Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city proper covers 48 square miles with an estimated population of 685,094 in 2017, making it the most populous city in New England. Boston is the seat of Suffolk County as well, although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999; the city is the economic and cultural anchor of a larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest such area in the country. As a combined statistical area, this wider commuting region is home to some 8.2 million people, making it the sixth-largest in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England, it was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Siege of Boston.
Upon gaining U. S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula through land reclamation and municipal annexation, its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing more than 20 million visitors per year. Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public park, first public or state school and first subway system; the Boston area's many colleges and universities make it an international center of higher education, including law, medicine and business, the city is considered to be a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 2,000 startups. Boston's economic base includes finance and business services, information technology, government activities. Households in the city claim the highest average rate of philanthropy in the United States; the city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings.
Boston's early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine but renamed it Boston after Boston, England, the origin of several prominent colonists. The renaming on September 7, 1630, was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest for fresh water, their settlement was limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC. In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history. Over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America. Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century.
Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, the city engaged in shipping and fishing during its colonial days. However, Boston stagnated in the decades prior to the Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia surpassed Boston in wealth. Boston encountered financial difficulties as other cities in New England grew rapidly. Many of the crucial events of the American Revolution occurred near Boston. Boston's penchant for mob action along with the colonists' growing distrust in Britain fostered a revolutionary spirit in the city; when the British government passed the Stamp Act in 1765, a Boston mob ravaged the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, Thomas Hutchinson the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. The British sent two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the angry colonists; this did not sit well with the colonists. In 1770, during the Boston Massacre, the army killed several people in response to a mob in Boston.
The colonists compelled the British to withdraw their troops. The event was publicized and fueled a revolutionary movement in America. In 1773, Britain passed the Tea Act. Many of the colonists saw the act as an attempt to force them to accept the taxes established by the Townshend Acts; the act prompted the Boston Tea Party, where a group of rebels threw an entire shipment of tea sent by the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was a key event leading up to the revolution, as the British government responded furiously with the Intolerable Acts, demanding compensation for the lost tea from the rebels; this led to the American Revolutionary War. The war began in the area surrounding Boston with the Battles of Concord. Boston itself was besieged for a year during the Siege of Boston, which began on April 19, 1775; the New England militia impeded the movement of the British Army. William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe the commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege.
On June 17, the British captured the Charlestown peninsula in Boston, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British army outnumbered the militia stationed there, but it was a Py
My Favorite Murder
My Favorite Murder is a weekly true crime comedy podcast hosted by American comedians Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. The first episode was released in January 2016; the podcast debuted as #25 on the iTunes podcast charts and peaked at #3 on April 27, 2018. Weekly episodes land within iTunes' Top 10 Comedy Podcast chart; the podcast has 19 million monthly downloads. Praise for the show notes how it normalizes an interest in true crime among listeners who considered themselves morbid or odd, discussing the sense of isolation and compartmentalization that arises in those with outlying but healthy interests. Noted is the predominance of female listeners, consistent with data showing true crime fans are predominantly female. Kilgariff is best known for her work on Mr. Ellen, her stand up routine includes playing guitar to original comedic songs. She is known for her podcast Do You Need a Ride with Chris Fairbanks. Hardstark co-hosted Slumber Party with Alie and Georgia; the show was broadcast on the Feral Audio network until September 2017, when it moved to Midroll Media.
On November 28, 2018, Kilgariff and Hardstark introduced their new podcast network Exactly Right. In partnership with Stitcher, the Exactly Right podcast network broadcasts My Favorite Murder as well as Do You Need a Ride, The Purrrcast, The Fall Line, This Podcast Will Kill You and Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad. Kilgariff and Hardstark met at a Halloween party in 2014 where Kilgariff was describing a brutal accident she had witnessed: a drunk driver plowing into a crowd of people at the media conference and festival SXSW. Hardstark approached Kilgariff with interest and the two talked all night about various murders throughout history. In January 2016, they released their first episode of My Favorite Murder with Feral Audio; that year, Steven Ray Morris became the podcast's producer, his first episode being Making A Twenty-Thirderer which aired June 30th, 2016. In September 2017, the podcast signed with Midroll Media. Kilgariff and Hardstark each select a single murder, true crime story, or survivor story to recount and discuss.
The podcast consists of dialogue between the hosts. Early episodes were thematically based; the thematic concept was abandoned early in the series. Early episode titles included murder-themed puns and pop culture references, such as "Thirty Let The Bodies Hit The Four," a reference to the Drowning Pool song "Bodies. However, the more recent episode titles consist of jokes based on the conversation within the episode, such as "Steven's Tuxedo" and "Service Poodle". Kilgariff and Hardstark have both referred to the podcast as a sort of therapy to deal with their own anxieties about murder. Both hosts strive to emphasize compassion for both the victims and perpetrators of the crimes they discuss, attempting to ensure that their discussion combats common problematic themes in true crime, such as discrimination against the mentally ill, sex workers, women, LGBTQ+, people of color. Full episodes are released weekly on Thursdays. "Minisodes" that are dedicated to the topic of "hometown murders" are released Mondays and are 30–45 minutes long.
However, "minisodes" have expanded to include not only "hometown murders," but stories of other crimes, hauntings, things hidden in walls, or anything interesting submitted by listeners. Episodes are recorded in Hardstark's Los Angeles apartment. In late 2016, the duo began touring with a live version of the show, these are recorded and aired as they are edited. At times, the hosts interact with the show's audio engineer Steven Ray Morris about the topics at hand, he is referred to as “the voice of Tina Belcher.” The hosts end each episode with their catch phrase, "Stay sexy and don't get murdered." Hardstark asks her cat, "Elvis, want a cookie?", Elvis meows into the microphone as the episode ends. My Favorite Murder gained a large fan following, including a Facebook group with over 200,000 members as of April 2018, a Facebook fan page with more than 171,000 followers as of February 2018. My Favorite Murder was swiftly syndicated beyond the original Feral Audio site to such places as Google Play Music and iTunes.
Media reaction to the program has been positive, with the phenomenon of the podcast's rapid popularity documented in many outside sources such as BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, HuffPost, Bustle. Fans of the show, who refer to themselves as "Murderinos," create merchandise with quotes from the latest episode, including the show's sign-off catchphrase, "Stay Sexy, Don't Get Murdered," "Fuck politeness," and "You're in a cult. Many of the show's profits from donations or direct sale of goods are donated to local police departments to fund examination of the backlog of untested rape kits. In addition to their massive success with their recorded podcast, the hosts have done several live shows internationally that follow the same format of the podcast; some of their live shows are made available to listeners in place of a new show that week. As of October 5, 2016, My Favorite Murder was #10 on the overall iTunes podcast charts and #1 in the comedy category and has around 450,000 downloads per episode, millions of downloads each month.
Elle invited Hardstark to write about the JonBenét Ramsey ca
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, since its creation by Charles H. Taylor in 1872; the newspaper has won a total of 26 Pulitzer Prizes as of 2016, with a total paid circulation of 245,824 from September 2015 to August 2016, it is the 25th most read newspaper in the United States. The Boston Globe is the largest daily newspaper in Boston. Founded in the late 19th century, the paper was controlled by Irish Catholic interests before being sold to Charles H. Taylor and his family. After being held until 1973, it was sold to The New York Times in 1993 for $1.1 billion, making it one of the most expensive print purchases in U. S. history. The newspaper was purchased in 2013 by Boston Red Sox and Liverpool F. C. owner John W. Henry for $70 million from The New York Times Company, having lost 93.64% of its value in twenty years. The newspaper has been noted as "one of the nation’s most prestigious papers." The paper's coverage of the 2001–2003 Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal received international media attention and served as the basis of the 2015 American drama, Spotlight.
In 1967, The Globe became the first major paper in the United States to come out against the Vietnam War. The chief print rival of The Boston Globe is the Boston Herald; as of 2013, The Globe circulates the entire press run of its rival. The editor-in-chief, otherwise known as the editor, of the paper is Brian McGrory who took the helm in December 2012; the Boston Globe was founded in 1872 by six Boston businessmen, including Charles H. Taylor and Eben Jordan, who jointly invested $150,000; the first issue was published on March 4, 1872, cost four cents. A morning daily, it began a Sunday edition in 1877, which absorbed the rival Boston Weekly Globe in 1892. In 1878, The Boston Globe started an afternoon edition called The Boston Evening Globe, which ceased publication in 1979. By the 1890s, The Boston Globe had become a stronghold, with an editorial staff dominated by Irish American Catholics. In 1912, the Globe was one of a cooperative of four newspapers, including the Chicago Daily News, The New York Globe, the Philadelphia Bulletin, to form the Associated Newspapers syndicate.
In 1965, Thomas Winship succeeded Larry Winship, as editor. The younger Winship transformed The Globe from a mediocre local paper into a regional paper of national distinction, he served as editor until 1984, during which time the paper won a dozen Pulitzer Prizes, the first in the paper's history. The Boston Globe was a private company until 1973 when it went public under the name Affiliated Publications, it continued to be managed by the descendants of Charles H. Taylor. In 1993, The New York Times Company purchased Affiliated Publications for US$1.1 billion, making The Boston Globe a wholly owned subsidiary of The New York Times' parent. The Jordan and Taylor families received substantial New York Times Company stock, but the last Taylor family members have since left management. Boston.com, the online edition of The Boston Globe, was launched on the World Wide Web in 1995. Ranked among the top ten newspaper websites in America, it has won numerous national awards and took two regional Emmy Awards in 2009 for its video work.
Under the helm of editor Martin Baron and Brian McGrory, The Globe shifted away from coverage of international news in favor of Boston-area news. Globe reporters Michael Rezendes, Matt Carroll, Sacha Pfeiffer and Walter Robinson and editor Ben Bradlee Jr. were an instrumental part of uncovering the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in 2001–2003 in relation to Massachusetts churches. They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their work, one of several the paper has received for its investigative journalism, their work was dramatized in the 2015 Academy Award-winning film Spotlight, named after the paper's in-depth investigative division; the Boston Globe is credited with allowing Peter Gammons to start his Notes section on baseball, which has become a mainstay in all major newspapers nationwide. In 2004, Gammons was selected as the 56th recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing, given by the BBWAA, was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 31, 2005.
In 2007, Charlie Savage, whose reports on President Bush's use of signing statements made national news, won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. The Boston Globe has been ranked in the forefront of American journalism. Time magazine listed it as one of the ten best US daily newspapers in 1974 and 1984, the Globe tied for sixth in a national survey of top editors who chose "America's Best Newspapers" in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1999; the Boston Globe hosts 28 blogs covering a variety of topics including Boston sports, local politics and a blog made up of posts from the paper's opinion writers. On April 2, 2009, The New York Times Company threatened to close the paper if its unions did not agree to $20,000,000 of cost savings; some of the cost savings include reducing union employees' pay by 5%, ending pension contributions, ending certain employees' tenures. The Boston Globe eliminated the equivalent of fifty full-time jobs. However, early on the morning of May 5, 2009, The New York Times Company announced it had reached a tentative deal with the Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents most of the Globe's editorial staff, that allowed it to get the concessions it demanded.
The paper's other three major unions had agreed to concessions on May 3, 2009, after The New York Times Company threatened to give
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter. Manslaughter is a killing committed in the absence of malice, brought about by reasonable provocation, or diminished capacity. Involuntary manslaughter, where it is recognized, is a killing that lacks all but the most attenuated guilty intent, recklessness. Most societies consider murder to be an serious crime, thus believe that the person charged should receive harsh punishments for the purposes of retribution, rehabilitation, or incapacitation. In most countries, a person convicted of murder faces a long-term prison sentence a life sentence; the modern English word "murder" descends from the Proto-Indo-European "mrtró" which meant "to die". The Middle English mordre is a noun from Old French murdre. Middle English mordre is a verb from the Middle English noun.
The eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England set out the common law definition of murder, which by this definition occurs when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully kills any reasonable creature in being and under the king's peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied. The elements of common law murder are: Unlawful killing through criminal act or omission of a human by another human with malice aforethought; the Unlawful – This distinguishes murder from killings that are done within the boundaries of law, such as capital punishment, justified self-defence, or the killing of enemy combatants by lawful combatants as well as causing collateral damage to non-combatants during a war. Killing – At common law life ended with cardiopulmonary arrest – the total and irreversible cessation of blood circulation and respiration. With advances in medical technology courts have adopted irreversible cessation of all brain function as marking the end of life.Сriminal act or omission – Killing can be committed by an act or an omission.of a human – This element presents the issue of when life begins.
At common law, a fetus was not a human being. Life began when the fetus passed through the vagina and took its first breath.by another human – In early common law, suicide was considered murder. The requirement that the person killed be someone other than the perpetrator excluded suicide from the definition of murder. With malice aforethought – Originally malice aforethought carried its everyday meaning – a deliberate and premeditated killing of another motivated by ill will. Murder required that an appreciable time pass between the formation and execution of the intent to kill; the courts broadened the scope of murder by eliminating the requirement of actual premeditation and deliberation as well as true malice. All, required for malice aforethought to exist is that the perpetrator act with one of the four states of mind that constitutes "malice"; the four states of mind recognized as constituting "malice" are: Under state of mind, intent to kill, the deadly weapon rule applies. Thus, if the defendant intentionally uses a deadly weapon or instrument against the victim, such use authorizes a permissive inference of intent to kill.
In other words, "intent follows the bullet". Examples of deadly weapons and instruments include but are not limited to guns, deadly toxins or chemicals or gases and vehicles when intentionally used to harm one or more victims. Under state of mind, an "abandoned and malignant heart", the killing must result from the defendant's conduct involving a reckless indifference to human life and a conscious disregard of an unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily injury. In Australian jurisdictions, the unreasonable risk must amount to a foreseen probability of death, as opposed to possibility. Under state of mind, the felony-murder doctrine, the felony committed must be an inherently dangerous felony, such as burglary, rape, robbery or kidnapping; the underlying felony cannot be a lesser included offense such as assault, otherwise all criminal homicides would be murder as all are felonies. As with most legal terms, the precise definition of murder varies between jurisdictions and is codified in some form of legislation.
When the legal distinction between murder and manslaughter is clear, it is not unknown for a jury to find a murder defendant guilty of the lesser offence. The jury might sympathise with the defendant, the jury may wish to protect the defendant from a sentence of life imprisonment or execution. Many jurisdictions divide murder by degrees; the distinction between first- and second-degree murder exists, for example, in Canadian murder law and U. S. murder law. The most common division is between first- and second-degree murder. Second-degree murder is common law murder, first-degree is an aggravated form; the aggravating factors of first-degree murder depend on the jurisdiction, but may include a specific intent to kill, premeditation, or deliberation. In some, murder committed by acts such as strangulation, poisoning, or lying in wait are treated as first-degree murder. A few states in the U. S. further distinguish third-degree murder, but they differ in which kinds of murders they classify as second-degree versus third-degree.
For example, Minnesota defines third-degree murder as depraved-heart murder, whereas Flori
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously functioning appellate court in the Americas, with a recognized history dating to the establishment of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature in 1692 under the charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania disputes this, claiming to be eight years older. Although it was composed of four associate justices and one chief justice, the court is composed of six associate justices and one chief justice; the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court traces its history back to the high court of the British Province of Massachusetts Bay, chartered in 1692. Under the terms of that charter, Governor Sir William Phips established the Superior Court of Judicature as the province's local court of last resort; when the Massachusetts State Constitution was established in 1780, legislative and judicial records show that the state's high court, although renamed, was a continuation of provincial high court.
During and after the period of the American Revolution the court had members who were appointed by royal governors, the executive council of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, governors elected under the state constitution. The SJC sits at the John Adams Courthouse, One Pemberton Square, Massachusetts 02108, which houses the Massachusetts Appeals Court and the Social Law Library; the proper legal citation for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is "Mass." Rex v. Preston – Captain Thomas Preston, the Officer of the Day during the Boston Massacre, was acquitted when the jury was unable to determine whether he had ordered the troops to fire; the defense counsel in the case was a young attorney named John Adams the second President of the United States. Rex v. Wemms, et al. – Six soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre were found not guilty, two more – the only two proven to have fired – were found guilty of manslaughter. Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison – The Court declared slavery unconstitutional in the state of Massachusetts by allowing slaves to sue their masters for freedom.
Boston lawyer, member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1779, John Lowell, upon the adoption of Article I for inclusion in the Massachusetts Constitution, exclaimed: "... I will render my services as a lawyer gratis to any slave suing for his freedom if it is withheld from him..." With this case, he fulfilled his promise. Slavery in Massachusetts was denied legal standing. Commonwealth v. Hunt – The Court established that trade unions were not criminal or conspiring organizations if they did not advocate violence or illegal activities in their attempts to gain recognition through striking; this legalized the existence of non-socialist or non-violent trade organizations, though trade unions would continue to be harassed through anti-trust suits and injunctions. Roberts v. Boston – The Court established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would be used in Plessy v. Ferguson by maintaining that the law gave school boards complete authority in assigning students to schools and that they could do so along racial lines if they deemed it appropriate.
Goodridge v. Department of Public Health – The Court ruled 4–3 that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the Massachusetts Constitution; the decision was stayed for 180 days to allow the legislature time to amend the law to comply with the decision. In December 2003, the state Senate asked the SJC whether "civil unions" would comply with their ruling; the SJC replied that civil unions were insufficient, civil marriage was required. The legislature made no further action, the stay expired on May 17, 2004; the state began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples the same day. This decision was one of the first in the world to find; the Court consists of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts with the consent of the Governor's Council. The Justices hold office until the mandatory retirement age of seventy, like all other Massachusetts judges; the serving justices are: William Cushing, Horace Gray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. were Chief Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court when they were appointed to serve as Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States Lemuel Shaw was one of the greatest American judges of the mid-19th century Charles Fried, who served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1995 to 1999, was United States Solicitor General from 1985 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan All judges appointed before 1695 were reappointed in that year because the legislation creating the court was vetoed in that year by the Privy Council.
Several further attempts to legislate the court's existence were vetoed, it was not until 1699 that the provincial assembly enacted laws creating courts that satisfied the Privy Council. Davis, William. History of the Judiciary of Massachusetts Massachusetts Civil List for the Colonial and Provincial Periods Reno, Conrad. Memoirs of the Judiciary and the Bar of New England, Volume 1 Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts List of Chief Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court Office of the Reporter of Decisions of the SJC Gay-Marriage Decision: Just the Beginning of the Debate Memoirs v. Massachusetts Simpson's Contemporary Quotations
Life imprisonment
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted persons are to remain in prison either for the rest of their natural life or until paroled. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, apostasy, severe child abuse, child rape, treason, high treason, drug dealing, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe cases of fraud, severe cases of financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage in English law, aggravated cases of arson, burglary, or robbery which result in death or grievous bodily harm, aircraft hijacking, in certain cases genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, certain war crimes or any three felonies in case of three strikes law. Life imprisonment can be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offenses causing death; the life sentence does not exist in all countries, Portugal was the first to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884.
For more info about life imprisonment in other countries worldwide, refer here. Where life imprisonment is a possible sentence, there may exist formal mechanisms for requesting parole after a certain period of prison time; this means. Early release is conditional on past and future conduct with certain restrictions or obligations. In contrast, when a fixed term of imprisonment has ended, the convict is free; the length of time served and the conditions surrounding parole vary. The date when a convict is eligible for parole does not predict when or if parole will be granted. In many countries around the world in the Commonwealth, courts have the authority to pass prison terms which exceed a century. For example, courts in South Africa have handed out at least two sentences that have exceeded a century. In Tasmania, Martin Bryant, the perpetrator of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, received 35 life sentences, plus 1,035 consecutive years, all to run concurrently and for the term of his natural life.
Another example of a life sentence that exceeded a century was Aurora Cinema shooter James Holmes, who received 12 consecutive life sentences and an extra 3,318 years without the possibility of parole for injuring 70,killing 12, 112 counts of attempted murder in the Colorado cinema and booby trapping his apartment with explosives. Few countries allow for a minor to be given a lifetime sentence with no provision for eventual release. According to a University of San Francisco Law School study, only the U. S. had minors serving such sentences in 2008. In 2009, Human Rights Watch estimated that there were 2,589 youth offenders serving life sentences without the possibility for parole in the U. S; the United States leads in life sentences, at a rate of 50 people per 100,000 residents imprisoned for life. In 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that sentencing minors to life without parole, automatically or as the result of a judicial decision, for crimes other than intentional homicide, violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments", in the case of Graham v. Florida.
Graham v. Florida was a significant case in juvenile justice. In Jacksonville, Terrence J. Graham tried to rob a restaurant along with three adolescent accomplices. During the robbery, one of Graham's accomplices had a metal bar that he used to hit the restaurant manager twice in the head. Once arrested, Graham was charged with attempted armed robbery and armed burglary with assault/battery; the maximum sentence he faced from these charges was life without the possibility of parole, the prosecutor wanted to charge him as an adult. During the trial, Graham pleaded guilty to the charges, resulting in three years of probation, one year of which had to be served in jail. Since he had been awaiting trial in jail, he served six months and therefore was released after six additional months. Within six months of his release, Graham was involved in another robbery. Since he violated the conditions of his probation, his probation officer reported to the trial court about his probation violations a few weeks before Graham turned 18 years old.
It was a different judge presiding over his trial for the probation violations a year later. While Graham denied any involvement of the robbery, he did admit to fleeing from the police; the trial court found that Graham violated his probation by "committing a home invasion robbery, possessing a firearm, associating with persons engaged in criminal activity", sentenced him to 15 years for the attempted armed robbery plus life imprisonment for the armed burglary. The life sentence Graham received meant he had a life sentence without the possibility of parole, "because Florida abolished their parole system in 2003". Graham's case was presented to the United States Supreme Court, with the question of whether juveniles should receive life without the possibility of parole in non-homicide cases; the Justices ruled that such a sentence violated the juvenile's 8th Amendment rights, protecting them from punishments that are disproportionate to the crime committed, resulting in the abolition of life s
