The American Civil Liberties Union has released a new report giving focused attention to the thousands of prisoners serving life without parole sentences in the United States for nonviolent drug and property crimes.

The report, which can be accessed at this link, is titled “A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses.”

Among those serving Life is a person who stole a $159 jacket and a “middleman” in the sale of $10 worth of marijuana.

If you think such cases might be a good case to test the ban on cruel and unusual sentencing, pause.  Few of these challenges are ever successful.

And so the question is, can we learn from the Ontario Court of Appeals?  A three-year mandatory minimum sentence for gun possession is “cruel and unusual punishment,” Ontario’s top court ruled in striking down a plank of Ottawa’s law-and-order agenda.

The full opinion can be found here.