NAACP Amicus Brief arguing that Missouri’s parole procedures are unconstitutional as applied to juveniles

This NAACP amicus brief argues that Missouri’s parole procedures are unconstitutional as applied to juveniles,  because they do not provide juveniles with a meaningful opportunity to obtain release (leading to de facto life without parole sentences). Pages 10-13 rely on statistics to show that  race affects sentencing and that Black men and boys are punished with more severe penalties than their white counterparts. Pages 13-14 document research showing how racial stereotypes of Black men and boys as violent affect peoples’ behaviors and attitudes toward them. Pages 14-15 discuss research showing that judges are not immune to implicit racial biases. The studies discussed in this amicus brief could be useful to defenders who want to highlight the problems of racial bias (explicit and implicit) in sentencing in order to prevent such biases from infecting sentencing decisions.