SCOWIS Approves LWOP for 14-Year-Old Killers

Today, in State v. Ninham, 2011 WI 33, the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved the sentence of life without possibility of parole for fourteen-year-olds who are convicted of first-degree intentional homicide.  The decision rests on a narrow reading of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark holding last year in Graham v. Florida, in which the Court outlawed LWOP for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes.  Since Graham, lower courts across the country have been wrestling with the implications of the decision for other categories of offenses and offenders.

Ninham’s challenge was framed as a categorical challenge to the use of LWOP against fourteen-year-olds.  As such, the challenge was appropriately assessed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court using the two-prong analysis of Graham, (1) determining whether there is a national consensus against the challenged practice, and (2) exercising independent judgment as to whether the practice constitutes an unconstitutionally severe punishment.

As to the first prong, although a large majority of states authorize LWOP for fourteen-year-olds, the sentence is in practice very infrequently imposed:

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Marquette Honors Noted Legal Historian Paul Prucha, S.J.

On Thursday, May 19, Marquette University honored Prof. Emeritus Francis Paul Prucha, S.J. with a special reception in at the Raynor Library Archives.  The event was timed to mark Prof. Prucha’s ninetieth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment to the Marquette faculty, as well as the sixtieth anniversary of his entrance into the Jesuit Order.

Prucha is the preeminent scholar of the modern era on the subject of United States government-Native American relations.  His numerous works include The Indian in American History (1971); Americanizing the American Indians (1973); The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands (1973); The Churches and the Indian Schools, 1888-1912 (1979); The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (1985), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History; and American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (1994).

Father Prucha was born in River Falls, Wisconsin in 1921.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from River Falls State Teachers College (now UW-River Falls) in 1941, and after stints as a high school teacher and an Army Air corpsman, he enrolled in the graduate program in history at the University of Minnesota, from which he received an M.A. degree in 1947.  He then transferred to Harvard University from which he received his PhD in 1950.

After receiving his PhD, Prucha entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained as a priest in 1957.  He joined the Marquette History Department in 1960. Because of the work of Prucha and colleagues like Frank Klement and Athan Theoharis, Marquette became a center of American legal-historical studies in the central United States in the second half of the twentieth century.  Prof. Prucha took emeritus status in 1988, but has continued to live and work at Marquette.

Although never a member of the law school faculty Father Prucha was a regular visitor to the law school library and a mentor to a number of law school faculty, including Professors Idleman and Hylton.  He is also the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees.

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Law School’s Lavvie Dilweg Added to the Marquette “M” Club

Lavern “Lavvie” Dilweg, Marquette Law School Class of 1927, has finally been added to the membership of the M Club, Marquette University’s Athletic Hall of Fame.  Earlier this week, the University announced that Dilweg is one of seven members of this year’s class who will officially be inducted into the M Club on Saturday, May 20.

Dilweg enrolled at Marquette in the fall of 1922, and starred in football, basketball, and track during his time as a Marquette athlete.  Among other honors, he was the first Hilltopper (as the school’s teams were known in his era) to be named a first-team All-American football player.  In 1924, after two years in the college, he enrolled in the law school where he continued to participate in varsity athletics.  During his third year of law school, having exhausted his collegiate eligibility, he played for the Milwaukee Badgers of the National Football League.

The Badgers folded after the 1926 season, and Dilweg joined the Green Bay Packers, for whom he starred through the 1934 season.  During his years with the Packers he played on three NFL championship teams and was named a first-team All-NFL End five times.  After his career with the Packers, he practiced law in Brown County, Wisconsin and served in the United States Congress.

There is nothing new about Dilweg being overlooked for a hall-of-fame.  Many historians of the early NFL view Dilweg as the best player from the league’s formative era not yet inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

A more detailed examination of Dilweg’s career in sports, law, and politics can be found at http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2009/11/09/lavvie-dilweg-27-mu-laws-contribution-to-the-nfl-and-to-congress/.

 

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