Jonathan P. Baird

Recently I listened to the seven-part podcast, Suave. It tells the remarkable story of David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez. A Latino juvenile lifer, Suave had been on what he described as a suicide mission. Convicted of the first degree murder of a 13 year old boy, Suave had received a sentence of life without parole when he was 17.

A hellion for his first ten years in prison (he spent 8 years in solitary confinement), things dramatically changed for Suave when he persuaded prison authorities to invite the journalist Maria Hinojosa to speak at Graterford State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania where he was incarcerated. He had heard Hinojosa on the radio and was intrigued because she was Latina. This was in 1993.

After Hinojosa spoke, he approached and asked, “I’m serving life. What can I do?” Hinojosa responded, “You could be my source. You could be the voice for the voiceless”.

That moment sparked a transformation in the life of Suave. Totally written off by the system, given an IQ of 56 and told he was retarded and would never amount to anything, Suave taught himself to read.

He paid another inmate in cigarettes to read him books Hinojosa sent him in prison. He read them over and over. Over a 16 year period, Suave obtained a GED and a B.A. degree from Villanova University.

He taught other inmates to read. As president of a Latino organization in prison, he organized a scholarship program for students who who lived in Philadelphia, Chester, and Bethlehem. The organization gave away scholarships of $500, $1,000 and $2,000. It was funded entirely by inmates from their wages which started at 19 cents an hour.

Also, Suave was a talented artist. He started painting watercolors when he was in prison. He taught other inmates how to paint watercolor. Suave contacted Mural Arts of Philadelphia and his wall murals started showing up around the city. He has produced 52 murals in the city of Philadelphia. His paintings are also on display at the Morton Contemporary Gallery.

Things in Suave’s life took a completely unexpected turn when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 in the case of Miller v Alabama that, for juveniles, mandatory life without parole sentences violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Writing for the majority, Justice Kagan emphasized that judges must be able to consider the characteristics of juvenile defendants in order to issue a fair and individualized sentence. Kagan wrote that adolescence is marked by “transient rashness, proclivity for risk and inability to assess consequences”, all factors that should mitigate the punishment received by juvenile defendants.

Then in 2016, the Supreme Court decided the case of Montgomery v Louisiana and ruled that Miller had to be applied retroactively. Justice Kennedy, writing for a 6-3 majority, found that “children are constitutionally different from adults in their level of culpability”. Kennedy wrote that the severest penalty must be reserved “for the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility”.

Justice Kennedy was responding to research that showed that because of developing brains, children were less culpable for their crimes and were more likely to be rehabilitated than adult offenders. The Court’s analysis was rooted in a long-standing rule that the Eighth Amendment embodies “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society”.

The Miller and Montgomery cases led to a review of Suave’s sentence and his release from incarceration in 2017 after over 30 years behind bars. Since his release, Suave has continued painting. He has also been an activist against mass incarceration.

I could not help but think about Suave and other Suaves when I heard about the new U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jones v Montgomery. In a shockingly backwards decision authored by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court reinstated juvenile life without parole. In embarrassing fashion, all the Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices went along.

In her passionate dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dismantled the majority opinion and showed how the Court dishonestly overruled precedent while claiming it was not doing that. To quote her, “How low this Court’s respect for stare decisis has sunk”.

Youth supposedly mattered but the new majority in the U.S. Supreme Court regressed in its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. The Jones decision effectively closed the door of judicial review for many outstanding cases. As Justice Sotomayor wrote:

“The Eighth Amendment does not excuse children’s crimes, nor does it shield them from all punishment. It does, however, demand that most children be spared from punishments that give no chance for fulfillment outside prison walls, no chance for reconciliation with society, no hope.”

In Jones, the Court ignored the plaintiff’s significant steps toward rehabilitation and maturity. At his resentencing hearing, Jones told the Court:

“I’m not the same person I was when I was 15… I’ve become a pretty decent person in life. And I’ve pretty much taken every avenue that I could possibly take in prison to rehabilitate myself…Minors do have the ability to change.”

Like so many of the juveniles serving life without parole sentences, Jones was physically and verbally abused as a child. His stepfather beat him with belts, switches and a paddle labelled the Punisher. His stepfather did not call him by his name but referred to him by cruel epithets. Jones committed his horrible crime when he did not have access to medications he was taking for his mental health issues.

The U.S. is the only nation that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before turning age 18. The punishment is now banned in half the states and in a handful of states no one is serving the sentence. At the start of 2020, there were 1465 juvenile lifers nationally. This represents a 38% decline since 2016.

Juvenile life without parole sentences disproportionately hit Black and brown children. 70% of all juveniles serving life without parole are people of color. Dehumanized as super-predators, these inmates pay the price for institutionalized racism. It is no accident so many children of color get such extreme sentences. They are part of the broader trend of racial disparities in sentencing with people of color getting harsher sentences.

The Jones decision is an undeniably major setback in the movement to end juvenile life without parole. Instead of an “evolving standard of decency” on the Eighth Amendment, our Supreme Court has a devolving standard rooted in cruelty and blindness to institutional racism.

Suave’s life shows the difference second chances can make.