There has been much talk about the value of diversity on the bench. A recent decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court is evidence that different experiences and history indeed provide different perspectives. The raw, painful and blunt language in State v. Belcher about the corrosive effect of racial stereotypes on generations of young Black people appears to reflect a perspective that must be lived to be clearly understood. That perspective was provided by its author, Justice Raheem Mullins, who is Black.

Belcher involved a 60-year sentence imposed on a Black teenager who was convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a stranger in 1993. Belcher was 14 years old at the time, had an extensive juvenile record, and was on furlough from the Long Lane School for juvenile offenders. The appeal sought a new sentencing hearing on the ground that the sentencing court had relied on “materially false information.”

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