This Boy’s Life
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The Marshall Project, Mother Jones
January 4, 2016

The Marshall Project in collaboration with Mother Jones published a piece highlighting the problems associated with sentencing children to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Tony Clayton was 30 years old, and just two years out from passing the Louisiana bar, when he walked into court in February of 1994, prepared to try his first murder case. He was, in his words, a ‘braggadocious kind of little young jit,’ determined to prove himself with a case that would test even the most veteran of prosecutors.

“The defendant, Taurus Buchanan, stood charged with second-degree murder—accused of throwing, at the age of 16, a single, deadly punch in a street fight among kids. If convicted, an automatic sentence would fate him to spend the rest of his life in prison, with no hope for parole. A section chief in the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office had told Clayton that securing a murder conviction under these circumstances would be a tough task. But Clayton had told her, ‘Ah, man, I can convict. I can do it. Just give me the damn case.'”
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