lead poisoning: Video screen with text and red play arrow

Florida Attorney Believes Lead Poisoning Is Partial Explanation For Low-income Neighborhood Crimes

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VIDEOGRAPHER: JACOB LANGSTON
JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Teri Sopp’s former self stares down from a wall in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office. The painting, a gift more than a dozen years ago, bears silent witness as she works to free people also frozen in time, serving lifelong sentences for crimes committed before they turned 18. For one client, she’s arguing reduced culpability because of lead. She expects to argue the same for other clients. Sopp is the director of the resentencing project for juveniles serving life without parole.

resentencing: The father holds the wand and is hitting the son with it, vintage color tone

Abused, Often Homeless, Florida Man Got 2 Life Sentences At 17

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JACKSONVILLE, Florida — In the decades after the civil rights era, Black communities in Jacksonville remained disproportionately impoverished, blighted and policed. Some activists would say this continues to present day. This was the world in which John grew up. Born in the 1970s, John’s childhood was characterized by instability, neglect and abuse. John (a pseudonym) had lived in two dozen homes by the time he moved out.

Federal, State Courts may Clash on 350 Juvenile Lifers

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A Michigan state court case says some 350 people given mandatory no-parole sentences for murders committed as juveniles must serve their full sentences. But in the coming days, a federal court is expected to opine on a similar question. A federal court in Michigan will soon rule on the constitutionality of automatic, no-appeal life sentences given to 13 people over the last few decades. The offenders in Hill et. al.