A teen who pleaded guilty to shooting and killing three
students in a high school cafeteria is challenging an Ohio law that
allowed him to be tried as an adult, hoping to persuade an appeals court
to throw out his sentence of life without parole.
Prosecutors and
T.J. Lane’s defense attorney will go before a state appeals court
Wednesday morning inside the courtroom where a smirking Lane wore a
T-shirt with "killer" scrawled across it and gestured obscenely toward
the victims’ families during his sentencing.
Lane was 17 at the
time of the February 2012 shooting at Chardon High School, east of
Cleveland, and his age is at the center of his appeal.
Because he
was a juvenile, he was ineligible for the death penalty. He is serving
three life sentences without parole. Lane, now 19, is not expected to
attend the appeal hearing.
Lane’s attorney is challenging an Ohio
law that allowed his case to be transferred from juvenile court to adult
court, a statute also being challenged in an unrelated case pending
before the Ohio Supreme Court involving a 16-year-old sent to prison.
The
law requires the transfer to adult court if a juvenile is 16 or 17,
accused of one of the most severe offenses, and there is probable cause
to believe he committed that act.
Lane’s appeal said that violates
the right to due process "because it prohibits the court from making
any individualized determination of the appropriateness of the transfer
of a particular child’s case to adult court."
Prosecutors say Lane
gave up his right to appeal his sentence when he voluntarily pleaded
guilty, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent and a recent Ohio case.
"Under
the eyes of Ohio law (Lane’s) conduct was an adult criminal act,"
Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz wrote in response to the appeal.
Lane
was at the Chardon school waiting for a bus to his alternative school
when he fired at students in the cafeteria, investigators said.
Daniel
Parmertor and Demetrius Hewlin, both 16, and Russell King Jr., 17, were
killed. Three other students were wounded. Investigators have said Lane
admitted to the shooting but said he didn’t know why he did it.
As
of 2012, there were about 2,500 people in the U.S. serving life
sentences for homicides that occurred when they were juveniles, but the
current number is difficult to track because a U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that year raised the possibility that hundreds of those sentences may
be called into question, said Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the
Philadelphia-based nonprofit Juvenile Law Center.
Giving juveniles
life terms without parole "means that we’re making these decisions on
day one of sentencing about who Lane or any other juvenile will be 30,
40, 50 years from now," Levick said. "And it’s almost impossible to make
that decision or to know who he will become as an adult."
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