From Juvenile Justice Information Exchange:
JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Teri Sopp’s former self stares down from a wall in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office. The painting, a gift more than a dozen years ago, bears silent witness as she works to free people also frozen in time, serving lifelong sentences for crimes committed before they turned 18.
For one client, she’s arguing reduced culpability because of lead. She expects to argue the same for other clients.
Sopp is the director of the resentencing project for juveniles serving life without parole. Once de rigeur, the Supreme Court has ruled mandatory life without parole for juveniles is unconstitutional. So now all such cases are eligible for resentencing.
Today, Sopp’s working the case of a client serving life for crimes committed when he was 17 in the mid-1990s. One night, he and some others tried to rob a man. The man shot and killed one of the co-conspirators. Sopp’s client was subsequently convicted of armed robbery and murder for his co-conspirator’s death under Florida’s felony murder law. Continue reading >>>
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