Sentencing 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds to serve a life term without the possibility of parole violates the prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment and is.
The Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday ordered a new trial for a man convicted of gunning down a 16-year-old outside a Geneva Avenue convenience store in September, 2011, ruling he did not get adequate representation because his lawyer spent parts of the trial asleep. The ruling on an appeal by Nyasani Watts, himself just 17 at the time of the murder, was one of two the