Court's decision to provide white juvenile offenders with shorter sentences shows bias, lawyer says

[BaronChocula]

Source: The Grio

SEATTLE (AP) — The attorney for a Black man serving a virtual life sentence for shootings he committed at 17 has asked the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider a split ruling that upheld his sentence, saying the leniency it granted white defendants in similar situations reveals racial bias.

The court last month upheld the 61-year sentence for Tonelli Anderson, 45, over forceful dissents from four justices.

The decision abandoned a precedent issued just a year earlier in which the court said — in the case of a white defendant — that such lengthy punishments for juvenile killers were unconstitutional because it left them no chance of a meaningful life outside prison.

Read more: https://thegrio.com/2022/10/05/courts-decision-to-provide-white-juvenile-offenders-with-shorter-sentences-shows-bias-lawyer-says/

[OtterDave]

1. Dang, so crazy

Anderson was 17 when he shot two women, killing one and blinding the other, during a drug robbery in Tukwila in 1994. An accomplice also shot and killed a man at the same home.

Anderson was not immediately arrested, but went on to commit other crimes as a young adult, including assault and robbery, and he wrote letters to girlfriends bragging about the shootings.

[calimary]

2. Welcome to DU, OtterDave!

Crazy it is.

[intheflow]

3. I have to agree with the court, here.

While it seems like racial bias, each of the white teens killed once at 17. This guy killed once at 17 and then went on to kill multiple more times until he was apprehended at 22. Maybe if they’d caught him when he was a teen he could have been rehabilitated, but four years after the fact - four years he went on a bloody crime spree - common sense says those circumstances have to be taken into account during sentencing. Rosa Parks this guy ain’t.