DLA Piper partner Steve Churchwell has given 309 inmates in California prisons something that once seemed lost forever: hope for the future. The inmates were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes that they committed before age 18 — some as young as 14.
Following a six-year lobbying effort led by Churchwell and Elizabeth Calvin, a senior advocate for Human Rights Watch, California passed a law that gives juvenile offenders the possibility of release before death if they have shown remorse and rehabilitation. The prospect of being locked up at age 15 and spending the next 65 or so years in prison is “cruel and unusual,” Churchwell said. “They had no hope whatsoever.”
