Imprisoning a child for life

The rush to try more and more children as adults began in the 1980s when the country was gripped by hysteria about an adolescent crime wave that never materialized. Joe Sullivan, the petitioner in Sullivan v. Florida, was sentenced to life without parole in 1989 - when he was just 13 - after a questionable sexual battery conviction. His two older accomplices testified against the younger, mentally impaired boy. They received short sentences, one of them as a juvenile.

source: Article 'Imprisoning a Child for Life'; www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09mon1.html?_r=2&hpw; The New York Times; 9 November 2009