Here, a grieving mother uses the memory of her murdered daughter to fight on behalf of victim rights. In his West Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, a paroled teenage killer uses his second chance to mentor at-risk youth. In these separate cases, both the criminals and their victims were juveniles.

Their stories provide the backdrop for an unrelated pair of upcoming Supreme Court appeals over whether juvenile offenders who commit violent felonies deserve tough prison sentences -- especially life without parole.

On Monday the justices will examine whether the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" should be applied in such cases, and whether young minds, because of their age, have less culpability and greater potential to be reformed.

"These two cases are going to tell us a lot about how far the -- led by Justice [Anthony] Kennedy -- is willing to go in limiting a state's ability to impose incredibly tough sentences on either the young, or in some cases, the mentally retarded," said Thomas Goldstein, co-founder of Scotusblog and a leading Washington attorney. "How much is the Supreme Court willing to intervene here?"

Child was abducted, strangled

On a quiet street in Allentown, Dawn Romig can look out from her porch and see the city park a block away where in 2003 her world fell apart. There on a snowy late February afternoon, her 12-year-old child, Danni, was abducted by a 17-year-old neighbor. The girl was beaten, raped and strangled.

Romig and her husband, Daryl, were in the courtroom when suspect Brian Bahr was brought in for a first appearance. "I leaned over to my husband and I said, 'Oh my goodness, I know who that is,' " she recalled. "I said, 'I've yelled at him. He was a troublemaker in the neighborhood before.' "

Bahr was tried as an adult, convicted, and given life without parole. Pennsylvania leads the United States in teen lifers with more than 440, according to state lawmakers supporting laws to end such sentences.

Anyone in the state charged with homicide has to be tried as an adult and, if convicted, sentenced to life behind bars.

"He was very close to 18, he was very angry, he knew what he was doing, he knew right from wrong," Dawn Romig said of her daughter's killer. "He had a written plan on paper that they found in his school bag, 23 things to do to a girl in the woods. And he did it all."

She thinks Bahr deserves to die in prison for his crime. "This was so violent and so premeditated. Other situations deserve a second chance but something as violent as this was -- it was so angry and so violent and so cold."

A parolee's story

Edwin Desamour is sitting in a city park in Philadelphia. With him are two teenagers he helps counsel, and they are getting a stern lecture on how to conduct themselves in school.

"Why are you arguing to your teacher?" he asks one boy. "You should know better." Desamour is president of MIMIC, Men in Motion in the Community, a grass-roots group he founded to mentor youngsters in his neighborhood.

He's 36 now, and completed his parole only last June, after two decades. Back in May 1989, 16-year-old Desamour took a ride with some friends, a trip that cost him eight-and-a-half years in an adult penitentiary.

He participated in a fight with rival teens across town. A friend had asked him to come along and help a buddy who wanted revenge for getting beat up.

"I was in that mind-set: I got your back, I'm going to be there for you," Desamour said, standing outside the rundown row house where he grew up. "I had been involved in plenty of incidents where violence occurred. But this time someone got killed."

The victim was 17-year-old Sean Daily, son of a Philadelphia police officer. He was savagely beaten with a baseball bat. The local media played the case as a racially motivated attack. Daily was white while the multiple defendants were all either Hispanic or African-American.

Five young men were sentenced to life in prison. Desamour, initially charged with first-degree murder, received a third-degree conviction and a sentence of seven to 20 years.

"I remember one day just sitting on the prison block and I looked around and I saw some older people there that were in their 70s and 80s," he said. "And I remember thinking to myself, 'I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be that old sitting in prison.' "

Desamour is remorseful for his role in the killing, and fortunate he was a given a chance to turn his life around.

"Coming home from prison was a perfect time for me to really identify key people that I'm surrounded by who are a positive influence on my life. And those people stepped up to the plate."

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