Joe Sullivan – Life in Prison for 13-year-old Kinky Hair Colored Boy for allegedly raping a 72-year-old White Woman.

By: Charles S. Mombo

Joe Harris Sullivan, now 35-year-old, is still serving a life term for a non-homicide crime committed, since 13-year-old, for raping a 72-year-old elderly white woman. Image Source:Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

What happened to a 72-year-old elderly woman white lady on May 4, 1989 in Pensacola, Florida was barbaric and unfortunate. She wasn't home at the time when her home was burglarized by three African-American teens. Someone returned to her house later that day and beat and raped her. The two older of the three teens admitted to the earlier burglary but said the youngest, 13-year-old, might have returned and committed the rape.

Six months later during the one day trial, the elderly victim admitted that she was blindfolded and with fading eyesight was unable to identify her attacker during the rape. But she did recall her attacker saying something like, “If you can’t identify me, I may not have to kill you.” During the trial, Joe Harris Sullivan, 13-year-old, was made to repeat the following sentence “If you can’t identify me, I may not have to kill you,” several times. He also admitted that he and his two older friends had burglarized the woman’s home earlier that day, but denied that he had returned to commit the rape.

While on the witness stand, the 72-year-old elderly white victim said, “It’s been six months, it’s hard to remember, but it does sound similar.” She also added that her assailant was “a colored boy” who “had kinky hair and he was quite black and he was small.”

The two older boys that accomplished Sullivan during the burglary testified again him. They received a short sentence in juvenile detention, but Sullivan was tried as an adult, convicted of sexual battery, and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. During Sullivan’s sentencing, then Judge Nicholas Geeker, of the circuit court in Escambia County said, “I’m going to send him away for as long as I can.” Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

There was biological evidence from the rape, but it was not presented at the trial. When Sullivan’s new lawyers recently sought to conduct DNA testing on it, they were told that the State of Florida had destroyed it in 1993.

Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) attorneys asked the Supreme Court to review the case and to decide if Joe’s sentence to die in prison for a non-homicide at age 13 violates this Eighth Amendment according to the United States Constitution. The Eight Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. According to court papers and a report from the EJI, which now represents Sullivan, only eight people in the world are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 13. They are all in the United States.

On May 17, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, Docket No. 08-7621, ruled 9-0 that the Sullivan versus Florida case should not have been heard by them in the first place, thereby declining to decide whether sentencing a thirteen-year-old to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is cruel and unusual punishment. Sullivan’s case was dismissed as improvidently granted in a per curiam opinion.

Joe Harris Sullivan is now 35-years-old and is still serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.