Emily Simpson

Draper and Adam Chick are both arrested and charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

They go to trial in 2007 and they're tried separately.

Prosecutors lay out the evidence, including the VHS tape, Cassie's bloody clothing, the murder weapons, masks, etc.

And both are convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

It shows them, so here we are in 2026.

No, so they have been in prison since they were 16.

Right, but I do believe... So they also talk about this in the third part.

So there was a Supreme Court decision that happened during the time frame that they were in prison for life.

Right, after they were convicted.

And...

I believe the Supreme Court had a decision that said that putting minors in prison for life without parole would be cruel and unusual punishment.

So the United States is the only nation that allows people who committed crimes as minors to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a punishment widely criticized under international law.

Critics argue that condemning children to spend the rest of their lives behind bars ignores research showing that young people differ from adults in development, judgment, and susceptibility to peer influence.

Despite this, thousands of individuals in the U.S.

have received life without parole sentences for crimes committed as youth, and these penalties disproportionately affect black and brown teenagers.

So over the past two decades, the U.S.

Supreme Court has limited some of the harshest sentences for minors under the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The most recent court case is this 2021 Supreme Court decision that reaffirmed that age must be considered in sentencing but allowed states flexibility in how they evaluate youth-related factors.

So the way I understood it was they say it's cruel and unusual punishment.

They also didn't, I believe in some of the earlier decisions, they didn't say whether it was retroactive or not.