On Wednesday, February 5, 2020, Catholic Law Professor Cara Drinan hosted Mr. Halim Flowers and Mr. Momolu Stewart as guest speakers in her Criminal Procedure class. Sentenced as children to decades in prison, Flowers and Stewart were released last year in the wake of Supreme Court decisions limiting extreme sentences for youth and related D.C. legislation. 

Professor Drinan’s own research, including her 2017 book, The War on Kids (Oxford Univ. Press), addresses structural inequalities that make it more likely for poor, minority youth to be in the criminal justice system and to be sentenced to extreme terms, including the sentence of life without parole. 

As the Supreme Court has held in its recent juvenile sentencing decisions, “kids are different,” given their immature brain development, diminished moral culpability, and increased capacity for rehabilitation. Professor Drinan invited Flowers and Stewart because, as she has said, they are “the best evidence that kids are, in fact, different.” Despite their own childhood trauma and years of brutality in prisons, she noted that “both men have emerged as talented artists and advocates with beautiful, open minds and hearts.” 

Flowers and Stewart spoke of their childhood experiences with poverty and community violence; the trauma of entering adult prison as a late teen; and the ways in which they transformed themselves during more than two decades in prison. They also encouraged Professor Drinan’s students to be engaged as citizens and to advocate for investment in youth rather than confinement of them. 

Professor Drinan (@CaraDrinan) and Mr. Flowers (@TheRealHalim) can be found on Twitter, while Mr. Stewart is on Instagram (nbz_pug).