Life without parole for juvenile criminals

From CNN:

The Supreme Court wrestled in often emotional terms Monday over whether sentencing juvenile criminals to life in prison without parole is "cruel and unusual" punishment, especially when their crime is not murder.


The justices appeared divided over how to treat two separate appeals, one involving a 13-year-old rapist and the other a 17-year-old violent home-invasion robber.

Now if that's as far as you got one might well wonder if life without parole is cruel and unusual.  But how about some facts.

It seems that the then 13 year old raped a 72 year old women and had a history of violent behavior.  The then 17 year old was sentenced after being caught in a violent home invasion while on parole for previous violent crimes.

These cases are interesting in many ways.

Consider first the rape.  Is rape of an elderly woman especially henious?  We regard child rape as especially wrong.  But rape of an adult is different and there is no special provision for elderly rape.  Why? It is certainly true that an elderly woman has no hope of self defense or flight.  Shouldn't this create some special circumstance?  But what about rape of a woman if some middle age.  Is she any less violated?  Any less a victim?  Now it seems to me that any rape is a terible crime.  The rape of a child or an elderly person is especially offensive.  So I'm inclined to think that special circumstances apply to the rape at issue. 

What then  of the rapist age?  He was after all only 13.  It has long been a matter of law that age is a factor in determining if there was an understanding of right and wrong.  As a general rule crimes commited by those under the age of 18 are treated as juvenal offenses.  They are subject to lesser punishments upon conviction on the argument that juvenal offenders have a lesser understanding.  I can understand that at some level but it beggs the question - does a 13 year old know that rape is wrong, that it is a crime?  The common sense answer is of course yes.  So if the understanding is present does age matter?  The common sense answer is of course no. 

Then what of the sentence?  Given that there were special circumstances in the rape and that age was not a factor then the sentence was just.  It was not "cruel and unusual."

What then of the 17 year old?  The crime here is different in many regards.  It is a violent home invasion commited by a habitual criminal who was then on parole.  The same sort of common sense analysis would suggest that the sentence was in fact just the argument being that the offender was habitual and within months of being an adult.