Cyntoia Brown, a Tennessee woman who is currently serving a life sentence for a murder she committed when she was a 16-year-old prostitute, made her case for clemency on Wednesday. Since she’s been in prison, Brown has earned her associates degree from Lipscomb University, WZTV-TV reported. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Wrongful Convictions of Youth, the Sentencing Project, the Juvenile Law Center and others have joined the legal brief, according to the newspaper. “Cyntoia’s sentence is wholly disproportionate for a 16-year-old girl, and therefore unconstitutional,” Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, argued in a statement. In 2012, after Brown had been sentenced, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not impose mandatory life in prison without parole sentences for juveniles convicted of murder.

Source: Fox News May 23, 2018 20:03 UTC