Eric Hancock was 16 and with a cash-strapped older cousin when he robbed a Mount Oliver convenience store, killing the clerk before he left with $400 and a pack of Newport cigarettes in the summer of 2007.

His public defender, Veronica Brestensky, maintains that he never fully understood the consequences of his actions and she does not believe he's beyond repair. Eric, who is from Greensboro, N.C., but was visiting family when he robbed the store, said he did not intend to kill the clerk and that the gun accidentally went off.

"I don't think it ever sunk in, the ramifications," Ms. Brestensky said. "I don't see any reason whatsoever that he would not be able to be rehabilitated."

But because Eric was charged with murder, he was automatically tried as an adult. He ultimately was convicted of second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Ms. Brestensky called the case "heart-breaking."

"You're dealing with a kid who hasn't been alive long enough to learn from [his] mistakes," she said.

Today, for the first time in its history, the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the constitutionality of such penalties for juvenile offenders when it reviews the separate cases of two Florida men, Joe Sullivan and Terrance Graham, who received life sentences for crimes they committed at 13 and 17, respectively. The cases, while not consolidated, deal with similar issues and are scheduled to be argued back-to-back today.

In Pennsylvania, some legislators, prosecutors and advocates are watching the cases closely because the state has more juvenile lifers than any other in the nation -- with 444 reported in May 2008 -- and the number grows every year. Last year, the Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission tallied a record 11 juveniles who received life sentences.

Attorney General Tom Corbett did not return phone calls seeking comment. But a friend-of-the-court brief he signed with 18 other states' attorneys general, written by Louisiana Attorney General James D. "Buddy" Caldwell, urged the Supreme Court to leave the difficult task of prosecuting juveniles up to them.

"When to be merciful to a juvenile who has committed a terrible crime? When to punish?" Mr. Caldwell wrote. "No one wants the responsibility to answer these questions, but they must be answered. The Constitution leaves that arduous but necessary task to the collective wisdom of the states and their citizens."

State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, held a hearing last year on the fact that Pennsylvania led the nation in the number of juvenile lifers. He said he hoped the Supreme Court would provide some guidance to legislators as to how to deal with young defendants, especially those convicted of felony murder.

To be convicted of felony murder, a person only has to commit a felony that results in a homicide and does not need to be involved with or even present for the actual murder. The crime in Pennsylvania still carries a life sentence.

"There may be cases in which [the defendants] weren't present and it's not first-degree [murder]," he said. "We might look at that, but there are cases where they should probably spend the rest of their life in jail.

"Maybe the Supreme Court will resolve those issues for us. I'm hopeful that they will," he said.

Some lawyers who are following the case say the Supreme Court's decision is not likely to have any direct legal impact in Pennsylvania, because neither of the two defendants before the Supreme Court was convicted of murder. All of Pennsylvania's juvenile lifers were convicted of first- or second-degree murder.

One of the two Florida defendants, Joe Sullivan, was sentenced to life after being convicted of robbing and raping an elderly woman when he was 13. The second, Terrance Graham, received a life sentence at 17 for participating in a home invasion when he was on parole for another armed robbery.

Even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of one or both of the defendants, a question remains as to what the court will say in terms of what makes the sentences unconstitutional.

The justices could, for example, set an age limit and say that defendants under a particular age can't receive life sentences. Or they could say that life sentences for juveniles who have not committed murder are unconstitutional.

David Acker, the attorney for 12-year-old murder defendant Jordan Brown, does not believe the two cases before the Supreme Court will directly affect his client. Jordan is accused of killing his father's pregnant girlfriend in rural Lawrence County when he was 11 and will face life without parole if convicted of homicide as an adult.

He believes the Supreme Court will carve out a narrower rule.

"They happened to pick two cases that are not homicide cases," he said, noting that the court has declined to hear cases involving juveniles who have received life without parole for homicide convictions in the past. "The Supreme Court has a habit of trying to be specific and as limited [in their] ruling as possible."

Still, even if the case has no direct legal impact, advocates are hoping it will stoke a discussion about the issue in Pennsylvania and that legislators will start to consider what justices today are considering.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, helped author a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the defendants, in which she asked justices to consider "a very modest remedy ... not release, simply an opportunity to review."

Ms. Levick said she hopes the court takes into account its ruling in Roper v. Simmons, in which it abolished the death penalty for juvenile offenders on the basis that it was "cruel and unusual." In that case, the court overturned the death sentence of Christopher Simmons of Missouri, who at 17 hog-tied a woman and threw her into a river to drown.

She said that in that case, the court acknowledged that children, even those who commit heinous crimes, should be treated differently under the law because of their reduced capacity for reason and because they can be rehabilitated.

Both Ms. Levick and Mr. Acker said they hope the court carries over its reasoning from Roper -- that juveniles are intrinsically amenable to rehabilitation -- and applies it to the current cases. They see both life imprisonment and the death penalty as "terminal sentences," because both sanctions presume the defendant is irreparable and can never return to society.

"If you're going to take a child and give him a life sentence without any hope, without any possibility of parole, that's the equivalent of the death penalty," Mr. Acker said.

Advocates are also urging the court to take into account the growing body of psychological and neurological research that shows adolescents are wired differently than adults and are more impulsive and more susceptible to peer pressure.

But Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. pointed out that the state court system already weighs many of these factors through a process called decertification, in which juveniles charged with crimes in adult criminal court can have their case transferred back to juvenile court through a hearing.

"Through the decertification process, you can address ... intelligence, age, family, amenability to rehabilitation," he said. "You do that on the front end."

Still, Mr. Zappala called Ms. Levick's proposition -- that juvenile lifers have an opportunity to be paroled at some point -- "not unreasonable."

"There's a mechanism on the front end, why can't there be a system on the back end?" he asked.

He added that parole boards would have to be cautious, and consider things such as the danger to the community and trauma to the victim's family.

His position was shared by El Gray, who works with the county's anti-violence initiative One Vision One Life. Mr. Gray has not only worked with criminal youth but has been the victim of violent crime himself. His grandson, 19-year-old Raemon Gray, and cousin, 23-year-old Alvin Smith, were killed within three days of each other last November.

Mr. Gray said he'd be in favor of life sentences with the possibility of parole for the men who pulled the trigger, regardless of whether they're juveniles. He views violent behavior as the consequence of outside influences, such as broken families, drugs and access to weapons, and that the effects these influences can be reversed.

"I believe that after a certain period of time that if an individual is trying to do something positive while incarcerated ... then there's a strong possibility he will do something positive on the outside," he said.

Washington correspondent Daniel Malloy writes the "Pittsburgh On The Potomac" blog exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.