Lengthy new New Yorker piece on juve LWOP and 14-year-old Michigan murderer
Shortly after midnight on March 6, 2010, Dakotah Eliason sat in a chair in his bedroom with a .38-calibre pistol in his hands, thinking about what the world would be like if he didn’t exist. Earlier that night, Dakotah, who was fourteen, had taken his grandfather’s loaded gun off the coatrack. Dakotah wondered if he was ready to die, and contemplated taking someone else’s life instead. He walked into the living room and stared at his grandfather, Jesse Miles, who was sleeping on the couch. A retired machinist and an avid hunter, Jesse often fell asleep while watching the Discovery Channel. For forty-five minutes, Dakotah sat on a wooden chair, three feet from his grandfather, and talked to himself quietly, debating what to do next. If he got hand towels from the bathroom, he could gag his grandpa. If he used a steak knife, the whole thing might be quieter. He figured he’d use the cordless phone on his bed to report the crime. He felt as if he were watching a movie about himself. Finally, at just after three in the morning, he raised the handgun, his arms trembling, and shot his grandfather in the head. “Man, I shot Papa!” he shouted. He put the gun on the floor and rushed into his grandmother Jean’s bedroom. She yelled for Dakotah to call 911. When officers from the police department in Niles, a rural town in southeast Michigan, arrived seven minutes later, Dakotah was waiting outside next to his grandmother.
Tells about Dakotah’s arrest and his trial as an adult for first-degree murder, which in Michigan carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Discusses the history and evolution of the American juvenile justice system. Although judges have long been attuned to the difficulty of trying mentally ill defendants, there is little recognition that people may be incompetent to stand trial because of their age. Each year, more than two-hundred thousand offenders younger than eighteen are tried as adults, yet only about half of them understand the Miranda warning. Discusses recent and upcoming Supreme Court cases on the sentencing of juveniles. Dakotah was found guilty of first-degree homicide and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Writer visits Dakotah in prison. Discusses his relations with family and with other prisoners.
This piece is quite timely as the top-side briefs are soon to be filed in the big Eighth Amendment juve LWOP cases of Jackson and Miller. According to the docket information at the SCOTUS website, the petitioners’ briefs are due to be filed on January 9, 2012 (and that, in turn, means the amicus briefs to be filed in support of the juve defendants will be filed by January 16, 2012). I am very interested to see how both petitioners and amici develop their arguments in these cases because there are so many distinct ways to pitch the argument that their sentences are constitutionally problematic.
A few recent related posts on Jackson and Miller and related issues:
- What might SCOTUS be doing with long-held cases involving 14-year-olds serving LWOP?
- Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!
- Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases
- Notable early prediction on what SCOTUS will do with juve LWOP in Jackson and Miller
- “Graham on the Ground”
- Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
- “The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth”
- “Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?”
- Great early commentary on SCOTUS taking “Another Bite at the Graham Cracker”