Justices let stand youth's 30-year prison term

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court let stand on Monday a sentence of 30 years in prison for a youth who killed his grandparents when he was 12, rejecting his appeal arguing that it was cruel and unusual punishment.

Attorneys for Christopher Pittman said he is the nation's only inmate serving such a harsh sentence for a crime committed at such a young age. Pittman was tried as if he were an adult. The high court declined to hear his appeal without any comment.

In 2005 a jury convicted Pittman of the double murders committed four years earlier when he shot his grandparents with a shotgun as they slept in bed and then set fire to their home in Chester, South Carolina.

He received the minimum sentence of 30 years in prison, without the possibility of parole.

Defense lawyers argued the antidepressant drug he was taking led him to commit the murders. But the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected that argument and others raised by Pittman's attorneys, and upheld his conviction and sentence.

The attorneys then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in challenging the 30-year prison term. "It is the extraordinarily harsh sentence that makes this case significant," they said.

"Punishing young children with excessive sentences violates international norms of human rights and juvenile justice law," they said. "Virtually no other nation in the world subjects young children to such long sentences."

Only eight other states besides South Carolina have laws in which a 12-year-old could be tried as an adult and subjected to a sentence of at least 30 years in prison without possible parole, they said.