Evolving images of a killer and the evolving Eighth Amendment

There are so many interesting facets of the Pittman case (first discussed here), which has now been brought to the Supreme Court.  This new National Law Journal article provides the basics and highlights the role of a law school clinic in bringing the case to the Supreme Court:

A group of University of Texas School of Law students has helped file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of getting a South Carolina teenager’s sentence reviewed.  The petition, filed on Monday, asks the court to review the case of Christopher Pittman, who is serving a 30-year sentence without parole for murdering his grandparents when he was 12.  Five third-year law students from the school’s Supreme Court Clinic in Austin teamed up with five public policy students and spent the semester working on the case.

In addition, as spotlighted in this post at Pharmalot, the Pittman case has already drawn plenty of attention from folks other than those concerned just with the operation of the criminal justice system:

[If the Supreme Court takes this case] another aspect is likely to get attention — Christopher Pittman was taking Zoloft at the time he used a shotgun to shoot his grandparents, and then set fire to their home in 2001.  During his trial four years later, his attorneys argued, unsuccessfully, that the rampage was heavily influenced by the antidepressant, which Pfizer has always denied….  Meanwhile, a [recent] Fox News program, Hannity’s America, ran a segment linking recent mass shootings by teenagers with antidepressants. The episode had its flaws — the reporter failed to include comment from anyone in pharma or at the FDA, and suggested a connection to the recent shooting at the Omaha shopping mall without offering any evidence. Nonetheless, these two items suggest the debate over the proper use of antidepressants won’t go away and, in fact, is likely to remain polarized for the foreseeable future.

While others may be primarily interested in the human and medical stories that surround this case, I am focused on legal issues concerning the interpretation and application of the Eighth Amendment in this (non-capital) context.  Of particular interest to me is how the Eighth Amendment is to be applied in non-capital cases in light of the Court’s recent capital rulings in Roper and Atkins (and its forthcoming work in Baze).  Specifically, I wonder whether and how the legal concept of an “evolving national consensus” that was central in Roper and Atkins should be unpacked here.  Against this backdrop, I am especially intrigued by the different images of the defendant that can be in the mind’s eye as one thinks about whether the sentence he received is unconstitutional because it would violate societal mores.  As a few shrewd commentors have already noted (and as the pictures in this post highlight) the evolving nature of a young man perhaps has already played a role in his fate, and could continue to play a role in the debate over this case.