with the human types zooming way in, and then pulling back out again. frank assessments, you've got colleagues on the ground in the canaries. what is the situation? 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