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Juvenile Rapists and Individualized Consideration

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Today's News Scan noted Michele Hanisee's post for the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys regarding Cal. Gov. Jerry Brown's signing of SB 1391. As Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Bretón explained last month, this ill-considered legislation exempts everyone under 16 from transfer to adult court even for the more depraved offenses.

Note how the calls for individualized consideration switch on and off depending on which way the default rule falls. In capital sentencing, sentencing of juveniles, and transfer of juveniles to adult court, we are first told that consideration of individual circumstances is essential to justice -- when the alternative is the harsher option -- and then we are told that a bright-line rule is essential when that line is drawn on the more lenient side.

I believe that a strong argument can be made that SB 1391 is invalid as an unauthorized amendment of Proposition 57. Stay tuned.

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