A Tiny Light!

The American press's reaction to the Amanda Knox case always amazed me.  Both the right and left press criticized the Italians for the way it treated Knox while largely ignoring our own treatment of youthful offenders.  Knox is home, with a rumored million(s) dollar advance for a book on her Italian prison experience, while we have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children rotting away in American prisons, with no chance of parole.  When will Americans stop pointing fingers at others and start examining our own morally bankrupt system?

Today there was a small light, very small, in the Supreme Court 5-4 ruling that it is unconstitutional for state laws to require juveniles convicted of murder to be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, to wit:

We "hold that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on 'cruel and unusual punishment,'" said Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the opinion for the majority. She was joined in that opinion by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia,Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Please note that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are all Catholics, yet violate everything the Catholic Church is about, or that I thought it was about when I was a child growing up Catholic, in their dissent to this humane ruling.  I should add that none of the Catholic countries, including Italy, permit the death penalty (which the Church says it's strongly against) and none sentence children to life in prison.  If Amanda Knox's verdict had not been overturned it's likely she and her boyfriend would have been out of prison in less than twenty years.  Humane societies don't put children away for life. 

We are not a humane society!