In November 2020, ACLU-TN filed an amicus brief with the Tennessee Supreme Court in support of Appellant Tyshon Booker, who at age seventeen was tried as an adult and convicted of first-degree murder (“felony murder”) by a Knoxville jury. Under Tennessee law, Mr. Booker was sentenced to a mandatory 60-year prison term and will not be eligible for release until he has served at least 51 years.
ACLU-TN’s amicus brief informed the Court that Tennessee’s 60-year mandatory sentence is far out of step with nearly every other state. In fact, our research indicated that Tennessee’s life sentence is the longest of any state that assigns a term-of-years to a life sentence. Such a long sentence denies juveniles the possibility of rehabilitation and meaningful reunion with society, in contravention of the United States Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.
The ACLU-TN was one of several organizations to join the effort to petition the state’s Supreme Court to change the way juveniles are sentenced in Tennessee. Amici also included the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (TACDL), Nashville Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and several faith-based organizations.
The Tennessee Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on February 24, 2021
ATTORNEY(S):
ACLU-TN: Thomas H. Castelli, Stella Yarbrough
Neal & Harwell, PLC: James G. Thomas, Nathan C. Sanders
DEFENDANT(S):
Tyshon Booker
